Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus: Das Philippshospital in Riedstadt (Hessen) (review)

General Book Reviews 159 predisposed the Jews' enemies to make more of their flaws and peculiarities than was strictly necessary. Schafer has given us a masterly account ofthe early history ofantisemitism, but he has not really dissipated the mystery of this terrible enmity. He has described the circumstances in which it first appeared and examined the ingredients out of which it was originally put together. Why this concoction should have been brewed in the first place, however, why the Jews should have been its victims, and how the brewmasters have managed to protect their product from countless attempts to drive it offthe market: these all remain questions to which no convincing answer has yet emerged. Robert Goldenberg Program in Judaic Studies State University ofNew York at Stony Brook Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus: Das Philippshospital in Riedstadt (Hessen), by Idisor J. Kaminer. Frankfurt am Main: Mabuse Verlag, 1996. 390 pp. DM 48.00. Rudolf Hess, deputy Fuhrer in Germany, once remarked that National Socialism was applied biology. This viewpoint was responsible not only for the mass murder of Jews and gypsies, groups defmed as alien races whose mere existence was threatening to Germany, but also of forced sterilization and killing 'of physically and mentally defective German individuals. This euthanasia program (T-4) was an integral part ofthe Nazi system. We have now available valuable studies of the German euthanasia program: in English, most notably Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to Final Solution, Benno Muller-Hill, Murderous Science, and G6tz Aly, Peter Chroust, and Christian Pross, Cleansing the Fatherland. Not only are other studies ofvarious aspects ofthis program available in German, but histories ofthe implementation of this program in specific mental hospitals have also been published. The study under consideration, a doctoral dissertation, examines the Philippshospital in Riedstad (Hessen). Following some general discussions of Nazi medical practices-particularly sterilization and the killing of mentally defective or incurable patients-the author then, basing himself on the available archival sources of the hospital, attempts with some measure of success to reconstruct the events that took place during the Nazi period. It is quite clear that efforts were made by the staff of the Philippshospital near the end of the war to destroy documents that might prove incriminating. This has made the reconstruction of some events difficult and in some cases impossible. Systematic killings of patients did not take place at this hospital as 160 SHOFAR Spring 1999 Vol. 17, No.3 they did in institutions such as Hadamar. Doctors, however, willingly filled out questionnaires which resulted in the transport of patients to institutions in which they were killed, because they were either Jewish or viewed as defective in some other way. Kaminer cites documents that show that patients who were conceded "corrigible" were sent to what the documents simply refer to as labor camps. This language disguises the fact that they were sent to concentration camps, including Mauthausen (near Linz), probably the worst ofall the German concentration camps. The evidence is also strongly suggestive that doctors deliberately chose through starvation and neglect to let patients die. Berthold Brecht once remarked that Die Wahrheit ist konkret, "truth is concrete." The specific case histories-the inquiries of relatives about the fate of patients in the hospitals, the description of the treatment ofpatients-give a sense of the dehumanization of the German medical profession under Nazism. The correspondence of the physicians is at times chilling: "The transport [of children] should ideally be to Eicberg [where they would be killed] with explicit instructions to send the brains to us" (p. 182). Kaminer notes that the program of euthanasia of children continued until the end of the war and that "in contrast to the murder of adults-similarly to the murder of Jewish patients-no voice ofprotest was raised" (p. 183). The material provided about patients, including extracts from their records, permits us to get three-dimensional pictures of life in the hospital, particularly as far as the patients were concerned. The same, however, cannot be said for the doctors who sterilized patients and participated in shipping them to institutions where they were killed. Though some physicians are mentioned by name, the author is much less...