Medicine and Medical Ethics in Nazi Germany: Origins, Practices, Legacies (Vermont Studies on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust) by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The camp doctor, accompanied by some SS, went from block to block. He received from the office the number of Jews in each single block. The Jews were taken from the blocks…and their numbers were checked at roll call. Then they had to strip completely, whether it was summer or winter. And now the doctor went along the rows of naked people, and all who appeared weak or frail, who had bandages, showed boils, or even scars or scabies, were…sent along with those to be killed.26

BY WAY OF A CONCLUSION, I should attempt to answer two important questions. The first is the one posed by the title of this essay and already alluded to at the beginning: Can one construct a group profile of Nazi medical criminals? At this point, the question must remain open, at least until further research has been accomplished. It would be mandatory, initially, to gather as much evidence on commonalities as possible: What common factors drove these men and some women? What characterized them? Some answers are already available. A large number of these professionals were seeking to improve their job standing, using lobby connections, conventional politics such as Nazi Party membership, and the time-honored mechanics of economic advancement. Some of the assignments in the “euthanasia” apparatus represented a promotion with higher pay, a more prestigious title, and higher standing in the civil service or professional pecking order. Such postings distinguished the careers of the aforementioned Drs. Steinmeyer and Sengenhoff. In the camps, ample opportunities for what passed as scientific research existed, which could be used for academic purposes, such as acquiring the Habilitation, or second scholarly book, enabling one to teach in a medical faculty or even become a professor. This drove Heissmeyer at Neuengamme, Mengele at Auschwitz, and Sigmund Rascher, who conducted high-pressure experiments with terminal results, at Dachau. Sadism—the experience of pleasure derived from inflicting pain on others—may have been a motive; it probably moved Inga Madlung's tormentor. This particular motivation often overlapped with others, as it did in the case of Mengele, who was both sadistic and highly ambitious. Were sadism and professional ambition aided and abetted by the incompetence of many SS camp physicians? For example, a certain SS physician in Bergen-Belsen was incapable of sewing up the wound of an inmate patient after a hernia operation.27 Gender bias was a factor in the sad efforts by Dr. Herta Oberheuser to measure up to her male colleagues at Hohenlychen and Ravensbrück. Female Nazi physicians in the Third Reich, who had a documented record of feeling displaced, tried to organize themselves to prove their worth as the equals of their Nazi male colleagues. Their attempts were effectively quashed by Wagner and Conti in 1938–1939.28 And the racist call for the physical elimination of allegedly biologically inferior “non-Aryans” turned into a mandate actually believed in by a plurality of Nazi doctors, to the extent that they took Nazi ideology at all seriously.29 This must have been a significant factor in the high

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