Genocide of the Holocaust

Genocide of the Holocaust

Arthur Caplan, editor of When Medicine Went Mad: Bioethics and the

Holocaust, states, "The Holocaust, unlike many other instances of mass

killing, was scientifically inspired, supervised and meditated

genocide." Since all genocides are a grand-scale effort to

systematically eradicate populations, their success hinges on having

large portions of a nation going along with genocidal policy. The

individuals in a society must be convinced of genocide's legitimacy in

'their case', they need to forget that it is murder. Genocide obtains

it legitimacy for the people of a nation from professionals, those

knowledgeable individuals that provide the ideological, intellectual,

and scientific basis to justify the complete destruction of a group.

It is the status these professional hold that okay destructive

actions, all of the statements they make are thought to be important

as well as accurate. A well-educated man in good standing...How could

he be wrong?

In the case of Germany, doctors began small. Doctors began to try and

use hygiene and sanitation to fight diseases such as typhus, cholera,

plague, influenza, and smallpox. They then identified Jews as carriers

of these diseases. And it was not long before these associations

forced the Jews into small, overcrowded ghettos. This was, of course,

justified and necessary, given the doctors' finding regarding these

diseases. These ghettos were without proper sanitation, and

considering the extreme overcrowding, there was soon quite an outbreak

of disease, and the doctors had their 'proof' that Jews were dirty and

diseased. In fact the Jews became the disease in people's...

... middle of paper ...

...schools

and institutions to bury their tissue sample collections in 1990.

. In the book Hitler and the Final Solution by Gerald Fleming, there

is a quote from Hitler that says, "Once I am really in power, my first

and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews." He nearly

achieved his goal with the help of the Nazi doctors, killing nearly

six million Jews.

Works Cited

Gutman, Yisrael and Michael Berenbaum. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death

Camp. Indiana University Press: Indianapolis, 1994.

Lagnado, Lucete Matalon and Sheila Cohn Dekel. Children of the Flames:

Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz.

William Morrow and Company: New York, 1991.

Lifton, Robert Jay. The Nazi Concentration Camps: Medicalized Killing

in Auschwitz. Yad Vashem: Israel, 1984. p. 207-55.