| Prisoner Doctors: The Agony of
Selections |
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| That degree of cooperation could save the lives of at least
the relatively healthy patients. |
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| Dilemmas |
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But the problem then was, as Dr. Jacob R. put it,
“becoming part of the system — this was the most troubling
thing.” Dedicated to trying to help people, he told me with characteristic
sadness and honesty of “the practice which haunts me all the time —
which I have never spoken about . . . the practice of selections of ...
prisoners ... unable to work.” He went on to describe how certain patients
would be very weak and show no improvement after days of hospitalization:
“So sooner or later they would be [recognized as] unable to work —
and we were unable to help. So they went off . . . to the gas chambers —
controlled [selected] by the SS doctors. And we had to decide who he [the SS
doctor] would see.” The dilemma for prisoner doctors was how much to
become a part of the system (in Dr. R.’s words); how much to cooperate in
selections. When requested or ordered by SS doctors to make lists of patients,
prisoner doctors would often consult with one another to try to come to a
common position — usually a compromise in which they would agree to
limited cooperation (listing obviously emaciated patients) while struggling to
save those they could.
They also had disagreements with each other,
which, according to Dr. Lottie M., could be difficult to discuss candidly
because of resulting feelings of pain, conflict, and anger toward one another.
Thus, prisoner doctors were pressed by their Nazi medical rulers into a moral
dilemma which, however resolved, had to result in a sense of guilt: one could
save lives only by contributing to Auschwitz selection policies; one could
avoid that involvement only by refusing to exercise one’s capacity to save
lives.
Pressures from Nazi doctors could cause prisoner doctors’
behavior toward one another to swing from solidarity to silence to contention:
So convoluted could matters become that one prisoner doctor's not helping out
with a selection could be experienced by another as a form of betrayal. Dr.
Gerda N., for instance, told me how she and a colleague served under their
Jewish doctor friend and superior, who generally protected her two younger
colleagues. They, in turn, would cooperate with her when she conveyed to them
Mengele’s orders for identifying sick patients: “We ... tried to
select the ones which were likely to die in a day or two.” But on one
occasion, she herself was particularly agitated and told them, “You have
until tonight to give me ... twenty-five people who have to be selected,”
because Mengele had demanded this. “And if you don’t do it, he said
he will shoot us.” At that point, Dr. N. and her friend “broke
down” and “decided to stop it [their cooperation],” and hid
themselves until well past the deadline. Dr. N. was not clear exactly why
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