| The Experimental Impulse |
| |
Dr. L. had seen enough of Auschwitz to suspect the
terrible truth (“I told myself immediately,…. ‘They are going to
a museum’ ”), though she and others refrained from saying so because
they “lacked the courage,” felt it would be more kind to remain
silent, and could not in any case be certain of their suspicion.
These
women were taken to the concentration camp at Natzweiler, near Strasbourg,
which although not designated as an extermination camp, nonetheless possessed
its own gas chamber with the usual false showerheads as well as one additional
feature: a one-way mirror that allowed those on the outside of the gas chamber
to observe those inside. This mirror had been installed because the gas chamber
itself had been constructed as part of the necessary research equipment.
A prisoner doctor reported that the group of Auschwitz women
(thirty-nine of them according to other records) were given a sham physical
examination for reassurance, then gassed, and that the corpses were immediately
transported to the anatomy pavilion of the Strasbourg University Hospital. A
French inmate, who had to assist the project’s director, SS Captain Dr.
August Hirt, told how “preservation began immediately” with the
arrival of bodies that were “still warm, the eyes ... wide open and
shining.” There were two subsequent shipments of men, from each of whom
the left testicle had been removed and sent to Hirt's anatomy lab.40
Hirt, a professor of anatomy, had under
Himmler’s instructions prepared the cyanide salts used to kill the
Auschwitz prisoners in what was the inaugural use of the new gas chamber. He
had originally advocated in a memo to Himmler the securing of skulls of
captured “Jewish-Bolshevik commissars.” The goal at that time was to
“acquire tangible scientific research material” that would
“represent … a repulsive but typical species of subhumanity.”
The memo recommended that “a junior physician attached to the
Wehrmacht” first take photographs and perform various measurements
and studies on subjects while still alive, make sure that the head is not
damaged in the killing, and then take other specific measures for preserving
the head and shipping it to the designated research institute where various
studies could be performed on the skull and brain including those of
“racial classification” and “pathological features of the skull
formation.” In locating two ultimate evils (Jewish and Bolshevik) in
members of that group, and anticipating specific anatomical findings in their
skulls or brains, the Nazis were acting upon the most extreme blend of
racial-biomedical and political ideology.41
But there were apparently difficulties in rounding up
“Jewish-Bolshevik commissars” and possibly in severing heads, so that
it was decided to make use of full skeletons rather than merely skulls and to
collect specimens in the place where any such task could be accomplished —
namely, Auschwitz. It was said that 115 people were victimized in this way, all
Jews (79 men, 30 women) with the exception of 2 Poles and 4 |
|
