| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE |
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| patients, who were then murdered. Dr. Henri Q. told of
cases involving “complex open fractures, complex reduction [bone-setting]
apparatus, and osteosynthesis [operation for uniting the fractured ends of a
bone].” in which treatment was elaborate and painstaking: “And when
they would be cured, they were killed — because they were weak.” And
Dr. Jan W. described a similar pattern in which Friedrich Entress, notorious
for his zeal in conducting selections, was taught a surgical procedure by a
Polish prisoner doctor, which the SS doctor, in turn, performed on patients.
But |
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if the treatment had to last longer than a very
brief convalescence, even after a successful operation, he [Entress] would
consider the patient a burden on the hospital, affecting the rate of turnover
in the hospital. So, even then, after the operation performed by this SS doctor
who learned the art in this way, he could just as swiftly send the patient to
the gas chamber or to an injection of phenol. |
| This schizophrenic contradiction between healing and
killing remained until the end. As Jacob R. said: |
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My last duty in Auschwitz [before he was
transferred to Buna] was typical of the attitude of negating reality — of
the prisoners and of the SS too. The Russians were coming nearer and nearer.
And [yet] we prepared a course of lectures for doctors in camp [telling them
how] to be better prisoner doctors. That was September 1944 .... We were
ordered [to do it] by the SS doctors, very much against the idea [opposition]
of the orderlies. It was a matter of power position. |
| It was also a matter of maintaining the Auschwitz “as
if” medical situation, a deception in which prisoner doctors were required
to be key figures. Dr. Erich G.’s observation that Nazi doctors
“could not suppress all humanity” may have a double truth: they could
not suppress all of their own humanity; much less could they suppress that of
their prisoner-physician-slaves. |
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| Remaining
Healers |
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Mostly prisoner doctors struggled to work together in ways
that could sustain life. Besides their “caucuses” on establishing
policies toward selections, in different ways — as Dr. Gerda N. said in
connection with her contacts with other women doctors — “they were
just great, ... as hungry, . . . thirsty.... [and] under the threat of being
put to death as all the others were, but still they functioned [to help
others].”
While their lives were sometimes saved by grateful
patients, prisoner |
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