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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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174 |
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| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE |
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repeatedly said that “the selections during the war
with his own people in connection with emergency care — who got care and
who didn’t — that these were much more problematic” than
selections in Auschwitz.
Duty arrangements for selections were simple
enough.* The chief doctor (Wirths) provided the names of physicians — and
later of pharmacists and dentists — under his jurisdiction to the ranking
noncommissioned officer of the medical unit (usually a top sergeant
[SS-Stabsscharführer] or a technical sergeant
[Oberscharführer]) and ordered him to make up a duty roster for
ramp service. The rosters included the doctor with primary responsibility for
the selections on a particular day as well as a back-up doctor. The latter was
supposed to be present, but was by no means always there, especially toward the
last phases of the gassings in 1944. Rosters had to be signed by Wirths and
posted one week in advance. Similar rosters were prepared for the ramp duty of
medical corpsmen, including Desinfektoren who were the only ones
permitted to handle the gas.
When the commandant’s office was
notified of the arrival of a transport, it immediately informed the SS medical
division. That office in turn notified the physician on duty as well as the
highest-ranking noncommissioned Desinfektor and the responsible people
in the motor pool, from which the ambulance or other vehicle (usually bearing
the Red Cross sign) was sent. This careful set of internal arrangements ensured
that the selections from the standpoint of SS doctors and personnel,
were conducted in an orderly and proper fashion — that is, according to
regulations.† That controlled orderliness extended to the functioning of
the Jewish Sonderkommando in the crematoria, who were coordinated
closely with this medical structure.
Each selection was greatly
influenced by instructions from above concerning the relative number of
arriving Jews to be killed or permitted to survive. In general terms, policy
was set in Berlin by higher SS officials, including Himmler himself. But
decisions were also greatly influenced by Auschwitz deliberations between the
chief physician and the commandant. Overall there was a basic conflict between
the police arm of the SS which considered itself responsible for the
annihilation of all Jews; and the economic arm of the organization, which
responded to the increasingly desperate wartime need for productive slave
labor. Wirths and other doctors saw themselves as essentially in the second
group because, in addition to performing selections, their task included
maintaining the health of these slave laborers, at least to the degree of
enabling them to work. But SS doctors could take the opposite view as well,
claiming that overcrowding and extremely poor hygienic conditions could lead to
devastating epidemics. They would therefore insist that fewer arrivals be
admitted to the camp; that, in effect, a greater percentage of them be |
__________
* These were discussed by a
former inmate who had worked closely with Wirths, and by Dr. B.
†
The term frequently used to describe this is ordnungsgemässer
Ablauf (“proper course”). |
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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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