Nazi ideology reframed genocide as a public health decision continuous with euthanasia

Evidence

Selection was a medical decision made by the SS doctors. And night and day they made it. When the prisoners left their boxcars to enter the camp, an SS doctor stationed on the arrival ramp selected those who would live and those who would die. When the prisoners went out to work for the day and when they came back at night, they passed a selection doctor—or failed to pass. Selection was incessant. In the medical wards, those too sick were “selected” for death: when new arrivals reached the camp, many of those already in the camp were selected to make room for the new arrivals. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3909

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains how ‘selection’ operated within the Nazi medical ethic as extirpation of disease.