Socialization to Genocide and the Biomedical Vision of the Third Reich in Robert Jay Lifton’s Monograph The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, translated by Maciej Jacek Klich, Znak Horyzont, Cracow 2024, pp. 747

Abstract

The Znak Horyzont publishing house has published Robert Jay Lifton’s monograph The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. The book was first published in the United States in 1986 and was reissued in 2000 and 2017. Although the book is almost forty years old, this is its first edition in Polish. At this point, it is worth considering: is the translation of foreign-language publications published in the past, the content of which has not been updated based on the latest research, justified, or has their scientific value already been devalued? The purpose of this article is to analyze R. J. Lifton’s book, the information it contains, and its value for contemporary readers and researchers studying the issues of Nazi medicine, perpetrators, or the Shoah in general.