Re: Sentimentality & Cruelty (fwd)

Bill Jenkins (billj@CC1.UCA.EDU)
Wed, 9 Apr 1997 08:57:03 CST6CDT

When I first came across Percy's comment that tenderness leads to the
gas chamber, I took it as an example of satire, much like Swift
suggesting that Irish children be raised for food. However, I've come
to see that Percy was dead serious about this assertion and here are
three reasons why:

1. I read the book Percy mentions at the beginning of \The Thanatos
Syndrome\, Frederic Wertham's \A Sign for Cain.\ This book came out
a number of years before the current abortion and euthanasia debates
that have polarized America, so Wertham's discussion of German
sentimentality about quality of life and death seem convincing
because it is non-partisan.

2. I have also read selections from Robert Jay Lifton's \The Nazi
Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide\, and this
book, like Wertham's, explains in grizzly detail how the
sophisticated and humane Weimar doctors and psychologists actually
prepared upper echelons of German society for mercy killing, which in
turn made it easier for Nazis to do their work by making use of the
technology and techniques the Weimar doctors first developed.

3. I also watched on either A & E or Discovery (can't remember) a
documentary titled \The Nazi Killing Films\. These were movies, some
of which were quite well-made, that presented believeable situations
in which talented, sensitive people had to make choices about mercy
killings. Some of these movies were intended for German filmgoers,
and some of them were educational documentaries. They all shared the
intent to justify and make acceptable the necessity of killing people
suffering from physical or mental diseases for the good of the
Fatherland. The next step, of course, was the Nazis' utilizing this
propaganda to justify their final solution.
I recommend this documentary especially to see what Percy
is getting at. When one hears the rhetoric and sees the apparent
concern of the doctors in easing the sufferings of others, one
quickly perceives Percy knew exactly what he was talking about.

Trying to distinguish between true and false sentimentality is
therefore uncessary. The Weimar doctors, and later many of the Nazi
doctors, were quite sincerely sentimental about quality of life and
the easing of suffering. Percy's point is not about bogus versus
genuine sentimentality.

Bill Jenkins
UCA