by Edwin Black
One day in mid-1944, the camp doctor, Schiedlausky, summoned Katzen-Ellenbogen to the SS hospital. “You’re a hypnotizer,” said Schiedlausky with distress, “You’re a psychotherapist. Save me.” In the midst of the human depravity he oversaw, Schiedlausky had become unable to sleep. Self-administered drugs were no help. Katzen-Ellenbogen replied, “I can help you only, Doctor, if you will forget that I am a prisoner and you are the SS doctor.” Schiedlausky collegially replied, “Naturally.”30
As Katzen-Ellenbogen analyzed Schiedlausky’s dreams, he concluded that the SS doctor’s mind was troubled by a great burden. “Unless you are willing to tell me what it is,” Katzen-Ellenbogen told him, “no further treatment would be of value.” Schiedlausky answered, “You’re right, but I can’t tell you.” At one point Katzen-Ellenbogen came upon Schiedlausky weeping uncontrollably and consoled the man. Katzen-Ellenbogen continued to treat Schiedlausky, whose mental state deteriorated. Soon Katzen-Ellenbogen was exercising great influence over the camp doctor.31
Schiedlausky was so impressed with Katzen-Ellenbogen that he asked him to treat other SS men unable to sleep because of their murderous deeds. Even though Katzen-Ellenbogen was a prisoner, the Nazis opened up to him. For example, a bloodthirsty Austrian-born SS lieutenant named Dumbock admitted to Katzen-Ellenbogen that he was haunted-day and night-by the ghosts of at least forty men he had personally beaten to death. As though confessing to a priest, Dumbock admitted that sometimes when he caught someone stealing vegetables from the garden, he just “[couldn’t] control himself.” It would typically begin as an urge to only slap the prisoner, but then Dumback would begin jumping on the man’s body until his ribs caved in. Katzen-Ellenbogen helped Dumbock realize why he could not sleep: the killings. “That’s it exactly,” Dumback agreed. Dumback was so grateful that he granted Katzen-Ellenbogen special privileges-ironically, to the vegetables in the garden.32
Katzen-Ellenbogen proudly remembered that the SS men “trusted me as a doctor very much.”33
Back at the Little Camp, Katzen-Ellenbogen administered cruel medicine. He forced Frenchmen to exercise in the frigid outdoors without their scarves and often without their shirts-this to “cure” infected throats. He smuggled in needed medicines through the SS medics but then sold them for money or favors. Such extortions allowed him to deposit some 50,000 francs into a camp bank account. He also cached large quantities of Danish food, medicines and cigarettes in his bedroom, mainly pilfered from the Danish Red Cross packets turned over by the sick and injured.34
Denying medical treatment was an entrenched eugenic practice at the state institutions Katzen-Ellenbogen was familiar with, from Danvers in Massachusetts to Skillman and Vineland in New Jersey. In those institutions, eugenic psychiatrists felt that medical care only kept alive those whom nature intended to die off. Katzen-Ellenbogen applied the same principles in Buchenwald.
Katzen-Ellenbogen capriciously decided who entered the hospital. Another camp doctor confirmed in court, “It depended on Katzen-Ellenbogen whether a certain person would be admitted into the little hospital… or in the main hospital.” A Czech doctor added, “If he [Katzen-Ellenbogen] found a man with appendicitis or pneumonia and said, ‘I will not send you to the hospital,’ then the man would not get through because he, Dr. Katzen-Ellenbogen, was the only medical liaison [in the Little Camp].”35
Katzen-Ellenbogen himself casually admitted at his trial, “We selected…. Let’s say there were 35 [needing hospitalization, and I was told] there are only 17 free [beds]. Which 17 should have preference for immediate hospitalization?” He held the power of life and death over those who desperately needed his help, and he sadistically exercised this power every day.36
In 1944, for instance, two French arrivals-a Protestant minister named Roux and a doctor named Rodochi-suffered greatly during the horrific railroad trip to Buchenwald. Upon entering the Little Camp, compatriots asked that Roux and Rodochi be admitted to the hospital. Katzen-Ellenbogen refused the first day. Even as they became weaker, he continued his refusals for two more days. On the fourth day, the two died during roll call, having never been seen by any doctor.37
After the war, a French physician internee identified as Denis told investigators that many men died who might have recovered had they been admitted to the hospital. But when French prisoners approached, Katzen-Ellenbogen often chased them away, slapped and punched them, or simply “beat them with any instrument handy.” Other inmates who were physicians would sometimes complain that Katzen-Ellenbogen stocked the necessary medicines, but that the Little Camp doctor would snarl that they were in Buchenwald to “die like dogs-not to be cured.”38
At his trial, prosecutors demanded answers
PROSECUTOR: Isn’t it also a fact, doctor, that many a prisoner died while he was waiting his turn to be examined there at the dispensary?
KATZEN-ELLENBOGEN :… When patients arrived he [a medical staffer] went always outside and looked who was the most ill and needs immediate attention or in a dangerous condition, to get them there first.
Q: Just answer the question please.
A:… • If you want me to answer the question yes or no, then I will have to answer no.
Q: All right then your answer is: at no time did any prisoner die while waiting his turn to be examined in the dispensary.
A: You say those questions [as though] with a revolver with “hands up.” It is impossible to answer whether yes or no.
Q : You were there were you not?
A: I was there.
Q: You know whether a man is living or dead, don’t you?
A: Yes.
Q: All right. Did any man die while he was awaiting his turn in that line?
A: Sure he did.
Q: I though you said a moment ago that he didn’t.
A: Yes, that is what I said-that is “a revolver,” a little so----yes, but not while he was awaiting his turn [and] because of waiting, but because he was in a condition that a few minutes later while they brought him in he was dead.
Q: Just listen to my questions please, Doctor. I did not ask you because he was waiting in that line?
A: I know. That is what I said: yes.39
Failure to be hospitalized also bestowed a death sentence because it often facilitated assignment to the fatal work details at the nearby Dora works. At Dora, slave laborers were systematically worked to death tunneling into a mountain, constructing the secret German V-2 missile facilities. Dora’s death rate was among the highest of any of the thousands of labor camps and subcamps in all of Nazi-occupied Europe. Many of Dora’s victims were shuttled in from Buchenwald. Transports regularly delivered thousands of prisoners at a time, and some twenty thousand of them died in backbreaking labor. In fact, for the Nazi campaign known as Extermination by Labor, Dora was a convenient final destination to extract a prisoner’s final ergs of energy.40
The weakened inmates whom Katzen-Ellenbogen callously refused to exempt from Dora work transports were essentially sentenced to death. In one typical transport of 1,000 to 1,200 French workers whom Katzen-Ellenbogen reviewed, only 97 came back alive. Indeed, the Dora Kommando, or work detail, was known everywhere as a “death kommando.” One Frenchman, when condemned to duty at Dora, turned to Katzen-Ellenbogen and declared, “Caesar, morituri te satutant.” (“We who are about to die salute you.”) Katzen-Ellenbogen recalled jocundly that the man “still had a sense of humor.”41
At his trial Katzen-Ellenbogen was asked by prosecutors, “The personnel in the Medical Department… certainly knew that Dora was a death commando, isn’t that so?” Katzen-Ellenbogen replied, “I should guess so.”42
Prisoners reported that Katzen-Ellenbogen actually encouraged unsuspecting French inmates to volunteer for “death details.” In one instance, a Frenchman discovered the ruse and warned comrades to remove their names from the volunteer roster. Katzen-Ellenbogen reported the Frenchman who spread the warning and the prisoner was brutally punished.43
Certainly, many concentra
tion camp trustees, capos and block elders curried favor by demonstrating heightened brutality toward the inmates under their authority. But many used their trusted positions to subtly connive and cajole the 55, in small ways helping others survive. For example, Austrian journalist Eugen Kogon worked as a clerk in Buchenwald’s hospital under the notorious Dr. Erwin Ding-Schuler. It was Ding-Schuler who in 1941 wrote in his diary, “Since tests on animals are not of sufficient value, tests on human beings must be carried out.” When testifying against Katzen-Ellenbogen, Kogon explained to prosecutors that it was not necessary to be merciless even when working for the most depraved doctors. “I worked in exactly the opposite way,” he said. “I made Major Dr. Ding-Schuler a tool of the prisoners and all this only in a positive manner from the beginning to the end…. That’s the difference.” Kogon went on to write numerous articles and books on the inhumanity of concentration camps such as Buchenwald.44
Camp medical men did more than just withhold treatment. Many actively participated in the murder process itself. Katzen-Ellenbogen was publicly accused of finishing off a thousand men with injections. The fact that thousands were killed by an instantly-acting injection-20cc of phenol-was amply proved. But there were no witnesses to corroborate that Katzen-Ellenbogen was among the medics who wielded the hypodermics. He never directly denied being involved in injections, although he asserted he was unaware of Schiedlausky’s mass injection campaign in Block 61. When the subject of injections was brought up in court, Katzen-Ellenbogen nonchalantly testified that the allegation against him was just that-an allegation in the newspapers that could not be proved.45
However, Katzen-Ellenbogen’s guilt-ridden colleague, camp doctor Schiedlausky, did admit his involvement in the injections as well as the other medical atrocities that took place in Block 61. Katzen-Ellenbogen denied claims that he exercised a “sinister influence” over Schiedlausky that could have made a difference. Prosecutors charged, “You could have stopped it, is that correct?”46
With typical insouciance, Katzen-Ellenbogen replied, “Not that I could stop it, but that I would do my best, and I think that I would have succeeded to persuade Schiedlausky not to burn his fingers.” Prosecutors shot back, “Well, isn’t it a fact, doctor, that you [previously] testified that you would have had enough influence that his extermination of prisoners in Block 61 would never have happened?” Katzen-Ellenbogen admitted, “Yes, I said it before. It is the same thing I just said.”47
Q: Well, then, you certainly were able to exercise a considerable power over Schiedlausky, is that not correct?
A: I wouldn’t use the word “power.” Influence, yes.
Q: Well, was there any other man in Buchenwald that could exercise that same influence over Schiedlausky?
A: Probably not, because Schiedlausky was a very secretive man, who, for instance, didn’t say anything to anybody, even his colleagues…. Due to the fact that he was a patient of mine-I have a certain influence of psychoanalysis which is exercised over a patient.”48
But ghastly science continued in Block 61. Heinous surgical procedures involving eye color and corneas were among the experiments performed by Nazi eugenicists operating in concentration camps. At Auschwitz, chemicals were injected into the eyes of children to observe color changes. At Buchenwald, trachoma was among the eye diseases investigated.49
Katzen-Ellenbogen claimed that he did not participate in the deliberate infections, painful experiments and euthanasia at Buchenwald, only pure research. One Nazi doctor, Werner Greunuss, received life imprisonment for his activities at Buchenwald. While admitting that he assisted Greunuss, Katzen-Ellenbogen explained, “I conducted with him scientific research about vision, and the experiments were made by [prisoner medical assistants] Novak and Sitte on rabbits.” He added, “I worked on literature, particularly as my doctor thesis was in this region. Dr. Greunuss was able to read all my work which was then in German, and furnish me books from Jena University Library.”50 Nothing further was proved about Katzen-Ellenbogen’s involvement with eye research.
Katzen-Ellenbogen did engage in other experimental medical activity, however. He regularly applied his skills as an accomplished hypnotist, including posthypnotic suggestions. There were the bedwetters, for example. In a hell where Katzen-Ellenbogen regularly ignored the severest diseases, injuries and afflictions, the doctor took an inexplicably keen interest in enuresis, or bedwetting. Many young boys, gripped by fright and mis-treatment, urinated uncontrollably at night. These boys were brought to the doctor, who placed them under hypnotic suggestion to cure their problem. But prisoners openly accused Katzen-Ellenbogen of using his hypnotic skills to extract information and confessions for the SS and Gestapo. Katzen-Ellenbogen was proud of his work. In one case, a young man between eighteen and twenty years old was brought in at 4 P.M. on a Sunday afternoon; he was placed under a trance in the presence of other SS doctors. On this point, Katzen-Ellenbogen in open court denied that he “was hypnotizing people in order to extort confession of political prisoners and deliver them to the Gestapo.” Yet he was never able to explain why he rendered service for bedwetters when he denied medical attention to so many others who were dying.51
Eugenics was always an undercurrent at Buchenwald. One block was known as the Ahnenforschung barrack, or ancestral research barrack. It was worked by a small detachment known as Kommando 22a, mainly Czech prisoners, researching and assembling family trees of SS officers. SS officers were required to document pure Aryan heredity. In addition, the SS Race and Settlement Office was systematically sweeping through Poland looking for Volksdeutsche, that is, persons of any German ancestry. When this agency discovered Polish children eugenically certified to have Aryan blood, the youngsters were kidnapped and raised in designated Nazi environments. This program was called “Germanization.” As a skilled and doctrinaire eugenicist, Katzen-Ellenbogen was assigned to perform eugenic examinations of Polish prisoners, seeking those fit for Germanization. Eugenic certification saved them from extermination.52
In describing Katzen-Ellenbogen’s duties, one Buchenwald medical colleague, Dr. Horn, said, “The first one, he was consulting psychiatrist. That is, later on they were Germanizing Poles. For that reason you had to examine the Poles somatically and psychically and since later on the SS used us for this delicate mission, I used Katzen-Ellenbogen to write the psychiatric reports. It was a pretty difficult job to talk about the intelligence of a Polish farm worker who didn’t even speak German and Katzen-Ellenbogen speaks some sort of Slavic Esperanto very well and in all the cases that he wrote for me, and there were at least 60 cases which he did, he recommended that for every one of them that they should be Germanized, so none of them were hanged.”53
To protect those fit for Germanization, Katzen-Ellenbogen engaged in all manner of medical charades. “So I manufactured all kinds of new forms of insanity and made false reports about their condition,” he recalled. “As the invalids were not sent out at that time, they were probably saved from being gassed at one of the extermination camps. In many cases, similar cases, particularly when Rogge, one of the SS Doctors, was making selections for the transport, I trained them to throw a fit, epileptic fit, and I don’t think that so many epileptics were ever in one place at one time as in Buchenwald.” Katzen-Ellenbogen did not save others in a similar fashion, just the fifry or so Polish prisoners he eugenically certified as possessing Aryan qualities, in spite of their mental or intellectual conditions.54
Katzen-Ellenbogen was an expert at faking symptoms. While on the witness stand at his trial, he was asked if someone could be trained to feign symptoms. He bragged, “To throw a fit? With training, he could do it. I myself, for instance, could give a wonderful performance in that respect.” Asked if a specialist could be fooled, Katzen-Ellenbogen rejoined, “To fool [SS] Dr. Rogge [who was making selections], yes. But not a real specialist.” Asked again, Katzen-Ellenbogen repeated, “Not a real specialist.”55
Katzen-Ellenbogen was very sure of himself. When called to t
estify against other doctors in the so-called “Doctors Trial” at Nuremberg, his usual brashness was more than evident. When a prosecutor asked when he had joined the Nazi Party, Katzen-Ellenbogen snapped back, “When I was in America, I never asked a nigger whether he had syphilis, only when he got syphilis.” Later he explained, “That’s about the same [as the] question he put to me. “56
By any measure, the forgotten story of Katzen-Ellenbogen, an expert American eugenicist in Buchenwald, is one that stands alone. Kogon recalled it this way for prosecutors: “Katzen-Ellenbogen’s power in the Little Camp was an entirely extraordinary one. An extraordinarily large one, it should be. He was the man who was feared by the prisoners in the little camp as ‘the man in the background.’ He had under his command the block doctors… and his influence upon them was considerable.”57
When it came time to bring Katzen-Ellenbogen to justice, prosecutors found his record filled with contradictions. He saved Polish men with German blood, he let Frenchmen die before his eyes, and he sent thousands to their deaths by not exempting them from death kommandos. He was a Nazi collaborator; he was an eminent New Jersey doctor with Harvard credentials. The haze around Katzen-Ellenbogen’s record grew thicker in the postwar chaos. The witnesses were gone-either returned to their homes or incinerated-the evidence was burned, and Nazi medical cohorts were quick to support each other with glowing affidavits.
Moreover, Katzen-Ellenbogen was an expert on the fine points of American jurisprudence-the standard that applied to his trial for war crimes. His court record is riddled with procedural jousting as he corrected prosecutors on what questions they were allowed to ask, and how questions should be phrased. At one point the prosecutor asked, “So that everything else, other than what you have qualified, has been of your own personal knowledge?” The defendant replied, “Most of the things I testified to was of my own personal knowledge. Still, I did not say that everything I said is correct, because I know too well the psychology of testimony, and I think you know it too, from your point of view that every witness tells objectively spoken truth.”58
