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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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173 |
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| Selections on the Ramp |
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[se…] lect was adamantly defended by Wirths. Indeed,
he himself insisted upon setting an example: not only did he himself select,
when he as chief would not have had to, but he put off other obligations that
might have prevented him from carrying out ramp duty for which he was
scheduled.11 His attitude was close to that
of Höss, the camp commandant, who felt compelled to be present at times
during not only selections but the entire sequence of killing: “I had to
show them all that I did not merely issue the orders and make the regulations
but was also prepared myself to be present at whatever task I had assigned to
my subordinates.” Significantly, he claimed that doctors had this
expectation of him as well, that he felt it necessary “to look
through the peephole of the gas chambers and watch the process of death itself,
because the doctors wanted me to see it.”12
The SS doctor Ernst B. thought that
having a physician conduct selections “made it perfect” —
by which he meant, “If somebody from some other place comes and says we
don’t have enough people or we have too many, . . . then it can be claimed
that the doctors have done it [the selections] — that it has been done
with precise medical judgment.” That “perfection” involved the
appearance of appropriate medical activity — Auschwitz’s “as
if” situation — and that policy of doctors’ doing selections was
(according to Höss) largely laid down by the chief SS doctor,
Reichsarzt SS Ernst Robert Grawitz.13
Wirths was understood to have had additional reasons for insisting upon
the medical control of selections, reasons having to do with constant friction
between his office and the commandant or military command in general. As Ernst
B. put it: “As far as the head doctor was concerned, everything that the
military was doing was foolish and wrong, and if he gave away his
responsibility to them — in this case, the selections — then his
influence on the military was reduced. He had to support his power any way he
could, and avoid relinquishing his hold on various levels.” Dr. B. was
implying that Wirths considered himself, as a physician, more humane but was at
the same time involved in a classical bureaucratic struggle. And for the same
reason, Dr. B. believed that the chief doctor preferred that he, rather than
his medical subordinates, should retain control over selections in order to
maintain his general influence: “In every bureaucracy everyone tries to
enlarge his ‘writing table’, [Schreibtisch].”
In
holding to the principle of medical efficiency for the entire operation, Wirths
oversaw the selections process, including its personal arrangements, and
thereby maintained the efficiency of Auschwitz killing. (I shall examine his
behavior and his conflicts in chapter 18.)
Performing selections was
constantly compared to being in combat. The message from Himmler, from the camp
commandant, and from the medical hierarchy was that this difficult assignment
had to be understood as wartime duty. Selections were often compared more
directly to medical triage in war. Thus Dr. B. could quote his friend Mengele
as having |
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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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Page 173 |
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