The Cunning of History by Richard L. Rubenstein

Author:Richard L. Rubenstein [Rubenstein, Richard L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

If the researchers really believe these experiments are safe for humans, why do they go to the prisons for the subjects? Why don’t they try them out in their own labs on students?…Because they know the university would never permit this…. They make a distinction between people they think of as social equals or colleagues and men behind bars, whom they regard as less than human.10

Nor is it accidental that the American doctors selected blacks as their subjects in the syphilis experiments. The blacks are the American equivalent of the Nazi Tiermenschen, subhumans, concerning whom no effective protest was anticipated. It is likely that racism is indispensable to a society of total domination. Certainly, racism facilitates the ascription of paranthropoid identity to human beings. Once the victim is categorized as belonging to a different species, the task of transforming him into a thing is immensely simplified. Undoubtedly, the harsh forms of slavery that characterized the ante-bellum South were facilitated by the fact that the blacks were different in both race and culture from their masters.11 Before the Nazis assaulted the Jews, the Poles, the Russians, and the Gypsies, they were categorized as members of sub-human races.

Another recent American parallel to the Nazi experiments was the decision of welfare authorities in Georgia to sterilize several mentally deficient black girls. Their illiterate parents were allegedly compelled by representatives of the welfare bureaucracy to sign papers permitting the sterilization.12 The syphilis experiments and the sterilization of the black girls are in all likelihood but the tip of the iceberg.

As we have noted, one of the German institutions that recognized the potentialities of total domination was the Bayer chemical division of the giant I. G. Farben cartel. I. G. Farben was involved in both medical experiments and slave labor utilization at Auschwitz. Before its enforced dissolution at the end of the war, I. G. Farben was a huge chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate, whose corporate subsidiaries included the Bayer aspirin and the Agfa film concerns. The Bayer research laboratories were interested in testing an antityphus medicine that had been prepared in both tablet and powder form. Some patients threw up when given the tablets. Bayer wanted to ascertain whether the powder or the tablets had the fewest side effects. At first, the Bayer researchers approached a “friendly insane asylum” and were granted permission to test the medicine on some of the patients. The experiments failed because of the inability of the mentally ill patients to distinguish between the powder and the pills. As luck would have it, one of I. G. Farben’s research workers was serving as Obersturmbahnführer at Auschwitz. His help was enlisted and Bayer was permitted to conduct its experiments on camp inmates.13

Bayer’s experiments were relatively innocent. This was not true of most of I. G. Farben’s corporate activities at Auschwitz. I. G. Farben was the most important German corporate employer of slave labor at Auschwitz. The corporation’s activities at Auschwitz are an important part of the story of the camp as a society of total domination.

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