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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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360 |
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| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE
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| be interesting.” It would have, indeed, though even he
might not have been entirely clear about his exact motivations. But I believe
they would include his characteristic combination of exaggerated scientific
claim and related ideological fantasy. |
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| Dwarfs, Noma, Eye Color, and Other Areas of
Research |
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Though nothing compared with his interest in twins,
Mengele could also be passionate about his work with dwarfs, and was once
described as “beside himself with joy” upon discovering an entire
family of five dwarfs. Such a family of course was a panacea for his genetic
focus, while at the same time satisfying his interest in the abnormal: his
wish, as his anthropological assistant put it, “to have as much a
characteristic, [of abnormality] as you can give him.”
Nyiszli
told of doing his first post-mortem examinations on people selected from
transports because of some abnormal physical development. He and others took
measurements of them; then an SS noncommissioned officer shot them; afterward,
Nyiszli did the dissections, prepared a protocol and then treated the corpses
with calcium chloride and put the clean bones together in packages which were
then sent to the … institute in Berlin-Dahlem.”38 Also, Dr. Lottie M. told of a sequence of
Mengele’s enthusiasm at receiving a family of dwarfs, his extremely
intense study and seemingly generous treatment of them and then their
disappearance: “A fortnight and … the study is finished so [to] the
gas.” (As in the case of twins a number of dwarfs did survive including
two described by Tomas A. as talented musicians who lived among his group of
twins and frequently played for the SS.)
But inmates understood the
dwarfs to reflect Mengele’s obsession with Jewish abnormality. As Dr.
Magda V. put it, “I think Jews must have been freaks to him — like
the dwarfs.” And a friend of Teresa W. saw him as “fascinated by all
sorts of freaks of nature … dwarfs, hunchbacks, imbeciles of all nations
… hermaphrodites” — all of them Jews. Another prisoner doctor
noted his interest in giants as well and, more generally, in “growth
disturbances” and growth indicators in children and young adults. Dr Erich
G mentioned Mengele’s “preconception” and even “religious
feeling” that among Jews there is a greater “heredity of bad
qualities” than among other races. In that way Mengele’s interest in
dwarfs connected with his general attitude toward Jews: it is not surprising
that ordinary inmates feared his freak hunting. As another survivor tells us,
“I was a little afraid of him. Everyone was afraid. Maybe he will ask you,
‘Come here,’ and he will find something on you interesting.”
Mengele’s third interest was noma, an area of
research that he may have more actively chosen than was suggested by the
prisoner doctor's description of his approach to Professor Epstein (see pages
296-97). In |
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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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