| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE |
| |
Transition to Auschwitz
Ernst B. was a
young general practitioner, just a few years out of medical school, when the
war began in September 1939. By the following year, partly in response to the
national patriotic enthusiasm surrounding early German victories, he began to
develop an intense urge to enlist. As a young man, he felt, “I must take
part,” but had difficulty doing so because wartime medical planners in his
region had declared him essential. Then, during a chance encounter on a city
street, a friend from his medical school told him, “Heydrich [chief of the
Reich Main Security Office] is a good friend of mine, and I'll arrange that for
you.” Dr. B. said that at the time he made no special distinction between
the Waffen SS, in which the arrangement was to be made, and the army, except to
consider the SS to be “like a good club.” Months later the call came,
and he was sent for a period of basic training followed by special officers'
training. He tended to dismiss this sequence as essentially an orientation
program for medical officers within the Waffen SS but acknowledged that there
was some discussion of SS ideology and focus on the SS as an élite
group.
Because of a background in bacteriology, he was assigned to one
of the Hygienic Institutes, considered “a normal medical-military command
within the Waffen SS.” From there after interviews in which his
ideological views were explored, he was transferred to the special
concentration-camp division of the Hygienic Institute. His impression was that
those so chosen were considered “ideologically steadfast … [and]
reliable.” The high standing of his sponsor as a friend of Heydrich
probably also played a part: when summoned to get his assignment from Professor
Mrugowsky, the overall chief of all SS Hygienic Institutes, “I was a very
small man but he received me as one of the inner circle … because of that
[original] recommendation.” Mrugowsky paid him the high honor of assigning
him to Auschwitz, telling him almost jauntily, “There you will find a good
friend.”
Though Ernst B. had heard of Dachau “and maybe one
or two camps in northern Germany,” he claimed to know nothing about
Auschwitz and “nothing about the extermination of Jews” at that time.
Certainly he was completely unprepared for what he encountered upon arriving in
Auschwitz in mid 1943, his relative innocence attested to by the fact that he
had with him his wife (who had joined him at a duty assignment not too far away
just before his transfer). When driven through the camp in an open vehicle,
they were shocked by what they saw: “Starving people working, … a
great number of them, … everywhere guards …. Far off in the distance,
a large fence …. It was very bad.”
They were taken to the
office of Bruno Weber, the “good friend” Mrugowsky had promised him,
a man Dr. B. had liked and respected as his superior at the first Hygienic
Institute to which he had been assigned. After he and his wife had both
expressed their horror at what they had |
|
