1. How did many prisoner doctors try to follow their Hippocratic oath in the horrendous conditions of the concentration camps?
2. Why can only a relatively small number of prisoner doctors be described as collaborators?
3. Why were phenol injections the most literal example of the "healing-killing reversal"?
4. Describe the difference between the Nazi medical experiments sponsored by the regime for supposedly ideological and military purposes and those that were ad hoc out of the allegedly scientific interests on the part of SS doctors (Also see pp. 378-383 on Josef Mengele-"The Ultimate Auschwitz Self: Physician-Killer-Researcher.")
5.How did a significant number of prisoner doctors seek to resist the atrocities inherent in this experimentation?
6.What is meant by the principle of "doubling"? Why does Lifton call the understanding of this principle the key to understanding the Nazi doctors?
7.What does Lifton mean by "psychic numbing" and "derealization"?
8. What was the irrational basis on which Nazi doctors sought to retain their identities as doctors in the midst of their killing function?
9.How is Nazi genocide related to "the vision of total cure" for the nation?
10. How was killing perceived as therapy? How did Nazi doctors justify participating in genocide?
Not all questions need to be answered. They are just study questions to help us better understand the book for our upcoming essay.