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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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369 |
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| Dr. Auschwitz: Josef Mengele
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| science, of omnipotence and doubt, were probably shared
widely among Nazified German scientists, and his serving as a personal
connection between the anus mundi of Auschwitz and the German
medical-academic establishment would seem to have been completely appropriate.
In leaving the camp at the end, Mengele fled to the Berlin-Dahlem Institute to
which he had sent his specimens. It is unclear whether he left new material
there (destroyed later by Verschuer) or took from it old material he had
earlier sent. In any case he was said to have gone there to make his report on
his work.50 |
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| Mengele and His Fellow Nazi Doctors |
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Mengele’s relationships with SS medical colleagues
also show contradictions as well as discernible patterns. We know of Dr.
B.’s lauding him as “the most decent colleague I met there.”
Ernst B.’s description of Mengele’s close professional and personal
relationship with Weber suggests the existence of a “medical-intellectual
élite” at Auschwitz.
A survivor, who had had opportunities
to observe SS doctors together, thought Mengele somewhat removed and
“quite arrogant” toward other SS doctors, but also said he had
“a strong personality and could influence people.” We have heard of
some of that persuasiveness in Mengele’s manipulation of Lolling for the
sake of maintaining support for his research and apparently countering
Wirths’s opposition to some of it, perhaps that portion of the work that
required having children in the camp.
Considering these tendencies, as
well as Dr. B.’s recollection of the impressive “rationality”
with which Mengele could spin out his wildly Nazified racial-historical
concepts, Mengele’s position with other SS doctors in Auschwitz may well
have depended upon his talent for rationalizing the murderously absurd.
He could be persuasive because, perhaps more than any other SS doctor, he could
make “good sense” of Auschwitz. |
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| Deadly Colleagueship: Mengele and Prisoner Doctors
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| Much confusion about Mengele stemmed from his solicitude
toward prisoner doctors which, while not without contradictions, could be
impressive and life saving. More than merely needing them for his research
purposes, Mengele placed doctors in a special category: as Dr. Lottie M. put
it, ordinary prisoners (Jews especially) “were the rabbits and mice,”
while the doctors were “the human beings,” so that even Jewish
doctors could become his “colleagues.” She told the story of how,
when the Czech camp was annihilated, Mengele made up a very small list of those
who were to be spared, which included his twins, his artist Eva C., and several
Jewish doctors. When one of the doctors said to him that he would not go with
Mengele unless his wife and daughter were spared as well, Mengele permitted
both of them to survive. Despite his coldness, Dr. Lottie M. considered him
more intelligent than the others, and more |
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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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