Uttdrag ur
The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide
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Robert J. Lifton, ISBN 0-465-09094.
Sid. 71 skrev:
Hitler himself is said to have decided upon the use of carbon monoxide gas as the killing method, on the so-called medical advice of Dr. Heyde. The decision followed upon an experiment conducted in early 1940 at Brandenburg, then being converted from a prison into a killing center. Killing by injection (using various combinations of morphine, scopolomine, curare, and prussic acid [cyanide]) was directly compared with killing by means of carbon monoxide gas. Karl Brandt, “a very conscientious man [who] took his responsibility very seriously,” requested the experiment; and he and Conti administered the injections themselves “as a symbolic action in which the most responsible physicians in the Reich subjected themselves to the practical carrying through of the Führer’s order.”
[...]
The first Nazi gas chamber had been constructed under the supervision of Christian Wirth, of the SS Criminal Police, lent to the T4 staff. The arrangement included a fake shower room with benches, the gas being inserted from the outside into water pipes with small holes through which the carbon monoxide could escape. Present were two SS chemists with doctoral degrees, one of whom operated the gas. The other, August Becker, told how eighteen to twenty people were led naked into the “shower room”: through a peephole he observed that very quickly “people toppled over, or lay on the benches” — all without “scenes or commotion.” The room was ventilated within five minutes; SS men then used special stretchers which mechanically shoved the corpses into crematory ovens without contact. The technical demonstration was performed before a select audience of the inner circle of physicians and administrators of the medical killing project. Having been shown the technique, Dr. Irmfried Eberl, newly appointed head of the Brandenburg institution, took over “by himself and on his own responsibility.”
Sid. 72 skrev:
Brandt recalled not liking the idea because he felt that “this whole question can only be looked at from a medical point of view,” and that “in my medical imagination carbon monoxide had never played a part.” Killing by gas, that is, made it much more difficult to maintain a medical aura. Brandt was able to change his mind when he recalled a personal experience of carbon monoxide poisoning in which he lost consciousness “without feeling anything,” and realized that carbon monoxide “would be the most humane form of death.” Yet he remained troubled because that method required “a whole change in medical conception,” and gave the matter extensive thought “in order to put my own conscience right.” He brought up to Hitler the difference of opinion about the two methods, and later remembered the Führer asking, “Which is the more humane way?” “My answer was clear,” Brandt testified — and other leading physicians in the program agreed.
