"The Nazi Doctors" by Lifton

Essay by Wayne N.University, Bachelor'sA+, February 1997

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This book presented the Holocaust in a most direct manner. Lifton's book depicts the

holocaust through the eyes of the prison doctors, as the prison doctors perceived their horror and

as they experienced their horror. As one of the prison doctors confided, "Our pride-my pride-is

to have been able to remain human there...I believe we remained doctors in spirit in spite of

everything." The book illustrates several different medical killing's and experimental surgery ,

from gas chambers to sterilization's that ended in death. Nazi doctors where male and consisted

in a chain of hierarchy in research importance.

        Lifton believed their was a need to try and examine how and why these so called human

doctors could succumb to such irrational and immoral behavior, without concluding that they all

must have been insane! If we where to question Robert Lifton on what seemed to take

precedence over all other experiments I believe from his manuscript we can conclude that

sterilization was the most prevalent of them all, overseen by doctors Carl Clauberg and Horst

Schumann. One cannot even imagine the types of experiments that the Nazi doctors performed

under the pretense of "medical research". Particularly the experimental sterilization's that where

performed out of allegedly military purpose. Adelaide Hautval a women prison doctor, illustrates

how five hundred women at time where chosen to be "guinea pigs" for sterilization experiments.

The women chosen for these experiments went in fearing what was to face them ahead, knowing

that the Nazi's principle was "anything is permitted". However these chosen women at the same

time preferred being guinea pigs, rather than being transferred to Birkenau where death was

reality. But prisoners on Block 10 where sterilization's where done, believed there was at least

hope that "maybe they will let us live after this."

        Before reading this...