MENGELE
AND ME
Karl Wallenkampf, FASPE
We recently passed the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg Medical Trial—also known as the Doctors’ Trial—in an environment of political change. Today, parallels abound with that era of rising inflation, civic mistrust, international conflict, and social strife. Pondering a past that seems so present, I stood in front of a stack of shelves and noticed Mengele: Unmasking the “Angel of Death” by David Marwell.2 I remembered the name and shuddered, taking the book off the shelf nonetheless: considering pathologies of professionalism alongside pathophysiology during my first year of residency might be illuminating. I read about Mengele and reflected on a recent trip to Germany and Poland, on visits to Brandenburg, the Wannsee House, Auschwitz, and others. In my reading I found not a foil for my professionalism but a challenging mirror. I was—in a word—stunned at the similarities between Mengele and me.
I read and learned Josef Mengele was not so peculiar, at least not as much as one might expect (or hope) from a man called the “Angel of Death,” who made selections for the gas chambers. He grew up the eldest of three boys to a father who ran a respected local business and a devout mother, and though he was initially intended to run the family business, an ongoing childhood kidney disease led to one of his brothers’ taking over its management.3 His life was not unusual and contained no clear foreshadowing of what was to come. As Marwell writes, “It is difficult to find evidence of the extreme politics, antisemitism, and capacity for murder that would define him.”4 He was a middling student5 but successful enough to achieve a place in medical school in Munich. Once there, Mengele became enamored with learning his profession and came to adore his teachers, including Siegfried Mollier, whom he respected in large part because of his humanistic practices such as approaching dissection labs in human anatomy with the utmost respect.6 In reading this, I felt a twinge, remembering a poem handed to me by a professor before I went to medical school, “Their Bodies,” by David Wagoner, which I had subsequently printed for my classmates prior to our first cadaver lab. Reading it, I had felt inspired, full of awe at the magnitude of trust given to medical students and physicians. Learning that Mengele had likely felt similar emotions gave me pause.
It is difficult to understand how a young student could feel and believe as a “good doctor” should while simultaneously joining far-right nationalist groups—and ultimately the Schutzstaffel (SS). Yet, Mengele’s medical and scientific convictions about the ethical practice of medicine, those he shared with many physicians of that era, were the foundation for his political activity. His complicity with Nazi crimes—with unconscionable acts—became possible through the formation of a developing Nazi medical ethics
Medical mores were undergoing revision in 20th-century Germany. Nazi medical ethics developed in a time of trust in scientific methods as a form of knowledge generation and a deep conviction that science and all it could discover could solve many social problems.7 Genetics seemed to be the key; many considered criminality to potentially be an issue of inheritance.8 Eugenics achieved popularity across the West, reaching its apogee in Germany as the study of Rassenhygiene—racial hygiene.9 The medical paradigm of helping sick individuals weather illnesses came under scrutiny, because, they reasoned, these sick individuals might pass on their genes. For the Nazis, this individual focus jeopardized the health of the race.10 Doctors, as individuals and as a profession in Nazi Germany, began prioritizing populations rather than individuals. Many believed racial hygiene would benefit Germany—and perhaps humanity—in the long term by producing fewer “weaker” human beings, thus creating what they imagined would be a superior gene pool. This drive for racial and genetic purity could not be separated from healthcare more broadly: “[r]acial hygiene—along with social hygiene and personal hygiene—was simply one element in a larger, more comprehensive program of human health care.”11
They believed in doctors, listened to their advice,
And followed it faithfully. You should treat tchem
One last time as they would have treated you.
They have been kind to others all their lives
And believed in being useful.
„Their Bodies,” David Wagoner1
8
1 Wagoner, David, “Their Bodies,” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/35293/their-bodies.
2 Marwell, David G. Mengele: Unmasking the “Angel of Death.” W.W. Norton & Company, 2020, 3.
3 Ibidem, 4, 7.
4 Ibidem, 3.
5 Ibidem, 6.
6 Ibidem, 12.