|
|
 |
| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
|
|
| Page
345 |
Back |
|
Contents |
Index |
Home
Page |
|
Forward |
|
| |
| Dr. Auschwitz: Josef Mengele |
| |
or his eyes had a "cruel expression" or were "the eyes of
a fish," or "dead eyes," "wild eyes," or eyes that never looked at one's own.
Some survivors spoke of his odor. One described him as "young, ...
elegant, ... smart, ... smelling of eau de cologne,” and as “very
sensitive about bad smells”: “Before his arrival the doors and
windows had to be opened.” And more generally, Marianne F., who worked on
the medical block, spoke of his “white coat over his uniform —
shining new white” and characterized him as “Clean, clean,
clean!”
Mengele’s passion for cleanliness and perfection
carried over into a selections aesthetic: he would send people with skin
blemishes to the gas chamber or those with small abcesses. or even old
appendectomy scars. “My two cousins were sent in front of my eyes by
Mengele to their deaths because they had small wounds on their bodies,”
was the way one survivor put it. Limited evidence of scabies, or rashes or
scars from scarlet fever, or even rubella (German measles) on: the skin of
children could have the same effect.
Specific prisoner responses to
Mengele’s selections were dominated by a special quality of fear and
helplessness. Dr. Gisella Perl wrote, “We feared these visits more than
anything else, because … we never knew whether we would be permitted to
continue to live. … He was free to do whatever he pleased with
us.”21 It was significant that many
survivors who had witnessed the annihilation of the Gypsy camp considered that
decision to have been Mengele’s — an understandable assumption, both
because the policy seemed consistent with the man and because Mengele was
relentless in tracking down Gypsies, especially children, who tried to escape
their fate. Though the assumption was factually wrong, its psychic truth lay in
Mengele’s inexorable commitment to the Nazi principle of murder-selection.
Dr. Lengyel speaks of prisoners’ rage: “How we hated this
charlatan! … How we despised his detached haughty air, his continual
whistling, his absurd orders, his frigid cruelty!” She described the
temptation on one occasion, when seeing lying on a table his briefcase whose
contours clearly revealed the revolver inside, to “seize the gun and
slaughter the assassin.”22 While full
awareness of that rage might not come for many inmates until their liberation
from Auschwitz, it was certainly building while they were there. Mengele could
also be perceived, almost in the manner of Hochhuth’s portrayal of him, as
a nonhuman evil force. Dr. Wanda J., in commenting that she never spoke to him
because he never addressed her or her colleagues, added, “The devil should
speak to him.” And another prisoner doctor spoke of Mengele as “the
lord of life and death.” Such figures of speech meant more in Auschwitz
than in other places. The perceived ratio of Mengele’s beauty and evil
could become a mystical indicator. Marianne F., observing Mengele on the
medical block, describes how she “played this little game”: “If
the sun rises red you'll live this day, because it's beautiful and you detach
the image of [Mengele] from what you knew |
|
| |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical Killing and the
Psychology of
Genocide
Robert J. Lifton
ISBN 0-465-09094
©
1986 |
|
Back |
Page 345 |
Forward |
|
|
