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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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461 |
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| The Auschwitz Self: Psychological Themes
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As in the case of the Auschwitz self, Hitler’s
position was that, because Jews were, biologically and existentially, a
permanent locus of evil and a permanent threat, it was they who must be blamed
for anything done to overcome that threat and extirpate that evil. In other
words, because as Jews (and, to a lesser extent, Poles) the prisoner doctors
were by definition evil, they were therefore responsible for medical negligence
and all other evil in the camp — a position the Auschwitz self could hold
while simultaneously depending upon the medical skills of Jewish doctors for
maintaining its own professional identity.
When a Nazi doctor became
enraged at a tiny mistake made by a prisoner doctor on a medical chart — a
pattern all the more remarkable when one considers the extent of falsification
throughout Auschwitz documents — that anger had an important psychological
function. It was the Auschwitz self’s effort to hold to the “as
if” situation of a decent medical establishment and to deflect potential
guilt by attacking the other rather than confront itself.66 But blaming the victim can extend to
retrospective Auschwitz reflections, such as those of Höss himself. The
camp commandant attributed the high mortality rate among Jews to “their
psychological state,” blamed “Jewish gold” for the
“camp’s undoing” (extensive corruption), and described Jewish
prisoners in Dachau as having “protected themselves in typical fashion by
bribing their fellow prisoners,” Höss took pains to make clear his
opposition to vulgar attitudes in this area, condemning Julius Streicher and
his notorious Der Stürmer for its “disgusting sensationalism”
and pornography as harmful to the cause of “serious
anti-Semitism.”67
Höss
suggests once more the Auschwitz self’s quest for meaning on the basis of
a story, within which one can claim to have made every effort to be reasonable
and humane in the face of extraordinary provocation, but had to point, however
reluctantly, to one’s designated victim as the source of evil and threat;
which in turn required that one take the matter in hand, as any clear-minded,
responsible person would have done. Or more subjectively: “God knows I
tried. I did my best with them. But being what they were, they kept spreading
their poison and endangered my compatriots and myself, so we were left with no
choice.”
Blaming the victim is highly important to the doubling
process creating the Auschwitz self and to the Nazi doctor’s function
within the healing-killing paradox. |
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| The Auschwitz Self as Performer |
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| The element of “performance” in the Auschwitz
self, especially during selections, had considerable importance for the
experience of meaning. Mengele, of course, is the exemplar here, the
outstanding player of the Auschwitz game whose “graceful and quick
movements” reflected his harmonious sense of meaningful work in the
Auschwitz environment. But |
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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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