|
|
 |
| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
|
|
| Page
411 |
Back |
|
Contents |
Index |
Home
Page |
|
Forward |
|
| |
| Healing-Killing Conflict: Eduard
Wirths |
| |
him, him himself.” But her ultimate question
about her father reflected both her profound doubts and her difficulty
comprehending how far his ideology had taken him. That question was: "Can a
good man do bad things?"
Eduard’s brother Helmut, the family
member most consistently involved in the issue, was apparently motivated by two
powerful incentives: to convey his brother’s struggle and in some measure
to clear his name; and to illuminate more generally this episode of Nazi mass
murder as a way of bearing his own constructive witness. His
“mission” was complicated by his own involvement in some of those
events. He was in frequent touch with Hermann Langbein, read extensively about
Auschwitz, and attended the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt, bringing with him at
times his son, a younger colleague, and the childhood friend of Wirths
mentioned earlier. Helmut and his son were in pained dialogue: “There was
a time when he [the son] doubted that anybody at all during that time [the Nazi
era] remained correct [noch korrekt geblieben; by implication, did not
become guilty] — including me.”
Helmut strove for a broadly
humanitarian perspective, declaring that he “could understand” and
had no animosity toward the British officer whose statement about shaking hands
with a man responsible for the death of four million Jews preceded
Wirths’s suicide; and claimed to have told his brother before leaving
Auschwitz, “If I were a Jew, I would, after the war, hang every German
man, child … old men, everybody.” But his simultaneous need to defend
his brother led to a stress on the latter’s good deeds to the point of
erroneous idealization, as in his claim that Wirths persuaded Höss to
permit children to remain with their parents at selections and thereby survive.
Helmut tried to regard his brother as “an extraordinarily misused
[missbrauchten] person,” as “a very good human being …
the best father, a good doctor… [who had the] terrible fortune to [be
brought into] this situation.” Helmut’s son interjected, “If you
[got into] this machinery of murder, you are forced to become guilty.” But
Helmut went further in admitting, “Sometimes it is hard for me to believe
all those things about my brother — how he would do those things, …
selecting children for the gas chamber.” He was also extremely troubled
about Langbein’s account of his brother’s participation in typhus
experiments, wondered whether Langbein could be mistaken, and added, “I
struggle against [believing] it.” He seemed to view the incident as a more
direct Hippocratic question than any other, and admitted that, if the
description were true, he would have to “feel differently” about his
brother because such experiments “would almost certainly mean death for a
human being.” He also admitted he had no reason to doubt Langbein’s
account.
In discussing his brother’s record, Helmut raised the
central question of the healing-killing paradox: “Can you murder in order
to save another?” And later: “Whichever way you turn … you must
become guilty.” At some level he was probably including himself in that
judgment |
|
| |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical Killing and the
Psychology of
Genocide
Robert J. Lifton
ISBN 0-465-09094
©
1986 |
|
Back |
Page 411 |
Forward |
|
|
