Numbers Never Die

The banal efficiency of bestial cruelty

We are all intimately aware of our specie’s capacity for bestial cruelty from historical wars and events to those in living memory and on our front pages daily. Yet many of these are seemingly unintended and have hidden behind the veil of time.

No greater systematic cruelties were ever developed by man than by the Nazis, many might agree. They began WWII with the goal of eliminating populations to the east for the sake of Lebensraum and found it easily popular to begin with Jewish diasporas. However, as well-documented in the book, Masters of Death, they also knew that their regular populace needed desensitization and training to casually murder others. So, they began with violent criminals who had been released for that purpose in newly conquered territories, and gradually were able to persuade their soldiers to participate. Beatings and bullets were soon found too inefficient. Use of large vans with exhaust fumes were also found to be short-sighted. Fritz Haber, the Nobel prize-winning originator of ammonia production (responsible for a massive increase in agricultural food production), had already established a division for chemical warfare at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, and one of his protege’s, Bruno Emil Tesch, quickly developed an enhanced insecticide for more efficient disposal of the deplorables of Europe. Zyklon B, when used in the newly developed factories of death, became the method of choice. Although its’ victims’ deaths were ghastly, they were out of sight. Granted, disposal via giant oven crematoriums was rather slow and inefficient but the best that could be devised on short notice to “hide” their atrocities. Some few survived assignment to this death of anonymity, perceived by the Nazis to be of some utility in slave labor camps. But even those who survived abuse and starvation did not escape the final efficiencies of bestial cruelty.

Decades ago, during my medical practice an older woman brought in her very frail mother. Both were gaunt and grey. The daughter provided history via excellent but slightly accented English. I was to evaluate the older lady for an opinion regarding diagnosis of and treatment for, if any, moderate kidney disease. She was wheelchair bound, and I doubted my ability to lift her to the examination table (which I often did for frail elderly patients) without causing a fracture of her bird-like bones or tearing her tissue-paper skin. Since I had records from the referring physician and excellent history from the daughter, I judged a limited physical examination while she remained in the wheelchair would be sufficient. As usual I began peripherally, with her feet and legs, then proceeded from her fingers to her shoulders visually and with palpation, evaluating the skin, the tissues, and the joints. The faint blue streaks on her left forearm did not initially register, but I did pause upon seeing them. At that point her daughter explained that these were the remnants of her tattoo from the concentration camp. Then I could finally make out the row of numbers distorted by time. Still, I was not prepared for the causal horror of that blue ink that her daughter then revealed.

Her mother’s underlying chronic illness, which she had suffered for all those decades since surviving the death camps, was a form of chronic hepatitis. Although sanitary conditions at the camps were absent, and perfect for transmission of many diseases, her daughter was convinced her mother had contracted the illness from being tattooed. After all, thousands were so marked day after day, with no intention of avoiding any cross-contamination. These were brands on a herd that was destined to fatal labor on behalf of the state. The mother had no other adverse health history, perhaps due to a perverse longevity bestowed on some by genetics, long-term underfeeding, and chronic physical work. Her primary care physician had already established the earliest phase of cirrhosis. I could foresee her kidney insufficiency, almost certainly secondary to the cirrhosis, progressing more rapidly that her failing liver. I knew that the kidney problem was untreatable, and that replacement of her kidney function with dialysis would be itself cruelly futile. Yet I also knew her coming death from the failure of that organ would be far less onerous than the prolonged agony of progressive liver failure. These were the conclusions, gained from many years of experience, that I would need to find a gentle way of informing the daughter and her mother. All that experience left me unprepared for a final act of remote bestowed cruelty.

I had begun my explanation to the daughter, in disjunctive sentences to allow her to translate for her mother. During my first pause, the daughter, beyond middle age herself, showed me her left forearm. Her blue numbers, in precise European script, were very clearly seen. The two women had atypically been kept together on entry to the camp and labelled one after the other. Daughter too had chronic hepatitis at an earlier stage, and this was one reason she was so convinced they had been given the disease by the careless indifference of cruelty seeking only efficient tracking of disposable inventory. What their users were doing, after all, was so routine.