| The Auschwitz Self: Psychological
Themes |
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of a precarious Auschwitz self. Initially revolted by
selections, Delmotte felt that they violated his strong SS idealism. His being
treated gently by his medical superiors and brought slowly around to doing
selections was in keeping with Himmler’s dictum of allowance for weakness.
I suspect that part of the message conveyed to him by Mengele (as designated
head of the “rehabilitation team”) was that a true SS officer —
a member of the special SS community — takes on, when necessary for his
Führer and his race, precisely those tasks he finds repellent. That
powerful argument and related pressures held for Delmotte’s Auschwitz self
— the latter also ironically buttressed by “fatherly” support
from his prisoner physician-professor-mentor — only for a year or so until
the end of the war. Then, with the collapse of the Auschwitz environment,
Delmotte’s relatively admirable capacity for guilt, associated with the
quick emergence of his humane prior self, undoubtedly contributed greatly to
his suicide. But the principle of ordeal on behalf of ethos and community
maintained the Auschwitz self sufficiently for Delmotte to perform the deadly
task for which he was brought to Auschwitz.*
Here was a vicious circle,
in which the very conflicts over killing that may have haunted the Auschwitz
self contributed to its sense of ordeal, which in turn diminished further its
concern about what it was doing to others. And as the overall ethos took hold
in any such Nazi environment, a man could act as he did and promote his
Auschwitz self because “it was expected that I do this.”29 An incremental tendency might also be present,
so that the “ordeal” of the Auschwitz self could gradually be
accepted. |
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| Biological Renewal |
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| Nazi doctors were always affected by the unique feature of
the revitalization ethos, its focus on biological renewal. They, the medical
biologists, |
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* There are psychological
parallels between Delmotte’s case and that of the far more prestigious
Nazi, General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who headed the Einsatzgruppen
in Central Russia (see page 159). Himmler took a keen interest in the case of
his “favorite general,” conferring by telephone with Grawita, whom he
severely chastised for failing to convey a full picture of Bach-Zelewski’s
condition and for what he considered the doctor’s poor psychological
treatment. 26 Nonetheless, the general recovered sufficiently that a few months
later he was back killing Jews as the newly appointed overall chief of
anti-partisan formations in Russia. His breakdown had been in early March 1942.
In September of that year, he wrote to Himmler recommending himself for the new
position as the most experienced higher police leader.27 Bach-Zelewski had a reputation,
even within the SS, for his unusual brutality in such activities as putting
down the Warsaw rebellion.
As solicitous as
Himmler was of Bach-Zelewski during his illness, the Reichsführer bristled
when the general, at the time of his breakdown, asked whether the killing of
Jews might be stopped in the East, and replied angrily, “That is a
Führer order. The Jews are the disseminators of Bolshevism. … If you
don't keep your nose out of the Jewish business, you'll see what'll happen to
you!”28 For one
who collapsed under his ordeal, sympathetic therapy was the order of the day
— until he could resume that ordeal. Sympathy stopped when the policy
behind the ordeal was questioned. We may strongly suspect that both
Bach-Zelewski and Delmotte internalized the desire to harden themselves by SS
standards as a means of recovering from psychological breakdown.
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