An ethics of testimony: Prisoner nurses at Auschwitz

Abstract

This historical research report presents and analyzes 2 recently identified narratives of women who underwent sterilization experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. A description of the historical and contextual background is presented in which involvement of the prisoner nurse occurred in the sterilization experiments. Using a critical feminist perspective, the ethics of nursing involvement are discussed in these experiments, with an emphasis on the political dimension. Salient implications are explored for contemporary nursing.

Full text

Advances in Nursing Science
Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 161–169
c

2006 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc.
An Ethics of Testimony
Prisoner Nurses at Auschwitz
Jane M. Georges, PhD, RN; Susan Benedict, DSN, CRNA, FAAN
This historical research report presents and analyzes 2 recently identified narratives of women
who underwent sterilization experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World
War II. A description of the historical and contextual background is presented in which in-
volvement of the prisoner nurse occurred in the sterilization experiments. Using a critical
feminist perspective, the ethics of nursing involvement are discussed in these experiments,
with an emphasis on the political dimension. Salient implications are explored for contempo-
rary nursing. Key words: critical feminist, Holocaust, nursing, postmodernist, sterilization,
suffering
The women were on certain lists for certain doc-
tors and certain experiments. When I lay on
the table in the treatment room, I overheard Dr.
Samuel [a prisoner-physician] saying to himself:
‘My God, to have to destroy such a young and
beautiful body.’... [The nurse] Sylvia told me to
lie down on the x-ray table, and then she took a
long syringe filled with a milky substance and un-
dertook the injection herself. Martha and Genia
held me down... I had terrible burning pain and
the feeling that my abdomen was coming apart,
nearly as if it would explode. I was screaming... .
Schewa Melzer,
1
Holocaust survivor, 1956
D
URING the 1930s and 1940s, the partici-
pation of professional nurses in multiple
roles in the atrocities committed on millions
of persons under the ageis of National Social-
ism in Germany has, until recently, been ren-
dered almost invisible. However, the recent
From the Hahn School of Nursing and Health
Science, University of San Diego (Dr Georges); and
the College of Nursing, Medical University of South
Carolina, Charleston, SC (Dr Benedict).
This study was funded by grants from the National
Institutes of Health, National Institute of Nursing Re-
search (1K01NR008505-01A2, Dr Benedict, PI), and
the Greenwall Foundation (Dr Benedict, PI). The au-
thors thank Anette Hebebrand-Verner and Traute Page,
MD, for the translation of the original historical source
documents.
Corresponding author: Jane M. Georges, PhD, RN, Hahn
School of Nursing and Health Science, University of San
Diego, 5998 Alcala Park, San Diego, CA 92110 (e-mail:
jgeorges@sandiego.edu).
works of researchers such as Benedict,
2
Benedict and Kuhla,
3
and McFarland-Icke
4
have begun to lay the groundwork for a
more complete historiography of nursing
involvement in the Holocaust. The narra-
tives that emerge from this clearly docu-
mented evidence of active involvement of
professional nurses in mass murder, torture,
and unethical experimentation are uniformly
chilling and extremely significant for con-
sideration for contemporary nursing. This
article addresses a specific exemplar of nurs-
ing involvement in the Holocaust, the partic-
ipation of prisoner nurses in the “steriliza-
tion experiments” performed on thousands
of women in Block 10 of the Auschwitz
concentration camp. The purpose of this
study is to present the historical narratives of
2 women who underwent the sterilization ex-
periments at Auschwitz, and to provide an
analysis from a critical feminist perspective
regarding the active involvement of prisoner
nurses in these experiments. Specifically, this
article:
•
provides a description of the histori-
cal and contextual background in which
involvement of the prisoner nurse oc-
curred in the sterilization experiments;
•
presents the narratives of 2 women who
underwent these experiments;
•
discusses the ethics of nursing involve-
ment in these experiments from a
critical feminist perspective, with an
161

162 ADVANCES IN
NURSING SCIENCE/APRIL–JUNE 2006
emphasis on the political dimension;
and
•
explores salient implications for contem-
porary nursing.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The ideological goal of National So-
cialism of the permanent elimination of
“undesirables” was clearly elucidated and in
congruence with its philosophical underpin-
nings of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and
heterosexism. After Hitler’s rise to power
in 1933, the entire apparatus of the state
was redesigned to achieve this goal, and no
segment of German society—education,
healthcare, industry—went untouched. The
re-socialization of nursing within this ideolog-
ical framework and the resulting activities of
professional nurses have only recently begun
to be examined.
NURSING AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM
In a landmark text entitled Nurses in Nazi
Germany: Moral Choices in History, his-
torian Bronwyn McFarland-Icke
4
provides a
stunning and meticulously documented ac-
count of the participation of psychiatric
nurses within Nazi Germany in the eu-
thanasia of thousands of patients with men-
tal illness. She notes the apparent para-
dox present in the nursing literature under
early National Socialism, which while still
retaining discursive themes of caring and
ethical behavior
4(p128)
was also beginning to
display themes such as emotional distance
and “coldbloodedness,”
4(p145)
portrayed as
important components of psychiatric nurse
practice. McFarland-Ecke
4(p145)
documents
the entry of the concept of eugenics into
German nursing literature of the 1930s, con-
temporaneous with the promulgation of the
National Socialist agenda to apply “scientific”
knowledge to social policy for the purpose of
attaining “racial purity.”
4(p147)
Concurrently,
decreased state funding for psychiatric insti-
tutions resulted in an actual reinforcement
of Nazi stereotypes of persons with mental
illness as unclean and “animalistic,”
4(p146)
as
nurses and other resources dedicated to their
care shrank. Thus, McFarland-Icke
4(p218)
as-
serts, by the time the organized euthanasia
programs for persons with mental illness be-
gan in 1939, psychiatric nurses had been re-
socialized by both propaganda and circum-
stances to be willing participants in the mass
killings by gassing, starvation, and later, by
injections.
2
PRISONER NURSE INVOLVEMENT
The work of McFarland-Icke
4
regarding par-
ticipation of “citizen” nurses under National
Socialism is seminal. Nevertheless, research
still needs to be done to address issues that
remain largely unexplored and unresolved: to
what extent did nurses who had been taken
prisoner in concentration camps participate
in the infliction of suffering and murder, and
what was the context in which these actions
occurred? Were these nurses even able to
make what could be deemed “ethical”choices
within this context? This article seeks to elu-
cidate a specific instance of the participation
of prisoner nurses in the sterilization experi-
ments conducted on women at the Auschwitz
concentration camp.
STERILIZATION EXPERIMENTS AT
AUSCHWITZ BLOCK 10
Congruent with the National Socialist ethos
of using “science” to attain its goals, consid-
erable support, both financial and political,
was provided to launch research programs
regarding rapid and cheap means of steriliz-
ing “inferior,” non-Aryan persons, while re-
taining their abilities to provide labor. In 1941,
2 German physicians were chosen to lead
key investigations into the development of
such techniques. Dr Carl Clauberg, a gyne-
cologist well known for his endocrinological
research, and Dr Horst Schumann, an SS Ma-
jor, were selected to design and implement
sterilization experiments in Auschwitz.
5(p270)
Clauberg tested a technique using injection of

An Ethics of Testimony 163
caustic chemicals while Schumann utilized an
intervention involving high doses of radiation.
While more than 1000 involuntary subjects
underwent these experiments, fewer than
100 survived.
6(p356)
Both men and women
were used in Schumann’s radiation steriliza-
tion experiments. Young men had their tes-
ticles subjected to large doses of radiation,
and were subsequently surgically castrated
to assess the degree of pathological changes
in their testes. Nearly all the persons used
in Schumann’s experiments were extermi-
nated following their participation, as the se-
vere x-ray burns rendered them incapable of
working.
7(p702)
While recognizing and honor-
ing the extreme suffering of the men who un-
derwent torture and murder, this article fo-
cuses specifically on the experiences of the
women who underwent sterilization exper-
iments and the ethics of prisoner nurse in-
volvement.
Clauberg began his Auschwitz experiments
in December 1942 in Birkenau [Auschwitz II].
However, after persuading authorities that the
importance of his research merited special
space and equipment, he transferred his ex-
perimental setting to Block 10 of Auschwitz I
on April 1, 1943.
8(p366)
The research facilities
provided to Clauberg included wards housing
hundreds of experimental subjects, an elab-
orate x-ray apparatus, and 4 special experi-
mental rooms, one of which served as a dark-
room for developing x-ray films. The method
that Clauberg tested as an expedient means of
sterilization was the injection of a caustic sub-
stance into the cervix in order to induce tissue
inflammation, scarring, and subsequent ob-
struction of the fallopian tubes. Inclusion cri-
teria for the women subjected to these exper-
iments included being married and between
the ages of 20 and 40, preferably those who
had given birth. Prior to the intervention, the
women were injected with a radio-opaque liq-
uid in order to confirm by x-ray examination
that no preexisting fallopian blockage was
present.
5(p271)
While Clauberg maintained a
great deal of secrecy surrounding the exact
nature of the caustic substance he was utiliz-
ing, historians have documented that its prin-
cipal ingredient was most likely formalin, a so-
lution of 10% formaldehyde normally used for
disinfection or the preservation of biological
specimens.
5(p272)
This injection formula was
developed by Dr Johannes G
¨
obel, a chemist
from Schering Werke, who worked as an assis-
tant to Clauberg.
6(p349)
Clauberg would have
found the substance cheap, readily available,
and capable of inflicting extreme damage to
living tissue. The dosage was administered
in 3 stages over a period of a few months,
though some women later described a total
dose of 4 or 5 injections. Subsequent x-ray
films were then taken to document the de-
gree of fallopian occlusion. It is estimated that
several thousand women were sterilized using
the “Clauberg method”in Auschwitz.
7(p701)
While prior historical documentation of
Clauberg’s activities has mentioned the con-
sistent presence of a prisoner nurse named
Sylvia F. as an assistant to him, scanty infor-
mation regarding her role or that of other
prisoner nurses has been published to date.
Lifton
5(p272)
states that Sylvia would “observe
the women after the injections for symptoms
of any kind.” Recently identified narratives
provide a more complete account, and in the
narratives that follow, Sylvia F. is portrayed as
an active participant in Clauberg’s work, as
are other prisoners who worked as nurses.
[Authors’ note: It is impossible, in many cases,
to identify which persons had been educated
as professional nurses. It was not unusual for
a prisoner to claim to be of a particular pro-
fession in order to obtain a better work as-
signment in the camp. Prisoners who worked
as physicians and nurses had far better liv-
ing conditions than the average prisoner and,
most important, the indoor job that was often
the difference between life and death.]
THE NARRATIVES
Recent identification of archival testimony
given by women who experienced the horror
of the experiments conducted in Block 10 of
Auschwitz has revealed a stunning portrayal
of prisoner nurse involvement that has
previously remained largely undocumented

164 ADVANCES IN
NURSING SCIENCE/APRIL–JUNE 2006
in the nursing literature. This article presents
excerpts from the testimony of 2 women
who survived Auschwitz, and later gave
depositions in preparation for the trial of
Dr Clauberg in the 1950s. [Authors’ note:
Clauberg committed suicide before his
German trial began.] Of particular relevance
to this article are their descriptions of the ac-
tive involvement of prisoner nurses in acts of
incomprehensible violence against women.
The narratives are excerpts taken from
primary source documents contained in the
German state archives in Wiesbaden (Hessis-
ches Hauptstaatsarchiv).
The first narrative is that of Cornelia
Loewendorff-de Haff,
9
who was 30 years
old when she entered Auschwitz. Schewa
Melzer,
1
the second witness, was 33 years old
at the time of her arrest. Of particular salience
is that Ms Melzer was already a professional
nurse prior to this experience, and details
in her narrative (eg, descriptions of wound
healing) reflect her nursing background. That
these 2 young women survived to relate these
narratives is a testimony to the human ability
to survive the most horrific experiences.
TESTIMONY OF CORNELIA
LOEWENDORFF-DE HAFF
“In the beginning of August, 1943, we
were arrested ... because we were Jewish
and had hidden ... we arrived in Auschwitz
around August 24th or 25th... . My prisoner
number at Auschwitz was 56009. After we
were unloaded in Auschwitz a group of about
40 women were sent to Block 10 of the men’s
camp in Auschwitz [Auschwitz I]... .Wedid
find a few Dutch women (maybe 3 or 4) who
had already been there before our arrival...
. They were asking us as soon as we arrived
how things were back home ... and they
were telling where we had landed. They told
us about the “Clauberg Block,”and we did not
understand at the time what this meant. They
explained that women were undergoing ex-
periments in this Block ... one of these exper-
iments consisted of injections into the uterus.
The next day I was called by a Dutch prisoner
woman ... she told me that I had to undergo
surgery the following day and that it would
be done by [prisoner-physician] Dr. Samuel.
When I went downstairs the following day, I
had to lie on the examining table ... I received
an injection in my arm and was anesthetized.
When I woke up, I was in bed ... I cannot say
what had occurred in the meantime ... I can
say, however, that I had an uncomfortable feel-
ing in my abdomen but cannot say that I was
in major pain. A few days later, my tempera-
ture was very high and I was sick for several
weeks lying in the Revier [infirmary, hospital]
before I was transferred into the larger sleep-
ing area.”
“It was months later that I was called in by
(the nurse) Sylvia. Whenever Sylvia appeared,
the word was, the ‘death announcer’ had ar-
rived. She told me to come downstairs for an
examination to see whether I was qualified
for an injection by Dr. Clauberg. Sylvia was
in the room ... I believe I was examined by
at least 2 men, and I heard the following con-
versation where one man said to the other:
‘My God, this woman has been sutured shut
down here.’ I had meanwhile found out that
the women who were not suitable for surgery
were all sent to Birkenau. I was afraid of the
transport to Birkenau because it meant either
gas or typhus ... I was so afraid that the ‘This
woman has been sutured shut’ meant that I
was not suitable and that I would be sent
away. I went to Branka [another Dutch pris-
oner] and asked her to speak with Dr. Samuel
so that he might help me. (He) examined me,
and afterwards he told me he would help me.
He asked me to return very early the next
morning. I was supposed to bring a friend and
come right after the Block opened because no
one was to know. Dr. Samuel did something
to my sexual organs, but I cannot describe it
because I do not understand it. It was very
painful and I was bleeding. Branka, who had
some influence, talked with Margit to make
sure that I was allowed to remain in bed...”
“About one week later I was called into
Dr. Clauberg’s office. I was so anxious back
then, and am unable to tell you today who else

An Ethics of Testimony 165
might have been in the office. I remember one
man stating, ‘This woman is all “raw.” But I
did not say anything about Dr. Samuel and
what he had done. Once I laid on the ta-
ble, something was put in my abdomen. Then
everything went dark. I felt that an instru-
ment was guided into my sexual organs ...a
bit later I felt pain in my body. I cannot give a
better description of the pain and the circum-
stances, because back then I was much too
apathetic, and also too scared and anxious.
Afterwards I developed a very high temper-
ature up to 40 degrees C. The female prisoner
physician diagnosed adnexitis [Authors’ note:
Infection of the fallopian tubes and ovaries]
and ordered cold compresses for me...”
“A few months later I was called for another
injection. I remember this so distinctly, be-
cause after the infection, I once again became
very sick (with) adnexitis. Before we were
transferred to the new Block 1 [Authors’ note:
This event occurred in May 1944
6(p352)
], we
had to appear for a count. Only very healthy
women were desired. I went with the help
of some comrades to the courtyard for the
count, and I had a high fever and could hardly
walk ...I do not have much of a memory of
the second injection. The consequences were
worse than the first time ...aside from me,
many other women had acute pelvic infec-
tions after the uterine injections. There were
many deaths after having developed acute
pelvic infections caused by the injections ....
As I mentioned earlier, those women who
were not suitable for any experiments were
selected and sent to Birkenau...”
[Authors’ note: In January 1945, Auschwitz
was largely vacated as the Russian army ap-
proached. Many prisoners, including Ms
Loewendorff-De Haff, began a “death
march” to the women’s concentration camp,
Ravensbr
¨
uck, near Berlin.] “After the war I
was treated by several physicians. (A physi-
cian) recommended me for tubal insufflation
(treatment.) My present husband and I
decided against this procedure, because I
had already undergone so many procedures
that I cannot endure one more. I only have
one interest. Professor Clauberg should say
exactly what he did to us back then ...he
should say what he injected in our bodies...”
“Aside from the already described exper-
iments in Block 10, there were also experi-
ments performed on Greek girls—the burn-
ing of the ovarian tubes by radiation. Later
on those girls who underwent the radiation
also went into surgery. They wanted to see
whether the burning of the ovarian tubes
had been successful. Several girls died from
these procedures. These girls were scream-
ing after surgery. Some of them died. I do not
know who performed these surgeries ...I feel
sure that the accused Professor Dr. Clauberg
should also be held responsible. As physician
and university professor, he should not have
tolerated such experiments taking place in his
Block.”
9
TESTIMONY OF SCHEWA MELZER
“The Gestapo picked me up in 1942 ...my
husband was able to attain Aryan papers and
was employed as a mailman, but in 1943,
someone squealed and so he died .... After
my arrest I was brought to the Westerbork
camp where I was for about one year. I re-
ported that I was a trained nurse because
I hoped to remain in Holland ...I arrived
at Auschwitz on a transport on 16 Septem-
ber 1943 and received my prisoner number
62482, tattooed on my arm underneath an up-
side down triangle. We were told in camp that
those who had this kind of a triangle were
cursed to a slow death...”
“There was a laboratory in the back of
the basement of Block 10 ...at first a Czech
woman named Ethel was the Block Eldest
(person in charge) ...she was later relieved
by Margit ...Dr. Clauberg recruited both of
them for his sterilization experiments al-
ready in Birkenau ...The first assistant of
Dr. Clauberg was a tall, blonde, Czech Jew
(named) Sylvia. She was a beautiful woman.
I am firmly convinced she had an affair with
Dr. Clauberg ...Sylvia had her mother, who
was treated as a special prisoner, with her.
She had good clothes, was released from
everything and could remain in the courtyard

166 ADVANCES IN
NURSING SCIENCE/APRIL–JUNE 2006
to play chess. There was a certain Martha who
worked as an assistant nurse, as well as a cer-
tain Genia ....” [Authors’ note: In her list of
inmate personnel of Block 10, Holocaust sur-
vivor Ima Spanjaard
10
lists Magda Hellinger
(first Block Eldest), Margit Neumann (second
Block Eldest), and Magda Hans, but did not
mention anyone named Martha as an inmate
worker in Block 10.]
“The women were on certain lists
for certain doctors and certain experi-
ments ...when I lay on the table in the
treatment room, I overheard Dr. Samuel say-
ing to himself, ‘My God, to have to destroy
such a young and beautiful body.’ I asked
the 2 assistants in Polish what would be
done to me. ‘Can ’t you figure this out for
yourself—you know where he examined you’
(they replied.) I protested and said that they
could not mean to remove body parts from
me without any kind of anesthesia. They
replied that I was not in Holland and that
I was in a Block where these experiments
were done. Dr. Samuel released me without
surgery because I was menstruating ...Iwas
called in by Dr. Clauberg in October of 1943.
I arrived in the room downstairs. It was dark.
The x-ray machine’s red lamp was on. Sylvia
told me to lie down on the x-ray table, and
then she took a long syringe filled with a
milky substance and undertook the injection
herself. Martha and Genia held me down.
They put a glass plate on my abdomen and
took x-rays right away. I had terrible burning
pain and the feeling that my abdomen was
coming apart, nearly as if I would explode. I
was screaming. I could not get off the table
by myself. Martha and Genia helped me
and once I was outside, two other women
took me upstairs to bed. I stayed there, had
a fever, without (my temperature) being
taken ...really, there was no medical care
whatsoever and I remained in bed for two
days. In order to reduce my pain, I had made
cold compresses for my abdomen and my
head. After two or three days, Sylvia gave
the second and the third injection. Every 4
to 6 weeks Sylvia gave the second and third
injection. Those were just as painful as the
first one ... Clauberg was never present.
However, as I found out, he did see the
x-rays ...”
“Once we arrived at Block 10, we found
16 to 18 year old Greek girls with whom
Dr. Schumann had experimented. He tried
to burn their ovaries by method of radia-
tion. Some of those Greek girls had dark col-
oration on their abdomen. Later on, this Dr.
Schumann performed surgery on these girls
in order to remove the ovaries. The surgical
sites looked horrible—the wounds would not
heal. The girls could not walk upright. One
day all 20 Greek girls were transported to
Birkenau where they were gassed. From what
I know, the following women from Block 10
died from the Clauberg injections: my friend,
Anni S., a Polish citizen who was also arrested
in Amsterdam and who also received an injec-
tion from Sylvia and who became very ill and
eventually died ...”
“The selections took place approximately
every 6 weeks. [Authors’ note: Selections oc-
curred when a physician would “select”the ill
and those no longer valuable for experiments
to be sent to the gas chambers in Birkenau.]
The resulting spaces would be filled with new
transports. The victims were at first put on
lists put together by the doctors who found
the women that were selected for them no
longer useful. There were also so-called nude
parades where we had to undress and stand in
the hallway or the sauna, and 3 or 4 uniforms
[Authors’ note: SS officers] would inspect and
separate us by moving their thumb, deciding
as to who would remain in Block 10 and who
would be transported to Birkenau ...”
“The evacuation was the so-called death
march [January 1945]. We had to march with-
out food and decent clothing for about two
to three days and were then put in open
coal wagons ...we were supposed to work
in ammunition factories ...gwe marched to-
ward Grimma, and it was there where the
Americans liberated us. It was on April 26,
1945.”
“My physician, Dr. V., a gynecologist, per-
formed surgery on me in March 1953 and
both ovaries were removed. I am also in treat-
ment with Dr. L., an internist who has found
that my nervous system was damaged. I suffer

An Ethics of Testimony 167
from this. In the end, it was the concentration
camp and the experiments that destroyed my
life.”
1
DISCUSSION
These powerful narratives give an account
of human experiences almost beyond com-
prehension. A thorough deconstructive anal-
ysis from a postmodern perspective could be
the subject of an entire lengthy text. For the
purposes of this article, an analysis using crit-
ical feminist perspective will be focused on
the political dimension of these narratives,
with a specific emphasis on the participation
of prisoner nurses.
In her classic text, In a Different Voice, psy-
chologist Carol Gilligan
11(pix)
asserts that ac-
counts of historical events can “expose the
underpinnings” of power relations between
men and women, or, by extension, the dom-
inant and the subordinate speaking groups.
The 2 narratives presented above are a re-
markable exemplar of this exposure: the ster-
ilization experiments in Block 10 were the
outgrowth of an ideological system fanati-
cally concerned with maintaining the domi-
nant position of “Aryan” heterosexual males.
That these 2 women are describing acts of vi-
olence enacted on their bodies because they
are women and because they are deemed
racially “inferior” is extremely salient in ana-
lyzing the political dimensions of the expe-
rience. These narratives can be viewed as a
quintessential ramification of Foucault’s
12
as-
sertion that the body is the ultimate site on
which power is concentrated in Eurocentric
culture. It is the actual “symbolic” anatomi-
cal parts of women in Eurocentric culture—
the uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries—that
are the target of these extreme acts of vio-
lence. The narratives are also emblematic of
what Gilligan
11(p.x)
describes as a Eurocentric,
“male voiced civilization” and “order of liv-
ing” that is founded on disconnection from
women. Within this ideology, radical discon-
nection from the socially constructed “other”
becomes not only possible but also highly re-
warded. In this particular situation, women’s
bodies have now become the actual “the-
ater” on which this disconnection is played
out, characterized by what Ms Melzer
1
terms
“nude parades” conducted by disembodied
male figures described as “uniforms.”
In contrast, the voices of the 2 women who
experienced these events can be viewed, as
Gilligan suggests, as “a voice that insists on
staying in connection, and most centrally stay-
ing in connection with women ... .”
11(pxiii)
In
spite of the horror into which they have been
thrust, connectedness with other imprisoned
women becomes a paramount concern. Again
and again, it is the other women who are de-
scribed as helping them, and, more than 10
years after these horrific events, the names
of woman friends who died remain clearly re-
membered and uttered. As Gilligan
11(pxiv)
as-
serts, these narratives can be viewed as mak-
ing relational realities explicit.
What, then, to make of the descriptions of
the activities of the prisoner nurses described
in the narratives? Congruent with other de-
scriptions of imprisoned women in the con-
centration camps who were given positions
of power, their actions display a mixed re-
sponse that confounds any facile explanation.
In some cases, they are described as help-
ful while simultaneously being characterized
as abusive. In these exemplars, one is left
with an impression that the major nurse pris-
oner figure described (Sylvia) has been pro-
moted to a position in which she is almost
an extension of Clauberg—the “first assistant”
and “death announcer.”
9
As Schewa Melzer
1
notes, these are the “Clauberg injections”and
“Clauberg was never present .... However,
as I found out, he did see the x-rays ....”
1
Clauberg has removed himself physically, but
again and again, Sylvia is present during mul-
tiple phases of the experiments. One can
readily surmise that Sylvia had become a
valuable asset to Clauberg, as valuable, per-
haps, as the state-of-the art x-ray equipment
he demanded and received during a strin-
gent wartime economy.
5(p276)
The theme of
sexual politics is also present: Ms Melzer is
“firmly convinced that she (Sylvia) had an
affair with Dr. Clauberg,”
1
a statement that
immediately precedes her description of the
special privileges enjoyed by Sylvia. And

168 ADVANCES IN
NURSING SCIENCE/APRIL–JUNE 2006
Sylvia received the ultimate “special privi-
lege” of prisoners in Auschwitz—she lived!
In the moral universe of Auschwitz in which
anything was possible, the relational realities
of suborning oneself to the dominant male
and disconnecting from the “other” to the
point of radical violence have become a sur-
vival strategy.
In his text, The Nazi Doctors: Medical
Killing and the Psychology of Genocide,
Robert Lifton
5
quotes an Auschwitz survivor
as stating, “I have no words. I thought we
were human beings. We were living creatures.
How could they do things like that?”
5(p269)
Work by philosopher Giorgio Agamben
13
pro-
vides a useful perspective for examining more
deeply the relational realities faced by pris-
oner nurses in Auschwitz. Agamben
13
builds
on Foucault’s
14(p140)
concepts of “biopower”
and “biopolitical space” to examine the ethi-
cal questions raised by the testimony of Holo-
caust survivors. Foucault
14(p140)
described the
term biopower as the exercise of technol-
ogy to achieve subjugation. Thus, Agamben
centers his work in the biopolitical space
that constitutes the postmodern world “after
Auschwitz.”
13
Agamben asserts that the biopo-
litical space of Auschwitz was extreme to the
point of defying ethical categories. Thus, ex-
isting ethical categories in the Western mind
totally collapse and are insufficient to respond
to the Holocaust.
13
As Ms Melzer describes
in her narrative, the sole explanation given
to her for her unimaginable suffering is that
she is “not in Holland” but “in a Block where
these experiments are done.”
1
Thus, accord-
ing to the authoritative voices in the setting,
she has entered a radically different biopo-
litical space where such activities simply oc-
cur naturally, and no further explanation is
needed. In her narrative, “Holland”becomes a
metaphor for a now invalid biopolitical space
in which she was deemed human and ethi-
cal categories of right and wrong existed. In
the collapsed moral universe of Auschwitz,
her status as a human being and the salience
of previously held ethical categories have en-
tirely disappeared.
What can one say, when confronted with
narratives of radical violence against women
carried out in a systematized fashion by pris-
oner nurses? Were ethical choices, as under-
stood in our contemporary context, even pos-
sible for them? Agamben
13(p13)
warns against
a response of complete mystification (ie, that
it is entirely unknowable) that can lead to a
sense of nihisim and apathy. Instead, Agam-
ben asserts, the ethics that remains after
Auschwitz is an ethics of testimony.
13(p13)
The
fundamental task of such an ethics is to bear
witness to suffering. Central to an ethics of
testimony is the task of repeating narratives
that reflect the Nazi attempt to reduce the hu-
man to a mere biological substance, with the
conscious teleological purpose of preventing
such a biopolitical space from being created
again.
IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTEMPORARY
NURSING
If, as Agamben suggests, the ethics that re-
mains “after Auschwitz” is an ethics of tes-
timony, the publication of Holocaust nar-
ratives in major nursing journals for our
students and colleagues becomes an essen-
tial moral duty. It has taken the better part
of 50 years for the nursing discipline to be-
gin substantial research into the participation
of nurses in Nazi atrocities. But the above
narratives that describe the involvement of
prisoner nurse in unthinkable violence may
also constitute an important sign in a post-
modern, semiotic sense to nurses in the con-
temporary political environment. Reports of
events within the biopolitical space of Abu
Ghraib prison in Iraq
15
remind us of the very
real possibility that relational realities within
such spaces can rapidly devolve into a “col-
lapsed” moral universe. As Georges
16
notes,
to the extent to which contemporary nurs-
ing is willing to engage in an uncritical accep-
tance of ideology, the potential for the per-
petration of suffering—and a subsequently
collapsed moral universe—exists. The narra-
tives from Block 10 of Auschwitz stand as a
sign and a warning that, within recent his-
tory, nurses have been caught up in such a
collapse.

An Ethics of Testimony 169
REFERENCES
1. Melzer S. Testimony against Carl Clauberg. Hes-
sisches Hauptstaatsarchiv. March 16, 1956. File
631A/556.
2. Benedict S. The nadir of nursing: nurse-perpetrators
of the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Nurs Hist
Rev. 2003;11:129–146.
3. Benedict S, Kuhla J. Nurses’ participation in
the Nazi euthanasia program. West J Nurs Res.
1999;21(2):246–263.
4. McFarland-Icke BR. Nurses in Nazi Germany: Moral
Choices in History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press; 1999:128–218.
5. Lifton R. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the
Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic Books;
1986:269–276.
6. Strzelecka I. Experiments. In: Dugoborski W,
Piper F, eds. Auschwitz 1940–1945. Vol. II.
Oswiecim, Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Mu-
seum; 2000:349–356.
7. Prosecution Exhibit 141. Trials of War Criminals
Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Vol. 1.
Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office;
1946–1949:701–701.
8. Czech D. Auschwitz Chronicle 1939–1945. New
York: Henry Holt & Co; 1989:366.
9. Loewendorff-de Haff C. Testimony against Carl
Clauberg. Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv. File
631A/556 R 990(V).
10. Spanjaard I. Personnel. In: Shelley L, ed. Criminal
Experiments on Human Beings in Auschwitz and
War Research Laboratories. San Francisco: Mellen
Research University Press; 1991.
11. Gilligan C. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press; 1993:ix–xiv.
12. Foucault M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the
Prison. New York: Random House; 1979.
13. Agamben G. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness
and the Archive. New York: Zone Books; 1999:
13.
14. Foucault M. In: Hurley R, trans. The History of Sexu-
ality. Vol. 1. New York: Random House; 1979:140.
15. Lifton R. Doctors and torture. N Engl J Med.
2004;351:415–416.
16. Georges JM. The politics of suffering: implications
for nursing science. Adv Nurs Sci. 2004;27(4):250–
256.