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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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214 |
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Contents |
Index |
Home
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| Chapter 11 |
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Prisoner Doctors:
The
Agony of Selections |
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They dealt with me nearly like a human being — but all the while
there was the reality of the camps. |
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— Auschwitz prisoner doctor |
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For prisoner doctors to remain healers was profoundly
heroic and equally paradoxical: heroic in their combating the overwhelming
Auschwitz current of murder; paradoxical in having to depend upon those who had
abandoned healing for killing — the Nazi doctors. And before prisoner
doctors could be healers in Auschwitz, they had to succeed in the very
difficult task of surviving, mentally as well as physically.
Only from
late 1942 were significant numbers of prisoner doctors permitted to work on
hospital blocks, often at first as an orderly or a nurse rather than a doctor.
Earlier, there had been near total neglect of the sick: a handful of prisoner
doctors (mostly Polish; and in the women’s camp German and then Czech
Jewish as well) had virtually nothing in the way, of medicine or treatment to
offer the overwhelming numbers of moribund patients. Patients were further
victimized by SS men and prisoner capos who were medically ignorant,
often sadistic, and inclined to try their hand at medical procedures (a
notorious former locksmith, for example, boasted of having performed many
amputations). |
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| Terror and
Privilege |
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| From late 1942 or early 1943, Jews who arrived as doctors
were not only permitted to live but were made a privileged category of
prisoner. But they, nevertheless, retained an underlying terror from what they
had |
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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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Back |
Page 214 |
Forward |
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