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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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91 |
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| Resistance to Direct Medical
Killing |
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[machin…] ery.* Bodelschwingh also visited Matthias
Göring in May 1940 to ask for help, and was told by Professor Göring
"not to undertake anything [in the way of opposition], but only to do this when
we have definite evidence" (though there surely was already evidence). Early in
the next year, Bodelschwingh asked Professor Göring to deliver a letter
addressed to the latter’s cousin Hermann, pleading that his epileptic
patients not be subjected to “economic planning” measures. Although
Hermann Göring did see fit to answer, he claimed that Bodelschwingh’s
assertions were “in part inexact and in large measure false,” and
added that he would have Karl Brandt clarify things further. Bodelschwingh, in
fact, negotiated endlessly with high Nazi officials and developed a close and
friendly relationship with Brandt (see pages 115-16), partially cooperating
while managing to stall the process despite a visit from a doctors' commission.
Bodelschwingh succeeded in protecting most of his patients.”33
Braune, described as a man of formidable
“Prussian military bearing,” had opposed the sterilization
program34 † and had taken the initiative
in approaching Bodelschwingh concerning opposition to medical killing. Braune
then worked closely with Bodelschwingh on gathering and exchanging information
and paying visits together to high officials. In one, along with the surgeon
Ferdinand Sauerbruch, they confronted Minister of Justice Gürtner, in the
latter’s apartment, with facts that apparently surprised him and caused
him to be “genuinely horrified.”36‡ also produced a truly remarkable document,
which combined passionate protest with detailed and systematic evidence, and
was submitted to an official at the Chancellery and addressed to Adolf Hitler.
The document begins with general observations made in “various
parts of the Reich” which “preclude any doubt that this is a
large-scale plan to exterminate ... thousands of ‘human beings
unworthy of life.’” These measures, he insists, “gravely
undermine the moral foundations of the whole Volk” and were
“intolerable.” He then presents a chronology of directives,
institutional experiences, questionnaire details, and methods of deception
— even making statistical estimates of the number of people killed on the
basis of the numbers on the urns of ashes received by families. He considers
these events “shocking” and “simply unworthy” of
therapeutic institutions.37 |
__________
* Bodelschwingh was
originally a supporter of the regime and even an advocate of eugenics, who
spoke of his “deep reverence” for research in that area and accepted
the sterilization program. But in his Christian view he looked upon the
physically and mentally impaired as “God’s admonition to man and
reminders ... of the connection between guilt and atonement.”
32 He brought that Christian
fervor to his protection of patients entrusted to him.
† Even he seemed to waiver a bit on sterilization. He apparently
detested the wandering beggars he encountered as business manager of the German
Hostel Association, and advocated that they be removed from society into work
camps and even undergo “medical measures that would make these people no
longer dangerous to the Volk.”35
‡ After that
meeting, Gürtner asked the Chancellery chief Lammers whether the program
should not either be stopped or else made legal. |
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THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical Killing and the
Psychology of
Genocide
Robert J. Lifton
ISBN 0-465-09094
©
1986 |
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