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Title: The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton ISBN: 0-465-04905-2 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: August, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.48 (25 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Good, flawed book
Comment: This book is a must for anyone interested in the direct psycho-social and material circumstances of the Final Solution--an enterprise that most people have found awesomely cruel. Like Arendt's _Eichmann in Jerusalem,_ _The Nazi Doctors_ attempts to demystify the motives of Holocaust perpetrators--in this case SS doctors and medical workers--and ends up contributing greatly to a modern, enlightened, psychological understanding of "evil." The formalization of Lifton's extensive research is probably what will continue to bring new readers to _The Nazi Doctors_. Despite the importance and persuasiveness of his overall thesis (that "medicalized killing" played an essential and often overlooked role in the Holocaust), Lifton's psychological theorizing about the etiology of individual doctors' behavior is usually either obvious or, if not obvious, simple. Of course there is no harm in stating simple ideas or facts, especially if they are new or have been overlooked. There is no harm, either, in stating the obvious: of course there are those to whom it isn't yet obvious. But this book states and restates basic psychological theories, and then summarizes its statements and restatements. For example, Lifton points to, among other things, a sort of psychological "doubling" phenomenon that took place in the personalities of Auschwitz doctors--most of whom began life as relatively normal people. This doubling allowed them to separate the non-murderous versions of themselves--the family men, the husbands, the fathers--from the men who felt compelled by circumstance or duty or some deviant inner need to conduct selections, murders, cruel pseudoscientific experiments, etc., on innocent people. While certainly true, it's a simple idea and could have been stated in far fewer pages and invoked far less often without thwarting the author's ends. It is Lifton's application of the idea, rather than the idea itself, which is original. The fact that he goes on for so long explaining such things makes the book seem bloated. This is a terrible injustice to his research. An added weakness for ostentatiously academic formulations makes Lifton seem at times almost unsure of the book's importance. I suppose the thing among career academics is to make a name with novel ideas. Though Lifton clearly succeeds in accomplishing a lot more than that, one can't help but feel subjected to a secondary effort to satisfy a tenure board. (The book was written in the mid-eighties, as straightforwardness was first being widely discouraged by the mainstream academy.) The real core of the book, for these reasons, is the unself-conscious, highly instructive, and direct middle section documenting the careers of Nazi doctors, among them Mengele and Wirths. Even the prose style in this section seems strikingly fluent in comparison with the rest of the book.
Rating: 4
Summary: An amazing read
Comment: In this reviewer's opinion, Lifton's book is the definitive work on the subject of Nazi doctors; in this book, he has pulled together more details and information about his subjects on a scale that has yet to be surpassed. From the origins of the Nazi "bio-medical vision" (his term) to "euthanasia," to the full-blown scale of the Final Solution, a clear-cut transition into mass murder and genocide is presented in light of a tremendous number of lives and times of Nazi perpetrators, whose betrayal of the Hippocratic Oath is shocking.
Lifton's original research is in itself a work of tremendous value; he personally interviewed many former Nazi doctors, survivors that bore direct witness to their crimes, as well as the Jewish and non-Jewish doctors that became collaborators with their Nazi superiors. So many accounts of their lives and deeds abound within the pages of this book...their experiences speak for themselves to add to the growing portrait of the medical profession in light of Nazism.
In this reviewer's opinion, Part III, which deals with the doctors in Auschwitz, is the most integral part of the book, with Chapter 16 being one of the most prominent chapters, as its subject, Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous doctor that never ended up living and being caught for his insurmountable cruelty, is given a human face that cuts through all the years of myth, legend, and hype surrounding his career and medical experiments.
There is one weak part of the book, evident in its sub-heading: "Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide." While it is incumbent that readers will judge for themselves the validity and integrity of psychoanalysis in history, this reviewer finds this an appropriate element suitable for another book. Psychoanalysis and history, in essence, should not be combined, as they themselves are two totally different areas not meant to be combined with the risk of considerable distortion and misunderstanding. Part IV of this book can be coined the Psycho-historical aspect of this work, as Freudian methods abound.
Its psychoanalytical bearing notwithstanding, this book is absolutely riveting, tremendously exhaustive and interesting, and original. It is crucial to the understanding of the Nazi doctors that were trained (and sworn) to be healers, and who became killers and traitors of the most basic of human moral codes. Absolutely crucial to any understanding of Holocaust perpetrators and the driving force behind the genocide.
Rating: 2
Summary: NOTHING HAS CHANGED UNDER DEMOCRACY..
Comment: Under Democracy, have benefited and exploited from the evil science of Hitler & Yamamoto - we used their research archives. We in the US have experimented on people in the name of science: 1) sterilized people of color ( american indians / blacks ); experiments with STD infected peoples of color, 2) exposed people to nuclear radiation & biological agents ( military service men ). 3) We continue to do so - if you consider a fetus a living being ( T/Stem-cell research ) We murder fetuses in the most gruesome way - partial birth abortion, We practice / promote population control - or genetic cleansing - if you consider the fact the majority of abortions are by poor people of color. We make by-products from fetal tissue - similar to the old adage of the "baby-skin lamp shade" that the Holocaust historians love to crow about. It was the great Democracy that made the first Atom bomb & dropped ( two of them ) on Japan - invented by Jewish scientists ( at least that is what they are claiming now ..- that Hiesenberg was not close to producing the bomb ). The ICBMs we have today are direct decendants from Hitlers V2 rocketry - brought to the US by Jewish scientists. The only difference between now and then - is that the victims are new, and the former victims are now participating in what this book raises as wickedly unethical behavior.
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Title: Mengele: The Complete Story by Gerald L. Posner, John Ware, Michaael Berenbaum, Michael Berenbaum ISBN: 0815410069 Publisher: Cooper Square Press Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz by Lucette Matalon Lagnado, Sheila Cohn Dekel ISBN: 0140169318 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: May, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Auschwitz : A Doctor's Eyewitness Account by Miklos Nyiszli ISBN: 1559702028 Publisher: Arcade Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation by George J. Annas, Michael A. Grodin ISBN: 0195101065 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: August, 1995 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the Ss Kommandant at Auschwitz by Rudolf Hoss, Steven Paskuly, Andrew Pollinger, Primo Levi, Rudolph Hoss ISBN: 0306806983 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: May, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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