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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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140 |
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| “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE” THE
GENETIC CURE |
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psychiatric experience at the state mental hospital at
Eichberg before being made its director in 1939. A special unit was formed
there for extensive killing of children. Just thirty-seven in 1941, he was one
of the youngest of those central to the 14f13 program. 22 His letters suggest a
variety of ways in which a physician could experience professional enthusiasm
in connection with participation in murder.
There is the sense of
special professional opportunity: “Our work here [at the Sachsenhausen
camp] is very, very interesting .... I am collecting . . . large quantities of
new experiences” ( April 1941). Three days, later: “I am putting
particular value on these examinations for eventual future scientific
utilization.” There is pride in the assumption of increasing
responsibility: “I spoke with Dr. Heyde on the phone and told him I could
handle it all by myself, so no one else came today to help.” (20 November
1941). There is professional busyness: “On 13 December [1941] we’re
again going to Berlin only to leave again on 14 December to Fürstenberg
[Ravensbrück] where we will begin working on the 15th. We have to be
finished with Ravensbrück by 21 December” (25 November 1941). There
is the statistically based aura of efficiency: “Although today I had to
begin working half an hour late, a record was broken I managed to complete 230
forms, so that now a total of 1,192 are complete (1 December 1941) And after
finishing 80 additional forms by working “briskly” for less than two
hours the next morning, he expressed a sense of triumph over his total of 320
forms, “which, Dr. Müller [his 14f13 colleague] certainly could not
do in 2 full days Whoever works fast, saves time!” (2 December 1941)* And
his professional zeal in conveying to a camp doctor and the commandant “my
ideas about which inmates should come into consideration for
registration,” resulted — happily for him — in the decision that
“the number is to be expanded by 60-70 [inmates]” (20 November 1941).
At the same time his at least partial awareness of the fundamental
fraudulence of the operation emerges in his frequent use of quotations around
the word “examined” and in such comments as: “There are only
2,000 men, who will be finished very soon, because they are just looked at
assembly-line style” (3 September 1941) and, “About the composition
of the pat[ients at Ravensbrück], I would not like to write anything here
in this letter” (20 November 1940). Clearly disillusionment set in, since
he wrote to his wife on 19 November 1941 that, when asked by Heyde to continue
to devote himself indefinitely to the work, “I very politely
declined,” and told Nitsche in a later discussion in early 1942,“that
I wanted to go back to my institution [Eichberg]” (14 January 1942).†
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* And, it should be noted,
brings home more money. Serving as a T4 expert was piece-work. The monthly
payment for up to 500 questionnaires was 100 marks; up to 2,000, 200 marks; up
to 3,500, 300 marks; over 3,500, 400 marks.23
† In testimony given in November 1946, Mennecke claimed that,
from 1942 on, he became aware that "all these methods of the Nazi government
were inhuman and cruel and completely undiscriminating and sinful" - indeed,
that he had recognized some of these truths by 1940. While we should be
skeptical, it is possible that he was fending off that kind of awareness even
as he enthusiastically proceeded with his deadly work. He claimed that,
during his earliest concentration-camp visits, prisoners were examined
individually "to establish the presence of psychosis or psychiatric symptoms,"
and that it was still “a medical question.” 24 The claim could be entirely
false. But if even partly true, it would suggest the highly dubious medical
dimension of the project even in its origins. |
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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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