Using Lifton’s Work in Teaching the Holocaust (festschrift article)

Ever since I started teaching my Jewish Literature of the Holocaust class and publishing on the Shoah 19 years ago, I have been influenced by the insightful and poignant writings of Robert Jay Lifton. But of all his publications, the one that has influenced my students and me the most is The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (1986). In this short essay, I will discuss how I have used this seminal book in my teaching of Elie Wiesel’s Night.

The focal point of my course is Night. Wiesel discusses selections several times in his narrative, particularly how the selections frightened him and his father Shlomo, making them fear that they would be sent to the gas chamber and that their strong, interde-

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pendent father-son bond would end in death. Because Wiesel does not provide many in-depth details about the selection process and students want to know more about this prominent aspect of Auschwitz, I turn to Dr. Lifton’s insightful book.

Wiesel discusses the fear that inmates in his block experienced regarding selections. For instance, he mentions that his father, upon having his number written down during an inspection, gave—as in bequeathed—Elie his knife and spoon: “My inheritance” (p. 75). Students read about the infamous Josef Mengele and wonder whether his behavior was typical for SS doctors. Wiesel barely mentions Mengele, so they are pleased to learn more about the doctor in Lifton’s book. They are also intrigued by the kind inmate doctor who operates on Wiesel’s foot: was this compassion typical or were camp doctors more like the deceitful dentist who wanted to extract Elie’s gold crown? The Nazi Doctors addresses these issues, providing students with valuable information from the psychiatrist’s own research and the eyewitness accounts that Lifton includes, such as those by Dr. Jacob R., Hermann Langbein, Marianne F., Dr. Franz Lucas, and Dr. B.

Students who read Wiesel’s memoir might believe initially that the selections were an organized and orderly process conducted on regular intervals, but Lifton’s research shows them that the selections were rather arbitrary and disorganized, both in regard to when they were performed and how the inmates were selected. Wiesel indicates, for instance, that when his father was chosen, it was inevitable that his number would not be forgotten, so he remained in the barracks (p. 74). Lifton, however, provides instances of arbitrary processes and chaos, quoting prison doctor Otto Wolken who said that a doctor sometimes chose prisoners who “for some reason or another, didn’t please him. . . . There was no medical examination” (p. 182). Lifton cites Marianne F., who survived a selection even though she was very ill with typhus while healthy people were chosen to die (p. 182). Furthermore, Lifton mentions that Wolken saved lives by altering records, providing prisoners with the numbers of deceased inmates, removing names of selected prisoners from the lists, and once stealing “before the eyes of the camp doctor…a pile of…reports from which the numbers for the gassing list were supposed to be taken” (pp. 183-184).

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By reading Wiesel’s account, students learn how he, Shlomo, and other inmates felt about the selections, but they have no way of discerning the feelings of the Nazi doctors toward this elimination process. Lifton’s book comes in handy in this regard as well. He quotes an anonymous Auschwitz prison doctor who says that the SS doctors primarily were unaffected by the selections and “did their work just as someone who goes to an office goes about his work,” even though they were responsible for deciding which Jews and gypsies were put to death (p. 193). However, Lifton sagaciously complicates the issue, placing physicians into different categories and emphasizing the excessive use of alcohol and the impact of selections upon new doctors. Lifton’s focus on the camp doctors’ dependence on alcohol suggests to my students that the doctors were not as unaffected as some historians, scholars, and eyewitnesses have asserted because alcohol allowed a temporary escape from the pangs of conscience.

Lifton characterizes SS extermination camp doctors in varying degrees, from those enthusiastic about selections and killing inmates, to those who were ambivalent, to those who were reluctant, to those who were initially resistant and occasionally refused to blindly serve the Nazi genocidal ideology. Lifton’s classifications correlate well with Hermann Langbein’s three categories of Nazi camp physicians: the zealots who took pleasure in genocide, the indifferent who simply went about their business by conducting the selections because it was their job, and the reluctant doctors who thought they had no choice but to obey. Lifton also juxtaposes Mengele with Dr. Franz Lucas to demonstrate that, although both were camp physicians, a significant difference existed amongst the doctors who conducted the selections and made life and death decisions on a daily basis (p. 195). Mengele’s cruelty is well documented, but Lucas was a compassionate and gentle man who was reluctant to kill. Lifton points out that kind doctors who had a good bedside manner benefited the camp inmates who desperately needed help and benevolence and who were at the mercy of the physician they encountered.

Yet, to be fair, Dr. Lifton quotes former SS Doctor Ernst B., a gentle camp doctor (the only doctor at Auschwitz who neglected to conduct selections) who suggested that the results from the selec-

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tions conducted by sadistic and kind doctors were not as different as one might assume. Dr. B. claimed that the difference between the cruel and the humane doctors during selections was simply a distinction in bedside manner and that the results of selections by the two extremes of physicians were similar. He asserted that the prisoners’ different attitudes toward the cruel and the kind doctors “had to do with their ‘typical SS’ authoritarian demeanor…that it was little more than a question of bedside manner” (p. 195). Dr. B. admitted that the prisoners feared some SS physicians and felt comfortable with others but claimed that the reason was not because the inmates were treated differently—“the source of the difference in their reputations being only ‘their personal relationships with patients’” (p. 195). Although Lifton respects Dr. B., he disagrees with his perspective. Although Dr. B., a humane SS doctor in Auschwitz, had no reason to lie by minimizing the demarcation between sadistic doctors such as Mengele and humane physicians like himself, Lifton politely disputes his assertion, claiming that “Dr. B., for psychological reasons of his own, minimized actual differences between himself and fellow SS doctors” (p. 195).

My students learn a great deal from this section in Lifton’s book, not only from the information he provides, but also from the way in which he interacts with Dr. B.’s observations. Many students find quotations that support their thesis and accept them as truth, without challenging the statements, particularly when they are eyewitness accounts; some students see claims made in a book and assume that they must be veracious because they are in print. In this example, however, Lifton’s approach shows students that they must be circumspect and skeptical as he carefully challenges Dr. B.’s statement. It is unsettling to them when a humane former SS doctor claims that there was little difference in the results of the actions taken by the gentle and the sadistic doctors in Auschwitz. Students can readily comprehend why an evil doctor would make such a claim—to mitigate the extent of his crimes and a subsequent punishment—but they have trouble understanding why one of the nicest physicians would make this statement. Lifton posits that Dr. B. does so for psychological reasons, which indicates to my students that not all Holocaust testimony, particularly that given decades after the Shoah by former SS men, is completely, 100% reliable.

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