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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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337 |
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Contents |
Index |
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| Chapter 17 |
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Dr. Auschwitz:
Josef
Mengele |
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The SS man from Mein Kampf — very righteous and
puritanical. |
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— Auschwitz prisoner doctor |
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He was capable of being so kind to the children, to have them become
fond of him, to bring them sugar, to think of small details in their daily
lives, and to do things we would genuinely admire .... And then, next to that,
... the crematoria smoke, and these children, tomorrow or in a half-hour, he is
going to send them there. Well, that is where the anomaly
lay. |
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— Auschwitz prisoner doctor |
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My work on the Nazi doctors began and ended with Josef
Mengele. It was initiated by legal documents on him and was completed in the
summer of 1985, just at the time a team of scientists declared bones discovered
in a Brazilian grave to be his.
Although I had originally considered
focusing my study on Mengele, I soon realized that such a focus could further
the cult of demonic personality already surrounding him and thereby neglect the
more general Nazi phenomenon of medicalized killing. Not that I aim to debunk
this exemplar of Nazi evil: while he is obscured by his demonic mythology, he
has in many ways earned it. Rather, my task is to try to understand how his
individual psychological traits fed, and fed upon, the Nazi biomedical vision,
and to learn what he has to tell us about medicalized killing and corrupted
medical science. For the fact that Mengele seemed to thrive in Auschwitz says
much not only about the man, but even more about the psychology of the
institution. |
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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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