Page 43 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

surgeon to conduct the operation. In exchange for this rather bizarre medical procedure, Von
Klienmann promises Steiner/Abraham the identity files. Although Steiner/Abraham is operating at
the Love Camp under his new identity as a Gentile, prisoner doctors at Auschwitz were allowed to
assist the Nazi doctors in their surgery and research. Robert-Jay Lifton and Andrew Hackett note:
Like other SS doctors at Auschwitz, Mengele made use of prisoner doctors. ... Most were
Jewish, and they were used primarily to diagnose and sometimes treat research subjects. ...
Mengele went so far as to set up a series of colloquia with prisoner doctors, some imported
from other camps. ... [TJhe prisoner doctors at Auschwitz included many distinguished
physicians. Most were vastly superior in skills and knowledge to the SS doctors... 15

Garrone appears to be surprisingly historically accurate, at least within this exploitation genre context:
Jewish doctors were able to assist Nazi doctots in their work; however the reality, at least at Auschwitz,
was that these doctors were not able to hide their Jewish identity.
Another emergent thread within the Italian Nazi sexploitation film is the 'Medical Experiment'
theme. Although the specifics of the medical experiments depicted in pictures like Lisa and Lager
SSadis Kastrat Kommandantur, as well as in films like Il portiere di notte, serve more to offer the
audience Sadean images of (naked) women being tortured, medical experiments were also done by the
Nazis, and wete equally horrendous:

Medical experimentation ... was a small part of the extensive and systematic medicalised killing
that was basic to the Nazi enterprise as perfected at Auschwitz. As tangible medical crimes,
however, such experiments achieved considerable prominence at the Nuremberg Doctors'
Trial in 1946-47. Indeed, their blending of ordinary science and extreme ideology made them
emblematic of science under Germany's National Socialist regime. The considerable curiosity
and notoriety aroused by research they carried out has to do with ethical questions that reach
beyond Nazi doctors, and particularly with the radical Nazi reversal of healing and killing. 16

Stories about Dr Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz of injecting blue dyes into dark-eyed subjects,
and morphological dissection of twins and dwarves are well known. So too is the knowledge that
the Nazis experimented with new processes of sterilisation, including experimental castrations and
injections with caustic substances.'7 Lifton and Hackett note, however, that other experiments in
Auschwitz's research laboratories were the stuff of horror movies:

Experiments took place throughout the camp. In block 41 at Birkenau, for example, three
noted German professors conducted surgery that entailed the exposure of leg muscles and
the test application of medications. Medical students performed experimental surgery on
a female hospital block, which offered the opportunity to practice whatever procedure
suited their particular interests. (Sometimes a prisoner with a relevant medical condition
was selected; sometimes the choice was arbitrary.) With no ethical considerations at issue,
a more opportunistic surgical laboratory than Auschwitz could hardly be imagined. Beyond

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