| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE |
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because he was an “outsider” they could talk more
readily to him about their families than they could to their fellow prisoners
— again a dubious claim but one that says something about the terrain Dr.
B. inhabited in Auschwitz. And he had proof of that shared terrain in warm
letters from inmates received after the war.
One reason he could adapt
so well was that his assignment there kept him separate from the killing
process, which is partly why he could say that “we are pulling the wrong
string” in talking so much about the killing: more “in the foreground
for … doctors is the problem of starvation.” But even that could be
overcome “if one had … or at least believed … one had a task to
fulfill and friends for whom … one could do something … good.”
He did describe moments when misery, which usually “one would
overlook a lot,” would be suddenly revealed by “a certain, special
glance” of a prisoner that would break through one’s “protective
cover” (Schirm; literally “umbrella”), and one would feel
“the experience of misery or despair in such a situation.” He added
that, just as small details move one in connection with beauty, so do
“small idylls” of a negative kind, and then “one has to become
very active” to overcome the feeling. Yet his Auschwitz dream recurred:
“To me the most dreadful thing during the whole time … was again and
again the look of this very good friend,” of Simon Cohen who probably was
a hallucination. That periodic self accusation was absorbed by and perhaps
served a function in, his relatively comfortable overall adaptation. What he
derived in particular from his relation to prisoner doctors was suggested in a
phrase in a handwritten letter he sent to me, the only one in English,
concerning his relationship with the older prisoner professor who had served as
mentor to Delmotte: “I adored [the professor] as a father and I believe he
also accepted me as a son.” Allowing for Dr. B.’s possible
exaggeration, we are nonetheless struck by these two young SS doctors looking
to a Jewish prisoner professor as a father figure and possibly experiencing a
measure of sibling rivalry in the process. That the feeling was reciprocal was
confirmed by warm letters from former prisoner doctors, including those from
the professor himself. After reading one of them to me, Dr. B began to muse
about “the duty to stay in Auschwitz” and his capacity “to feel
quite comfortable there.” He spoke of having in the camp an active sense
of the “special calling in me to be a physician.” This statement
represents his own relationship to the Auschwitz schizophrenic situation; it
could have been made by no other Nazi doctor. |
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| Dr. B.’s Family: “I Never Told Her the Full
Truth” |
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| Ernst B.’s relationship with his wife and young
children was crucial to his Auschwitz life, but indirectly and from a distance.
One of his first |
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