Ep. 65- A Nazi doctor and Post-war Justice with Andrew Wisely

Despite some popular perception, Holocaust perpetrators are rarely cartoonish pure evil characters.  In fact, many of them understood their guilt and actively sought to weave false narratives to exonerate themselves or avoid prosecution.

The story of Franz Lucas is one such narrative.  In this episode, I talk with Andrew Wisely about Lucas, an SS doctor at multiple concentration camps.  We discuss his complicity in the Holocaust as well as his attempts to avoid prosecution in post-war German society.65

Andrew Wisely is Professor of German at Baylor University.

Wisely, Andrew.  The Trial of a Nazi Doctor: Franz Lucas as Defendant, Opportunist, and Deceiver (2024)

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You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Waitman Beorn (00:00.602)
Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Holocaust history podcast. I am your host, Whitman born. And one of the things that I hope that has been obvious throughout the podcast series is that I love complexity. I love history that is difficult. That is not sort of black and white, not binary. And I can't think of a better example than the person we're going to talk about today. A Nazi perpetrator.

who tried in many ways to reinvent himself and, at, at sometimes may have been less bad than others. but we're going to talk a little about, about how this happened. And it's really fascinating. in space on a book by our guest, Andrew wisely, who's written the book, the trial of Nazi doctor, Franz Lucas as defendant opportunist and deceiver. And that, that subtitle there is a really great.

sort of explainer about where we're going. so Andrew, thanks so much for coming on. Can you just start by telling us sort of how you found this guy, how you got into looking into his case? Because I think it must be fascinating.

Andrew Wisely (01:02.754)
Thank you.

Andrew Wisely (01:14.968)
Sure. Well, my first encounter with Franz Lucas was actually reading about him in an introduction that Hannah Arendt provided for Berndt Naumann's compilation of Frankfurt Auschwitz trial hearings. She was very favorable toward him. She said that he was the only one in the courtroom who didn't deserve to be there. He didn't deserve to be on trial. And mainly on the basis of exculpatory testimony that she heard from

not Auschwitz survivors, but actually Ravensbrück survivors. I wanted to explore this person a little bit further. So I started a long time ago. I'm not even going to tell you what year this captured my interest, but it was more than a decade ago. But Lukas was someone who was a Catholic. He was an ardent German nationalist. He was born in Osnabrück in

the western part of Germany in 1911 into a butcher's family. Had two brothers who fought in the war. One died on the eastern front, one died on the western front. Then Lucas lost his mother. And so he just had his father and his sister to write letters home to. And he occasionally was able to leave Auschwitz to go home on furlough. And so you must imagine that he had a divided attention. You know, he probably would have liked to stay at home.

but basically the important thing I think in his, his formation was that he attended a Catholic preparatory school in Meppen, not too, not too far from, from Moonstar where he entered the university. and one of his mentors was an ardent Nazi who basically showed the radical side of this, this ideology. And like, like some

you youths who are wanting to rebel in a certain way and become part of something greater. Lukas spent a lot of time with him. And then, you know, of all years, he enters the university in 1933. And so he's part of this group of young Nazis who are indulging in this gleichschaltung, you know.

Andrew Wisely (03:39.69)
hazing and hounding their older colleagues and the faculty to get on board with this program. then he sees a lot of his fellow Jewish students and Jewish faculty disappear during this time.

Waitman Beorn (03:54.286)
And it sounds like his, in a certain sense, I mean, his trajectory is a bit, is a bit different, right? I mean, like as a butcher's son to go to a prep school and then, you know, become a doctor seems like, you know, a, a, we'll say non-standard sort of, sort of life trajectory.

Andrew Wisely (04:02.488)
Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Wisely (04:12.95)
No, I think it's true for a lot of families in the working class at this time. They see opportunities for advancement and they jump on them. Here's a chance, and in fact, Lucas' lawyer, Rudolf Aschenauer, mentioned this later on. Here's a chance for someone to prove his quality as the first physician in the family. Then all of a sudden, national socialism gets in the way.

as though that weren't the actual factor that helps him depart on this path. Instead, it's argued as an impediment to being the true humanitarian. But I do think that he was in it for pride and to make his family proud.

Waitman Beorn (04:47.534)
Right, right.

Waitman Beorn (05:02.312)
And so you, you, you, you alluded a little to sort of his ideological development and of course, and something you'll probably want to talk about as we, as we move forward, you know, it's always a challenge to try to sort out what these guys believed, particularly in the post-war period when, when we have sort of legal documents and depositions and statements that are intentionally self-serving as kind of stuff. But do you have a sense of kind of.

of where he falls on the spectrum because we'll talk then about sort of how he gets into the SS but you know clearly he to get into the SS or to want to go to the SS he had to have at least some kind of ideological agreement with the third right.

Andrew Wisely (05:42.498)
Yeah, I think, you know, as he started out as an ardent German nationalist in a Catholic, you know, center party, I do think that he might have been put off a little bit at first by extremism of Nazi ideology. But I also think that he was probably believably more enthusiastic at the start and a little bit less enthusiastic as he realizes what they're asking him to do over time.

especially when he arrives at Auschwitz in late 1943. But I do think that certain physical signs like the Schmis or the scar on his face from his dueling fraternity at the university show that he belonged to an organization that wanted to prove its bravery or its manhood by sorting out the victors

from the losers. I think that, you know, I mentioned this mentor that he had in high school, I think also did a lot to sort of push that ideology into gear. And then if you look at the promotion documents, when he goes from being in Nuremberg in his unit, he gets promoted, he gets promoted a couple months later, you know, to

know, Untersturmführer, Obersturmführer, all of these promotions obviously can't happen if you're against the ideology. And usually, I mean, some people might say that these promotion statements sound interchangeable, really they do get to the point that if there's nothing on your disciplinary record and you are showing due diligence, they'll count you as a dependable or, you know,

Seine Weltanschauung ist fest. So he's got an unshakable worldview and there's no question that he's devoted to the cause. And he's a good leader of the troops. So he has people under his command, he shows leadership, he shows that he's serious about it.

Waitman Beorn (07:40.943)
Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (07:56.228)
and i suspect also the it's it's it's sort of double-edged sword in the sense that

If you did have misgivings or whatnot, you clearly aren't going to show them. And, therefore they're not going to register. So as you point out, you know, if, if you're not showing any signs that you're in disagreement with the third, right. Then they're going to assume you are in disagreement, in agreement, you know, and, and, and, and again, if from our perspective, you know, if, your disagreement is so hidden that you're getting promoted, then what's the point of it in the first place, right? I mean, like, you know,

Andrew Wisely (08:27.096)
That's right. And I do think that it's a question of having lots of exit points along the way. But there are too many factors working in your favor to take those exit ramps, right? You might have some discomfort about some of the ideology, but on the whole, it's effective, it's advancing your career, and you can live with some of the misgivings. And so it's not the case that all of a sudden when he arrives at Auschwitz, he is

Waitman Beorn (08:33.168)
Mm.

Andrew Wisely (08:55.118)
completely surprised by what he sees. That's a complete delusion.

Waitman Beorn (08:59.672)
Right. Right. So maybe we can talk about about sort of how he gets there. What's his trajectory? So he goes to medical school. What kind of doctor does he become? And then sort of how does he end up? You know, what's his career path?

Andrew Wisely (09:12.376)
Yeah, so eventually he becomes an OBGYN and the training that gets him there, know, he's not a stellar student at the university. He has to retake some exams. He has to extend his training a little bit, although it's not unnatural for medical students at the time to study at more than one university. You he goes from Munster to Rostock.

And then from Rostock to, and this is something I, if I were to write the book again, I would spend more time really analyzing why did he decide to go to Gdansk, know, to Danzig, you know, of all years in 1939. What sort of advantages could he see for himself there? I don't think it's just the case that that was the only thing available to him at the time. But he has training.

along the way more precisely, I think in the direction of a career interest that he thought would be profitable, which is gynecology, obstetrics. so after he writes his dissertation on abtotic pregnancies, he's already in the SS by that point. He enlists in 1937. He's accepted in 1937.

But by the time he's finished with his dissertation, he has the chance to attend this month-long, really intensive, military SS medical academy. Sort of a mixture of, know, in essence, it's militaristic medicine. You know, how do you practice medicine as an SS officer whose identity is just as much soldier as it is physician? And so this is, you know,

This happens in Graz in Austria, one of these places that has been under-researched, but there are all sorts of gory things that go on at that place and where they get their experimental tissue from, for example. But in the final analysis, his medical trajectory takes him on a path where he's qualified to treat

Andrew Wisely (11:42.238)
Military troops, which of course in his testimony he says was all he did. He never wanted to really put himself in the camp doctor category, which

Waitman Beorn (11:51.834)
This is in the context of like, like wounds and you know, battlefield medicine kind of thing.

Andrew Wisely (11:55.737)
That's right. That's right. And that's, that is what he did the first year and a half in Nuremberg when his first SS unit after this place at the military academy. So he is, he is treating his fellow troops, but then he gets introduced to, first of all, between the military troops and the prisoners in the camps, he has

an intermediate period of serving as a troop doctor for paratroopers in Yugoslavia and fashions that as an argument that he was being punished for the views that he expressed in Nuremberg as though every transfer that happens is a punitive transfer.

Waitman Beorn (12:39.151)
Hmm.

Waitman Beorn (12:44.728)
Yeah, I was going to say this, is something that comes through throughout, throughout your story and his story. Like any, he wants to, he wants to portray himself constantly as this person that's actually kind of a victim of the third rank being, being sent places. But of course, we're going to talk about, you know, that there's little to sort of support that beyond a sort of legal strategy.

Andrew Wisely (12:57.23)
That's correct.

Andrew Wisely (13:05.026)
Right, right.

But he never gives up doing the troop doctor thing, even when he is at Auschwitz. It's not the case that people arrive at these camps and have just one job duty description. They're being moved around, they're deputized, they're filling in on vacation, other people are filling in for them. And so he's advancing all of these skills, whether it's on friend or foe.

Waitman Beorn (13:33.46)
When I was going to say it's kind of interesting as an obstetrician, you know, this is not a battlefield specialty, right? I he's not a he's not a trauma surgeon. But in the context of the Third Reich, you know, with all of its.

concerns and emphasis on birth, birth rates and, and contraception and all that kind of thing. He isn't kind of one of the most politicized branches of medicine, right?

Andrew Wisely (14:03.598)
That's right, that's right. Yeah, it's all about this biopolitical drive and...

And this is also something he keeps quiet about. We never really find out what he thinks about the sterilizations that he performs or about the abortions on the so-called internal enemies of the Reich. But it definitely is also a factor that emerges in his dissertation. And he makes some oblique references to some of the patients that

are in his experimental pool who have lifestyles that are not good Aryan German lifestyles and maybe are the cause of their gynecological difficulties and sicknesses.

Waitman Beorn (14:57.264)
So how does he end up going from your sort of standard battlefield, know, aid station, whatever kind of medicine treating troops to Auschwitz because that's not necessarily sort of a standard career path I would imagine for like military medicine.

Andrew Wisely (15:20.108)
Yeah, I mean, there's one thing I refer to in passing at the start of my book, which may have some credence, but I'm not giving it a whole lot of credibility, which is the fact that because he lost two of his brothers on the fronts, that he was allowed a safer position, that he himself wouldn't be asked to stand in the line of battle that way. I'd like to give more credence though to actually the fact that he was a diligent worker and that

And he worked so hard that he made himself ill, right? His standards were high and I think they needed people they could depend on to keep secrets in the camps and do the work that, I mean, they knew by then the work that they thought needed to be done. But of course, as he arrives, the liquidations, the exterminations become even more desperate. But when he arrives, he's doing the

the work of feeding the prisoners, determining nutritional values, signing death certificates, that sort of thing. But also, unfortunately, the other things that come mixed with the camp doctor's duties, which is being on hand at executions of prisoners, being the one to look into the gas chamber to make sure that everyone is dead.

things that he hinted at early on when he was being interrogated, but then with time realized that he should probably shut up about that.

Waitman Beorn (16:59.664)
was gonna say, I mean it.

On the one hand, you know, going back slightly, you know, again, if we're thinking about his political reliability, if you will, or his sort of level of ideological commitment, I would imagine that at some level that might also have recommended him to Auschwitz, right? Because you know, if you had, as he might have claimed later, you know, if his superiors were sort of concerned about his political reliability, he probably wouldn't be the person that you would recommend.

Go to a place like this, right? As you point out, the, the, the secrecy part is important. And you're also, you're also looking for a kind of person who is going to be okay with what what we might, the nicest way of saying it sort of non-standard medical practice. Right? I mean, like, you know, I mean, like that, I imagine that the, the, the, the,

Andrew Wisely (17:30.412)
Right, right, yeah.

Andrew Wisely (17:49.238)
Right, right. Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (17:54.192)
the powers at be have to at least recognize that look, we need people that are going to take in the Nazi view sort of an enlightened view of what doctors should be doing because this is not sort of something that they, standard physician would expect to do.

Andrew Wisely (18:09.038)
Right. No, I think that's completely correct. I think that he, at this point,

is not yet trying to straddle a line between.

proudly belonging to the inner circle that can be depended on. then, you know, later when he claims to be making these small acts of resistance to show his displeasure or, you know, small acts of sabotage, he's still, I think, really on board when he arrives at Auschwitz. And I do think that that ideological proven commitment and his dedication to hard work is what puts him in a position to be trusted as

as Mengele's deputy in some of these, you know, the family camps in Birkenau.

Waitman Beorn (18:59.792)
Yeah. And so I want to get, want to get into that in a little more detail off also. Um, but so does he also serve on the ramp, you know, doing, mean, I understand that this is kind of like, you know, um, and you probably had this experience as well, cause I've, I've worked in, in trial documents and then there's sort of the, the closer you get to kind of like the, the nucleus of the thing that would, that would be most likely to send you directly to the noose.

you know, the less information anybody wants to talk about it. And so for him, I imagine that admitting he was on the ramp or admitting that he was, as you point out, that he was sort of like inspecting the gas chambers is that sort of that, that, that black hole at the center that he doesn't want to talk about at all. Um, but do we know, do we have other sources that, that put him on the ramp, doing the selection, sending people back and forth? How do we know sort of what he was up to at Auschwitz?

Andrew Wisely (19:55.311)
Well, it's interesting. I think we have two key witnesses who place him on the ramp. And both are witnesses in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, except one of them is a co-defendant, which is very strange. I mean, I can count on one hand, you know, the number of defendants who, you know, break this honor among thieves, you know, tacit agreement and actually question the self-righteousness of

one of their co-defendants who's getting away with murder, literally, who basically is serving as a standard of contrast to all the other defendants. So this is Stefan Boratsky, and he's one who worked with Lukas during his time. And this is, you know, an SS man, a guard, who does a lot of the dirty work. And basically after Lukas has denied his ramp activity for about 14 months successfully.

All of a sudden, this co-defendant rears up and says, wait a minute, you were on the ramp. I saw you there several times. And this is an opportunity. This is a way for one of the adjunct prosecutors, Christian Rabbe, to get his foot in the door and basically press Lucas against the wall and not let him deny it any longer.

At which point, and I spent a lot of time thinking about this sort of defensive pivot probably done in conjunction with his lawyer, Ashenauer, the argument then goes to a different defense strategy, which is to admit, but to say that he did it under duress and then to find someone to pin his duress on, namely, Yosef Kramar, that everyone knows about from his involvement in Bergen-Belsen.

the one of the most famous and earliest British trials after the war. So he's able always to be a little bit a half step ahead and come up with someone, come up with a scapegoat, come up with something to explain why he was on the ramp. And certainly, it never would have been his own decision. It would have been something done under duress from the garrison doctor, Edward Veerts.

Andrew Wisely (22:22.803)
And so that's one witness who pins him there on the ramp.

Waitman Beorn (22:28.046)
And I wonder, I wonder also because as you point out, we'll talk about this again, obviously when we talk about the trial, know, but, he kind of Lucas's whole sort of shtick, particularly in the Frankfurt Oswars trial is like, I'm the good guy. Like I'm the, know, I'm the guy that was the A sort of had second thoughts and B was, was good to prisoners. And I wonder, I wonder if at a certain level there is just, just genuine, sort of

vengeful anger by some of other guys being like, you know, actually, no, you were the guy said, it's Boretsky saying it will actually know you're right because I'm tired of hearing you like we're all getting we're all gonna we're all gonna hang for this and you're pretending like you weren't there like the rest of us.

Andrew Wisely (23:00.216)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Wisely (23:07.17)
Yeah, that's right. But the strange thing is, he doesn't even have to say this about himself. He can rely on the testimony of mostly of these women who have been invited. And I'm not sure why there are so many witnesses from Ravensbruck at a trial about Auschwitz, but somehow they're trying to give an impression of his character. So they let them come in and they all say that he's basically God's gift to

prison guards, that he did nothing wrong. He's the whole reason why they survived. And there was actually a group of Ravensbrück survivors, mostly German communists who made sure that he wasn't discovered by the British justice when they were combing Germany for Ravensbrück offenders.

They wanted to shield him from a justice that they thought that people like Adolf Winckelmann deserved a hundred times more. So this is interesting how those immediate post-war tactics serve to shield the defendants.

Waitman Beorn (24:16.232)
And I don't want to step too far ahead. So if we come back to Auschwitz, right? So he's no, it's fine. I mean, this is why this is why the story is just so fascinating because the guy is kind of like this, this really slimy chameleon sort of trying to change, change how he's portrayed. So what does, does, what else does he do at Auschwitz? How long is he there? What does he, you know, what are the ways in which he is essentially complicit in the, we've talked about the ramp, but you mentioned the gas chambers, but also his work.

closer to sort of his medical specialty.

Andrew Wisely (24:52.726)
Yeah, so there isn't a whole lot of evidence that he performed sterilizations at Auschwitz, but he did oversee the prisoner doctors. And he did serve as, when Mengele was ill himself especially, and became too busy to look at everything closely, he did serve as a deputy.

camp doctor for the Trezienstadt family camp and the Gypsy family camp. And in both places he apparently would make daily rounds, but usually he could leave that work to the prisoner doctors. And then he could cultivate a sort of solidarity with the doctors. A couple of them, a couple of the Polish prisoner doctors remember him

trying to tell them that he was on their side, but he couldn't do much. And so even then he was trying to, think as Barretzky said later, know, buy a one-way ticket to civilian life because he could see the tide turning even then. But as a camp doctor, you know, I mentioned that he signed death certificates for any listeners who

don't know anything about that. It's basically the prisoner doctors are putting fake causes of death to shield the fact that most of these deaths are from malnutrition, from exposure, from simply not being able to resist the dangers of disease in overcrowded conditions and so forth. So he's doing...

Waitman Beorn (26:37.316)
Which is to be clear, like again, the most basic form of malpractice. mean, like, you you're, you're as a doctor, like you're literally lying about, about a cause of death, which is regardless of the Holocaust or anything else, that's just absolutely something that you, know, you shouldn't be doing anyway.

Andrew Wisely (26:49.058)
Right, yeah, absolutely.

Andrew Wisely (26:55.17)
Yeah. Yeah. So there's that. you know, there's, again, the things that he's completely silent about, which is the compulsion to attend hangings and shootings, you know, and for Auschwitz, we think of, you know, the black wall, block 11. And so he's having to determine, you know, that those who have been executed are really dead and make the report.

He's also doing some statistical reports to send to Berlin every month about the changes in mortality rates from month to month and some nutritional reports, maybe some requests for additional supplies. And then,

I don't know if this is the time to say this, but the most flagrant medical responsibility that shows his culpability is in the spring of 1944 with the onset of the Hungarian transports. He's assigned by Edward Viertz every couple of weeks at least, probably once a week to

the rotation of selecting the deportees who arrive on the ramp at Birkenau.

Waitman Beorn (28:18.672)
Yeah. I mean, it's worth pointing out that, that, you know, for, for our listeners, you know, that the sort of mass murder, um, starts at Auschwitz in September 41 is the first gassing of, uh, the test gassing of sequel with SQL and B of, of so if you had W's, but, but it begins in earnest sort of in the spring of 42, but then by time he gets there, you know, it is just full on there's, there's no chance that you could sort of be anywhere near bear canal and not, and not be deeply complicit, you know, and then

And then he's there until, you know, if he's there towards the summer when the Hungarian transports come, you know, he's he's actually kind of there at the at the height in a certain sense of the killing of the killing process. But then he ends up being transferred. He goes to sort of multiple places towards the end of the war. So can you go go through sort of those really quickly? Because I want to get I want to get to the his sort of postwar machinations, because I think those are really, really fascinating as well.

Andrew Wisely (29:15.212)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

So he gets transferred from Auschwitz to Mauthausen in early August 1944, right after the liquidation of the Gypsy camp. And right away, he works on a narrative that says that he was the victim of being hazed by Franz Zieris, the commandant of Mauthausen. And basically by saying that he refuses to abuse the prisoners there.

And he does have some prisoner doctors who in passing, I don't even think this is intentional, but maybe being asked by interviewers to say, who are the good ones? Who are the good doctors that stand out at Mauthausen? They mentioned Lucas's name. But my point is that there's nothing about being a good doctor to patients in one realm that

Waitman Beorn (30:01.84)
Mm.

Andrew Wisely (30:17.506)
that basically prohibits you from being a terrible monster to people in another realm. he does get some witness statements who put him at the scenes of or being interested in doing some medical experiments. He's also mentioned in conjunction with Guzen, with the sort of the twin camp.

But in general, his time at Mauthausen doesn't really stand out as a place of particular good or bad qualities. It's kind of a way station.

Waitman Beorn (30:58.916)
I mean, what's fascinating here too, just really briefly is, is it this like, again, it's this idea that, mean, sure, if you ask the camp doctors who was the good, the good one, you know, it's on a sliding scale, right? So like, you know, okay, great. Like he wasn't, he wasn't murdering us or torturing us, you know, so compared to everybody else, you know, he's good. But of course, you know, the, takeaway for, you know, the rest of us is, yeah, but you're still a doctor in the SS at a conservation camp. And so like this whole idea of good.

Andrew Wisely (31:11.638)
Right, right.

Andrew Wisely (31:25.358)
That's right.

Waitman Beorn (31:28.85)
is very relative. But this is, think, at the heart of your book as well, which this idea of sort of relative goodness and who determines what is good and then ultimately what does that mean when you come to sort of stand before the judge in this context.

Andrew Wisely (31:44.441)
That's right. mean, the actions might not have been, you know, legal crimes that are identifiable as, you know, action units or, you know, a tot einheit or whatever, but, they're, they're often, you know, what we might call sins of omission, right? So there are things that he could have done, but either was too lazy to do or thought it's not, it's not worth expending the effort. And I want to keep my head down, you know, and already,

It's far enough along in 1944 to know that there's no turning back and that the key is just to stay a few steps away from the Red Army advancement. So he goes from Mauthausen to Stutthof, which is an under-researched camp right outside of Danzig.

Andrew Wisely (32:35.032)
Then he goes from there and by this time Stutthof is serving as a transit camp for a lot of displaced Jewish women who are being expelled from camps further east. And anytime you have a transitory situation in these camps, you have just an invitation for disease and mistreatment and also excuses for people saying that they couldn't do anything, right?

claims in his consistent victim narrative, which becomes more consistent the more he tells it. He claims that for another disciplinary reason, he was transferred from Stutthof to Ravensbruck. And so he arrives there mid-December of 1944 and stays at Ravensbruck through the end of February 1945. And this is the interesting place because this is where he does

the sterilizations of the Cinti Roma veterans, Wehrmacht veterans that have been sent there in a circuitous way. And it's amazing to me that the policy is still to sterilize as many of these internal enemies as possible. I mean, this is completely at cross purposes with

with trying to salvage something from the war effort.

Waitman Beorn (34:07.482)
These are Wehrmacht soldiers of Cinti Roma background who end up in the camps.

Andrew Wisely (34:11.82)
Yes, who have been decorated, highly decorated, but with over time get marginalized more and more from, we're going to let you coexist. We're going to let you wear your medals. And then they get stripped of the medals and then their families get put in Auschwitz with them.

Waitman Beorn (34:33.2)
I'm sorry, just to be clear, these are World War I veterans? these were World II veterans. are... my gosh. Okay, so talk about that a little bit, because that's,

Andrew Wisely (34:36.814)
No, they've actually been culled from the battlefield. Yeah, so this is, you know, it's always a matter of degrees. And this is, you know, what you might call sort of the functional aspect of Nazism, where they're making it up as they go along in many ways and responding to certain decrees. know, Himmler makes this decree, I think, in January of 42. I mean, that's...

that's significant month in and of itself, but that, you know, he's going to concentrate the, centian Roma except for the, the pure Romani that he thinks have something to do with Arianism. But anyway, over time, they are actually no longer to, to, hide. They're no longer able to hide on the front, but they're actually pinpointed and brought to Auschwitz.

And instead of being exterminated, you know, the next best thing is sterilization. But they get moved from at pretty much the same time that Lucas left for Mauthausen. A lot of these Sinti Wehrmacht veterans get moved to Ravensbruck and to other places. You can see their names on the transport lists. But they're languishing there with their families.

And the men are in the small men's camp, which almost never gets talked about at Ravensbruck. And the rest of their families are in the women's part. But when Lucas gets there, he gets the order to sterilize the men and the boys in the men's camp. And then his colleague, Percy Trita, and also Carl Klauberg is there at the same time, sterilizing all the gypsy women and girls.

Waitman Beorn (36:10.352)
Hmm.

Andrew Wisely (36:35.992)
So that's one thing that he's doing. Another thing that he's doing is he, at least on paper, he's in charge of one of the infirmaries there, the tuberculosis unit and other infectious diseases. So he is doing some healing work, you know, and that's where he gets hold of a lot of the witnesses who stand up for him later to say that he was the one

person who was trying to act against the tide of collapse and against, I mean, he was the only one who cared, they say. And I think there is some truth to that. But then again, this is, it's the truth of someone who's trying to fashion his post-war existence.

Waitman Beorn (37:20.89)
Well, and also, I mean, again, as an obstetrician, I'm guessing, I mean, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you know, as a, you know, sterilization of men is not a procedure that he would have really learned in medical school. Right. So, so again, he's had to, he's had to sort of go out of his way at a certain level to learn a procedure that is directly and really only associated with Nazi.

Andrew Wisely (37:35.308)
Right, right.

Waitman Beorn (37:47.234)
sort of eugenics and racial policy. Because that's not something that he would know how to do unless he had to learn just specifically for these purposes. Or he's just doing it really badly and kind of mucking it up because he wasn't really trained how to do it. But either way, that's again an indictment of him and his complicity.

Andrew Wisely (38:08.344)
That's right. And to be clear, dragging any information out of him about why he was doing this and what training he had, I mean, it's like pulling teeth. He just had no answer except that orders are orders. The certificates for sterilization were here. I had to comply. I had to carry through with that. And again, so diverting the attention from the actual victims to

himself as the secondary victim.

Waitman Beorn (38:41.262)
And is this, is this, is this the one I'm kind of remember from, the book at one point he, he suggests that, he was, I'm guessing incorrectly labeled as homosexual. And that was, that was, that was part of his persecution complex is, you know, he said he tell it, which is really weird in its own kind of way that he would sort of choose that of all the kind of things, you know, that, that just, cause you, you would guess that he wouldn't, even if he's making it up, like that's kind of a weird.

Andrew Wisely (38:53.339)
yeah, yeah.

Waitman Beorn (39:09.75)
weird thing to sort of voluntarily make up.

Andrew Wisely (39:10.186)
It is, and he uses that to talk about his time at Mauthausen, that the commandant greets him with the news, I've heard about you. You're one of those 175ers, right? And so I'm not sure why he includes that in the narrative either, but I think it belongs in the same sort of category as the strange things he says about Mengele over time when he tries to disassociate himself.

from ever knowing this person. Whereas if you look at the first reports from the interrogations, Mengele shows up on every page as being one of his mentors at Auschwitz. So it's always, I mean, you know this from trial reports and interrogations. It's always good to look at the, it's always good never to forget the first interview, the first statement. And that also applies especially to Percy Trita.

Waitman Beorn (39:51.172)
Right.

Waitman Beorn (40:04.026)
Yeah.

Andrew Wisely (40:09.838)
his colleague at Ravensbruck over time the sanitization of the narrative.

Waitman Beorn (40:16.26)
Well, and we'll talk about this too, because like the, the, the lawyers get involved, you know, there, there are those who specialize in this. And so they, you know, they're clearly steering this as well. Yeah.

Andrew Wisely (40:23.875)
Yeah.

I did want to say one more thing about the Ravensbruck thing, is interesting. You have to read carefully to realize that Lucas was one of the camp doctors asked to set up this execution camp at Uckermark, the little camp outside of Ravensbruck that used to serve as detention for juvenile young women.

It's repurposed in January, February of 1945, and it's being used as a place to outsource the fragile, the sickly, the ones who don't survive the selection. And basically the plan is to simply let them languish there, starve to death, freeze to death. If that doesn't work, execute them 50 at a time at night. And so on the basis of something that Percy Trita says in court, he

He basically outs his colleague Lucas by saying that Lucas too. So Percy tried to says.

Yeah, well, he's not the head doctor, but interestingly enough, the witnesses think that he was a head doctor. The real head doctor was Richard Traumar. So he's the actual CMO. Lucas and Trita are of equal rank. They're sharing duties.

Andrew Wisely (41:56.633)
Tritus says that he was asked to be the doctor on duty during one of those nightly executions where 50 women are shot to death and he's the one who's supposed to figure out that all of them are dead. He says that the same thing after he protests that and says, I'll never do that again, he says the same thing happened to Lucas. So that Lucas had that same at least one or two nights of doctor duty.

making sure that he wasn't saving the lives of these women, but was ensuring that they weren't breathing any longer so that they could be put, you know, as Trida said, it would be

an inhumane thing to do to throw these women who were still alive into the crematorium. That would just be an inhumane thing to do. So anyway, what we know from reading between the lines is that Lucas was involved in a lot more than just sterilizing the, I mean, that's bad enough, but he's also part of these sort of very shadowy events going on in this side camp a mile or two down the road from Ravensbruck where

you know, the because of the overcrowding in the camp and because of the uncertainty of the future. And this is just before the Scandinavian, you know, the white bus rescues and so forth of a lot of ethnic prisoners. There's still a question of what to do with this overcrowding. And at this point, when you have a mixture of Rudolf Huss and Johann Schwarz Huber and people like that who are used to executions, then you come up with the idea of

executions for death.

Waitman Beorn (43:38.542)
And again, of course, this is, this is getting towards the very end, you know, at a time when, on the one hand, he might've been thinking about, should probably try to not, not be as involved as I can in, in the worst things. And yet he's still doing them. and then, and then he, very quickly takes off, right?

Andrew Wisely (43:55.214)
Correct.

Andrew Wisely (43:59.023)
So he does, he claims that his transfer to the last camp, Sachsenhausen, was a result again of disciplinary actions due to his insubordination. You know, that he refuses to perform a selection or that he tears up one of the selection lists or that he crosses out names. I mean, these are all things also that prisoners happen to claim for themselves.

So it's interesting that some of these tropes of resistance are being traded back and forth. And at any rate, for whatever reason, he gets transferred to Sachsenhausen and again plays this card of, was greeted by immediate belligerence from the head of the camp. And so, you know, his stories.

Andrew Wisely (44:53.112)
Sometimes his story is that he spent some time in detention before he even performed any camp duties. And at other times he just says, you know, I tried to keep my head down and I refused to do anything more that had to do with, you know, as he called it, Schweinergai, you know, the pigsty, the pigsty known as Sachsenhausen.

Waitman Beorn (45:15.736)
Yeah. And so, and so then we can, we can sort of move, guess, into sort of the post-war, right? So he, he, he deserts according to him, right. and goes into hiding and then what happens, how does it come to that decision?

Andrew Wisely (45:29.72)
Yeah. yeah, he claims that he fashioned his escape from, from Sachsenhausen a few days before it was going to be evacuated anyway, and that he's AWOL from the SS and keeps his head down, makes his way back by bicycle to Northwest Germany. He doesn't say why he chooses that place. And that he, after the war, he's immediately hired on as an assistant doctor in Elm's Horn.

at the city hospital there. And the key thing to remember there is, you know, no background checks. There's also no denotification that happens. No one checks his records and he's able to, to do the job that they need, which is, you know, in an era of, you know, decimation of qualified doctors, he steps in as a gynecologist. And in 1954 becomes director of the, of the women's

clinic there.

Waitman Beorn (46:30.766)
and is under his name, his real name and everything.

Andrew Wisely (46:33.08)
doesn't have to change his name whatsoever. And he's basically left alone. I mean, we know this about Northwest Germany that, you know, this isn't Schleswig-Holstein, but this is, you know, close to it. He's able to really, to go under and fashion a new existence. No one asks him about his past. And in fact, he threatens to sue anyone who claims that he has a Nazi past. So he's trying to, you know,

buttress his opportunities there for advancement.

Waitman Beorn (47:07.95)
It's remarkable how many of these guys, this is not the only case I've heard of this, you know, where a guy will literally bring the law into like, know, into like, into like his, it's just like a terrible idea.

Andrew Wisely (47:16.468)
Exactly. Yeah, yeah. mean, it's, it's as though there's no way you can be, you yourself can be guilty if you go on the offensive, right? This works against, I think this is behind the whole OM trial, right? Where a prisoner recognizes, I think it's, is it Bach-Zalewski on the street? And I can't remember now, but, basically when, when the

Waitman Beorn (47:26.629)
Yeah.

Andrew Wisely (47:45.218)
the accused goes on the offensive, it's not a good idea.

Waitman Beorn (47:49.328)
I mean, there's a, there's a, mean, in my, in my first book, I wrote about the Wehrmacht and Wehrmacht perpetrators. And there was this guy who was having a fight with his separated wife and she accused him of being a dirty Jew murderer. And he, he, he called the police on her and then they investigated. They turned out that he had very much been a Jew. I mean, you know, it's, it's anyway, that's, that's beside the point, but it's, it's always crazy how some of these people will try to sort of, uh,

Andrew Wisely (48:10.328)
Yeah, yeah.

Waitman Beorn (48:17.976)
Well, it's encountered. It's counterintuitive. It's counterproductive, but they do it anyway. They think they can sort of. Bluff their way through it. But anyway, so how does it come out that he who he is, who he is?

Andrew Wisely (48:25.902)
That's right. That's right.

Andrew Wisely (48:33.496)
So in the 1950s, so this happens after he's become director. He comes under the radar of the justice system before and after the creation of the central office in 1958. He's asked to testify against former comrades. And basically the state knows, the state has started to know

Waitman Beorn (48:55.504)
to the state knows that he's an Auschwitz doctor.

Andrew Wisely (49:01.998)
but they still attribute his actions to, you know, innocent, just part of the background kind of personnel. No one has accused him of anything except, you know, being in a camp, serving in a camp under duress, right?

Waitman Beorn (49:18.54)
Which at that point, to be clear to our listeners, you know, we've gone full circle on that, but at the time, you know, simply having been stationed at Auschwitz or any other places was not sufficient to demonstrate any kind of guilt. And you could not be prosecuted really. They were not prosecuted just because you had been at Auschwitz.

Andrew Wisely (49:37.816)
So he's being asked to weigh in on the leadership of Sachsenhausen and then later on three of the doctors of Sachsenhausen including his former boss, Heinz Baumkotor.

Andrew Wisely (49:56.32)
Along the way...

One of the, you know, as the prosecutors sort of assimilate this evidence and examine it, make connections, they go back and they question people a second and third time. And then they try and see who's going to give evidence against whom. And so there's a case where one of Lucas's colleagues at Sachsenhausen says, I had a conversation with Lucas once and he was talking about

how terrible the work was with the gas chambers. And so the question is, is he talking about the Sachsenhausen chamber or is he talking about Auschwitz? At any rate, Lucas gets on the radar, the press gets a hold of it. He gets placed at these places as the SS doctor that he was. He denies it slowly, but surely this causes a scandal.

In Elmshorn, there's there's a really, fundamental city council meeting that, takes place where the, the effect of which is that there are enough people on the council who vote against him. And so basically he's fired from his position from the city hospital. Lawyers get involved. He, he has to practice medicine.

for a while without being licensed. mean, he's on his own, all of this. And then he gets, he gets called into, to be one of the,

Andrew Wisely (51:36.896)
Ultimately 20 defendants in the Auschwitz tribe.

Waitman Beorn (51:40.314)
And this, course, is the Frankfurt Altruist trial, which is the largest Nazi trial in German history. So can we talk really briefly through what

Andrew Wisely (51:43.447)
Yes.

Waitman Beorn (51:53.54)
Cause he's he kind of provides this role as you point out in the book as, kind of the, the best, I suppose of the, of the defendants, know, this kind of Albert Speyer character, kind of character of the, you know, reluctant doing his best to, to not be a bad guy. I mean, again, this is all his, the way he portrays himself. And at this point, is he represented by Ashenauer or is that, is that later?

Andrew Wisely (52:18.049)
Once the trial begins, yes. Until that point, his lawyers were Hamburg lawyers, so it was more local. But he does go with Ashenauer, which is probably a good choice, given Ashenauer's reputation.

Waitman Beorn (52:22.788)
Okay.

Waitman Beorn (52:28.601)
Okay.

Waitman Beorn (52:37.808)
Can you talk a little about this guy? I have a selfish motive here because Aaschanar was also the lawyer for some of the UNOSCA perpetrators during the Lemberg trial. And he specializes in this stuff.

Andrew Wisely (52:50.348)
Yeah, I mean, you name it. He was everywhere. Achenauer was everywhere. know, Otto Ohlendorf, Erich Ehrlinger, you know, all of the, a lot of the key Sonderkommando leaders. He, Achenauer gets asked to be their lawyer. He's also behind

mostly high-ranking defendants. But surprisingly enough, in the Auschwitz trial itself, he's also the lawyer for Wilhelm Boga, who was more of the typical Schlager, the person that everyone thought was the sadist who did bad things and cruel things and deserved life imprisonment, as opposed to

Waitman Beorn (53:38.352)
Well, this is it because I mean, Ashtonauer is also, mean, Ashtonauer is like the, like the better call Saul of, of sort of Nazi perpetrators, you know, like he's like the fridge magnet of like, you know, if you get, if you get arrested and you're a Nazi, like you want to get this guy. and, and, I, I mean, his story is just kind of fascinating because like he makes this his whole, his whole thing is like, he only defends basically.

Andrew Wisely (53:53.592)
That's right.

Waitman Beorn (54:03.18)
Nazis. And these are also, you know, not even marginal. I mean, these are like, as you point out, the really bad ones. But that's like his that's like his shtick. That's what he does.

Andrew Wisely (54:12.802)
Well, and here's someone who knows the law better than the judges do, right? I mean, he always comes armed with these obscure and not so obscure appeals courts, decisions and precedents that he cites, you know, very easily. But he's also a high ranking Catholic who has the attention of the Catholic and Protestant bishops, both sides, you know, and

little known fact about him is that he actually appeared in front of American Congress to testify during the witch hunts of the McCarthy era. his DNA was composed of this anti-Bolshevism. He was basically a contemporary and I think he was in the same fraternity, the Saxonia fraternity.

Waitman Beorn (54:52.494)
I did not know that, well.

Waitman Beorn (55:00.76)
Well, he was an actual Nazi too. mean, the key was.

Andrew Wisely (55:09.464)
Catholic fraternity as Lucas was.

Waitman Beorn (55:12.612)
And of course, again, like this is, don't know if it's relevant, but there are these Catholic legal defense organizations that are vested in, for some reason, defending Nazi war criminals as well and asking for clemency. So I suspect that those ties help in that regard as well.

Andrew Wisely (55:34.06)
Yeah, that's right. was very much a consultant to organizations like Stille Hilfe. Although Lucas's wife claimed that he cautioned the two of them not to become involved with some of these aid organizations because it might look bad.

Waitman Beorn (55:52.558)
Yeah, because his whole shtick is like, I'm, I'm, I'm not really a bad SS guy. so if you're.

Andrew Wisely (55:57.601)
No, but I think, I mean, what you were asking is sort of how does he put on this good person persona during the trial? And I think it's precisely through making sure that he's not, you know, making jokes about the witnesses. He cultivates this withdrawn, you know, quiet look. I mean, he doesn't want to be there, you know, so he's not smiling from ear to ear, but he's also not

cracking jokes with fellow defendants and during the recesses of the hearings, he's not gossiping with others or making sure that the press knows that he's innocent. He just basically makes it clear that he doesn't belong there.

Waitman Beorn (56:44.248)
And I think you mentioned in the book, he's the only perpetrator that goes on the field trip to Auschwitz, right? Like, and, and, and there's a photo in the book of him kind of looking very somber and like reflective as he's walking around. But I mean, that's a surreal moment. Can you talk a little about that? Cause it's kind of a crazy, a crazy sort of moment.

Andrew Wisely (57:04.108)
It is crazy and actually I'd sort of suppress that until you mentioned it, but it's one of the key aspects of his defense that just doesn't fit somehow. I suppose he did it with the gall of thinking that, like we were talking about earlier, that by going on the offensive, by making this decision that no one else among the fellow defendants

had the gall to do, that he would stand out even more as being the only one who wants to process the past in a responsible, compassionate way and to show remorse for being, well, this is, exactly, and this is important, remorse not for what he did, but remorse for getting caught, right? Remorse for being caught up in something, and the German is really good here, right? Verwickelt, or verstrickt.

Waitman Beorn (57:48.034)
unwittingly part of the system.

Waitman Beorn (57:57.848)
Yes.

Andrew Wisely (58:02.095)
in something that he slid into unawares. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he goes, he goes, this is a court trip for, it's called a, you know, a site visit where they test out the statements of the witnesses and the defendants, you know, how far point A was from part B. Could you hear something going on where you were standing? What really were the distances involved?

Waitman Beorn (58:05.6)
I'm sorry this happened to me kind of thing.

Andrew Wisely (58:29.938)
And so how can we measure the credibility of what we've been listening to for months on end? And this should have happened earlier, but there were actually defense lawyers, Aaschenauer included, who said, this is a bad idea. We're not going to do that. I mean, they didn't say that upfront, but they basically placed roadblocks in the whole idea. I think they probably knew that that's right. Because what they found out was that it wasn't as

Waitman Beorn (58:51.554)
Yeah. They don't want them to see the scale and all the the horror of the place.

Andrew Wisely (58:59.658)
insurmountable and vast as people thought it was. You could hear screaming from certain distances and you could identify the features of particular SS officers from a distance that the defendants denied. So it was a good fact-finding mission and Lucas got a lot of press for it, but usually the journalists would say something like, this is a person who continues to be

impenetrable. You know, he's taciturn. He stutters his answers. We're not really sure what he has actually said in the final analysis. Is he guilty or not? It's hard to tell. I mean, he'll say these elliptical things like, this is my first visit to the black wall. You know, I'm here representing everyone who has been a victim of this Nazi atrocity.

But then he immediately starts talking about things that other countries have done as well.

Waitman Beorn (01:00:04.814)
Right, of course. mean, like he's he is there as victim in his mind. As one of as one of it's such a projection of like, you know, assuming the mantle of the victims when you're the most clearly the perpetrator.

Andrew Wisely (01:00:08.568)
That's right.

Andrew Wisely (01:00:19.202)
But for at least the historian, if not for the court then, it just shows how amazing, how anyone who could think that that was a good idea, that it would pay off ultimately, how wrong they were. Because at least the historian can say that pretty much sealed his fate.

Waitman Beorn (01:00:41.656)
Was that what happened? then what's the verdict for him from the Frankfurt Alphard trial?

Andrew Wisely (01:00:43.884)
I mean, I think so. I think it was.

And the verdict is that on account of the exculpatory testimony that again came mostly from Ravensbruck and not from Auschwitz, that even though he has the formal charge against him is at least four counts of selecting deportees on the ramp at at least a thousand prisoners each time. we have

You know, rough estimate of 4,000 selection deaths to his name, a very conservative estimate. But absolutely. Yeah. But he gets pretty much the lowest possible sentence due to, you know, good behavior, good deportment. And this final statement he delivers, which you could, you could pretty much interpret any way you want. It's kind of a grudging, you know, I'm sorry for getting caught.

Waitman Beorn (01:01:23.394)
Right. But they're always pretty conservative in that sense.

Andrew Wisely (01:01:46.767)
kind of statement. And I hope that I can find a way forward from here. And nothing to say about really the victims ultimately. But he gets a low sentence. It takes a long time for this to become legally valid, by the time his retrial comes in 1970. So he's the only one who wins his appeal.

Waitman Beorn (01:01:47.887)
Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:02:13.242)
So he appeals at that.

Andrew Wisely (01:02:17.63)
appeal the charges. The prosecutor of course has lobbied for a longer prison sentence.

Waitman Beorn (01:02:25.488)
What was the sentence again? I missed how long. Which I bet was taken up by the time that he was already in prison, right?

Andrew Wisely (01:02:26.862)
I'm sorry, three years, three months.

Andrew Wisely (01:02:32.29)
Yeah, exactly. So, so he gets, he gets out three months early. And so, and he really had nothing to complain about. I mean, as he wrote his wife, you know, the prison life isn't that bad, you know, as long as I, he does ask Achenauer to, to lobby for him. So he gets more time outside every day, but you know, he's, he's in okay circumstances. he gets a gallbladder removed at some point and he was afraid.

of having that done by prisoners that are actually, yeah, maybe by prisoners who are now doctors. But he wants it done in a hospital of his own choosing. At any rate, when he gets out, it's a foregone conclusion that he's going to have his complete civil rights restored as a result of this retrial and complete acquittal. And that's what happens. And as I mentioned in my book, it's uncanny

how the court and the prosecutor at that time, let alone the defense lawyer he had, they tell his story much more convincingly and seamlessly than he himself can explain it.

Waitman Beorn (01:03:49.616)
mean, what's his grounds for, for appeal? Did you basically just say, you know, I actually wasn't involved in any of this stuff or is it, I was a secret resistor kind of thing.

Andrew Wisely (01:03:58.703)
So what Aaschenauer argued was the court did not sufficiently give the reasons how he could have performed differently than how he did under duress in Birkenau against the hazing of Josef Krammer, who was commandant of Birkenau at the time in 45.

They basically said he wasn't given an option for any alternative behavior to avoid, you know, this Befehl's Notchstant.

Waitman Beorn (01:04:37.986)
Right. of course, then they probably said that, you know, they couldn't prove base motives and he didn't do anything that was extreme. And so therefore he's just a bang and therefore he had no choice. so therefore he's at best an accessory or whatever.

Andrew Wisely (01:04:44.12)
That's right.

Andrew Wisely (01:04:50.83)
And as you know, I mean, with obedience under duress of superior orders, the defendant can rely on this so-called putative notion. Yeah. So how can you argue against that? You can't say that the defendant didn't know that he wouldn't be punished for finding a way to avoid the orders, avoid the criminal orders.

Waitman Beorn (01:05:04.314)
Fudges have dressed, yep.

Waitman Beorn (01:05:10.746)
didn't honestly believe that, yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:05:20.24)
And of course, Ashton are probably put him onto that for sure, because this is, this is like, you know, this is like defense strategy 101 is, you know, you can't prove that that someone didn't honestly believe they were going to be put up against the wall next or whatever, you know, because you can't prove someone's mindset.

Andrew Wisely (01:05:23.313)
yeah, yeah.

Andrew Wisely (01:05:35.971)
I mean, Ashenauer, as I mentioned in the book, was no longer his lawyer on retrial, but I'm not completely sure why that happened. I mean, I have read the exchange of letters. It seems to me that Lucas had sort of found out from the grapevine that Ashenauer's reputation had finally caught up with him as an ardent Nazi. And by the late 60s, it's

Waitman Beorn (01:05:40.451)
All right, OK.

Waitman Beorn (01:06:03.278)
He wasn't the best image. Yeah. So, so he, he never, so then he, he's acquitted then of, of Auschwitz. Was he ever put on trial for anything else for the other places?

Andrew Wisely (01:06:03.894)
It's probably not the best person to have to defend you.

Andrew Wisely (01:06:18.262)
He was not, although he had to deflect a number of sort of post acquittal accusations and all of these petered out into nothing. I mean, basically it was almost as though the state attorneys didn't think it was worth their time to pursue it because he was so noncommittal and he would, this is a point I make too in the book is that he actually used his own

story of being on trial like a transcript Instead of answering the questions himself. He would say look at the court record. That's what I said then, you know, so He would never he would never Make something. Yeah, that's right. He would just say it's all been I've said it all before, know Don't waste my time and so they didn't waste his time, you know, but but he did keep flaring up as a person that was mentioned by Survivors who?

Waitman Beorn (01:07:01.028)
You couldn't catch him in a lie because he wouldn't, he just wouldn't make any content.

Andrew Wisely (01:07:18.016)
later on. mean, this is a long time after, but there's no statute of limitations for when these survivors think that it's time to pursue justice. It's just that it's almost as though

Even if he's not being charged for the same crime, it's as though it's being thought of as, let's leave this guy alone, he's suffered enough.

Waitman Beorn (01:07:40.528)
Yeah, I mean, I was going to say, because I suspect that I don't know the histories, but I suspect there was a Ravensbrück trial at some point or perpetrators of Robin, you know, a Ravensbrück complex, whatever, where there's a trial of the Robin's book, but he doesn't end up, you know, it's almost like they say, he's he's he's acquitted from from Auschwitz. And so that sort of is the double jeopardy, you know, adheres to that. And we can't charge him for anything else as a result.

Andrew Wisely (01:08:07.944)
The Ravensbrück trials actually happened in the 40s. The British hold those trials in the 40s. But the point I make in my book is that

Waitman Beorn (01:08:12.076)
Okay, great.

Andrew Wisely (01:08:18.226)
He hides away and he's only an hour away from the courtroom and he's reading about the trial that should have included him. He's reading about it in the newspapers and no one is making an effort to find him, partly because he's been described as the exception. And this is an unanswered question in my mind. Why, if he was living under his regular name?

Waitman Beorn (01:08:27.567)
Yeah, for sure.

Andrew Wisely (01:08:47.702)
why the British couldn't have found him. And this is something that Trita, Percy Trita and his lawyer kept saying, you know, don't ask Trita about Lucas, find Lucas and ask him yourself.

Waitman Beorn (01:09:01.176)
I mean, it is interesting because not only is he under his own name, but he's like. A doctor in his specialty. mean, you know, it doesn't take a, you know, Sherlock Holmes to figure out that this guy, you know, is out there. and, of course I, one of things that I thought it was interesting in the book as well as his wife, who is an ardent supporter.

Andrew Wisely (01:09:12.728)
That's right.

Waitman Beorn (01:09:26.658)
of him throughout this, you know, and, it is playing into this whole victim, victim narrative, you know, that he's sort of actually a victim of the third right, because they had to do this stuff. What is, what is your take on, on, on their relationship and sort of how she gets involved in this?

Andrew Wisely (01:09:28.12)
That's right.

Andrew Wisely (01:09:43.596)
No, you're right. She is a very loyal wife. All she knows is what he has told her. And so the question is,

Waitman Beorn (01:09:51.68)
When did they get married? it after the... Okay, so she wasn't at any these places or...

Andrew Wisely (01:09:53.295)
So they get married in 1950. They have two daughters, early 50s. She claims that the first she knew about the charges against him is what she read in the papers. So this is someone like his co-defendant Hans Stark, who was arrested in his apartment in 1958. And he told his wife, by the way, I never mentioned to you that I was at Auschwitz. And that's why they're arresting me now.

But the thing is, think his wife comes across as innocently guilty in the sense that if you didn't know anything else about her situation, she would sound credible. She would sound like the loyal wife. She would sound like there were no crimes that anyone she knew had committed in the past. was like there was always a clean slate there.

She met this wonderful man who had a promising career in 1950. I mean, they might've met the year before, but basically she enjoys a decade of uninterrupted marital life with him until he undergoes this scrutiny. And then she never waivers in her support. She does all the things that are typical male tasks.

around the household once he's in prison and makes all sorts of efforts to visit him and take her daughters with him. And it sounds like she's a victim of justice because the justice system is robbing her daughters of a father and robbing her of her husband and robbing his patients of their gynecologist.

Waitman Beorn (01:11:45.744)
Did you, I don't know if this is an aside as well, because it's something I'm really interested in. Did you find his family at all? Did you, did you talk to his family in the?

Andrew Wisely (01:11:56.043)
Okay, this is my sore point. This is my shortcoming. I didn't try hard enough to get through the bureaucracy. I made a couple visits, one productive visit to Elm's Horn to shuffle around in the city archive to look at newspaper stories about this local gynecologist hero who's now under the spotlight.

But I should have tried harder to check the marriage. I am criticizing myself for that. I think I was a little bit wary of the reception I would get from his daughters, assuming they're still alive, and whether I would ask the right questions. And I think I would be much more prepared to do that in a better way than I was several years ago.

Waitman Beorn (01:12:29.476)
I mean, there's no criticism. I'm not,

Waitman Beorn (01:12:38.426)
starting ships.

Right.

Waitman Beorn (01:12:49.55)
always just fascinated about about these these post-war family relationships you know with I mean like there was a guy one of the inovsky guys you know who goes to prison for seven years and and you know I've been in contact with some people and you know it's almost like he was off he was like off the planet for seven years

You know, but no, he was in prison because he'd been a SS guard at UNOSCA, but that is just like a black hole in the family. And like, they don't, it, it, then afterwards the, came back and did whatever he did in his town and his village. And he's written up, you know, in the local village newspaper and stuff. It's always as fascinating to me, the sort of ways in which they sort of go on and you're, you were, you know, in the seventies, you're living in a society where.

Andrew Wisely (01:13:18.082)
Yeah, yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:13:36.622)
You know, people are walking amongst you doing their normal things. And, and it might even be normal that you know that, yeah, that guy was in Auschwitz or he went, he was on trial for Auschwitz, but now he's, you know, just the local doctor. he, did he continue to be a doctor after he was acquitted? So.

Andrew Wisely (01:13:50.479)
Yeah, he did. He went back to to practicing, got his medical license back and had regular. Yeah, yeah, I know. I know.

Waitman Beorn (01:13:58.222)
Which is astonishing. I mean, that, in of itself is astonishing because I mean, one would think that regardless of whether you are convicted of, sort of participation in the Holocaust, as it were, you know, falsifying death records as the smallest thing should by itself be disqualifying, right? For, for, you know, continuing to practice, let alone sterilizing people against their will. it's just kind of a.

Andrew Wisely (01:14:22.606)
Yeah. Yeah. But we know that the, I mean, this is not to point fingers, but we know that the medical establishment in itself is compromised, especially in the failure to acknowledge a lot of the regular discrepancies and crimes as a whole, don't even want to get into the,

the issue of hiding tissue and human remains and putting up roadblocks to identifying the DNA of the victims and so forth. But yeah, mean, they didn't have any problem at all with reinstating him. And he had a successful career for another decade and a half.

Waitman Beorn (01:14:58.084)
Right.

Waitman Beorn (01:15:12.9)
I mean, this is what's fascinating about, again, like,

And I am a micro historian in many ways. I really appreciate this approach. obviously whenever we do micro history, the logical question that always comes is, well, so what does this tell us about the larger? It's a great story. It's interesting. It's full of lots of interesting sort of vignettes and stories. But what does it mean? Why does this matter? And I think one of the things that, obviously your book,

Andrew Wisely (01:15:19.182)
Mm-hmm.

Waitman Beorn (01:15:44.116)
rises to that occasion, right? Because one of the things it shows, for example, is that, you know, oftentimes the medical establishment in order to avoid having them put people point fingers at them. Want they it's in their best interest to sort of not rock the boat and deny this guy his medical license, because then he might say to the person that's in charge of, you know, reissuing the medical license, well, I know what did you what did you do during the war? So there's like

sort of Kono silence that's a complicity of everybody, right? What else would you say? mean, what do we bring? What do we learn from the Lukas case that is sort of generalizable to sort of understanding the Holocaust or even the post-war period in Germany?

Andrew Wisely (01:16:09.016)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Wisely (01:16:28.802)
Well, we have to remember he's a low to mid-level functionary.

Waitman Beorn (01:16:32.527)
Right.

Andrew Wisely (01:16:38.168)
I think we have to believe that there was a lot of voluntarism involved. It's not all hardship. It's not duress. And I actually, taught in my Holocaust class, having taught, you know, Rudolf Hoos's autobiography and then get to Serenity's, you know, Into the Darkness with conversations with Franz Stangl, you know, about Stangl, she basically says something that has resonated with me.

You know, it's his memory of events, the way that he wishes he would have acted, right? And so not the way he really acted. there's this retelling, this refashioning, reintegrating into society that happens more in the sense of retrospect. I'm going to act as though I'm on a continuum.

with good character that I always acted this way.

Waitman Beorn (01:17:35.566)
Yeah. It's like review. He's Lucas is like reverse engineering. Like his his past, you know, was fascinating about about the way you tell it in the book. Again, it's this.

It makes you wonder at what point does he start actually believing this stuff? And at what point is he just being, you know, a cold calculating guy who has an excellent strategy for both sort of defeating the justice system and also reintegrating into society? know, of course we may never know that obviously, but I mean, you know, at some point you'd almost have to start to believe that actually I was, I was kind of a resist. I mean, because you know, it's just.

Otherwise you're just literally sort of having to always be on your toes to sort of portray your fictionalized version of yourself.

Andrew Wisely (01:18:26.754)
No, that's completely accurate. And I think, you know, when I make a little bit of a point about this whole Janoskopf idea of someone who's looking both forward and backward, who's wearing the two faces, but not necessarily in a Jekyll Hyde sort of way.

Waitman Beorn (01:18:44.44)
Yeah, exactly. No, I thought this was really, I thought this was really smart because, you know, there's a, as you know, there's there's a famous historian or scholar, Robert Lifton, who has this idea of when he writes about Nazi doctors and his ideas doubling, right? That like, literally they're sort of, they're like a split down the middle. And when they walk into whatever they're doing, then they're the evil Nazi doctor, but then they go home and they're not. I think what you show, which is really, really useful is and complicated again, is, that this guy is quite aware.

Andrew Wisely (01:18:57.998)
Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:19:13.8)
of his, his moral and ethical shortcomings and the places in which he is vulnerable to prosecution for these things. And, and is trying to manipulate that sometimes in real time to sort of give himself a soft landing. You know, and I think that that's it's, it's not this idea of, as you say, he's not Jekyll and Hyde. He's not like turned off like a light switch. And then all of sudden he's not compartmentalizing the stuff.

Andrew Wisely (01:19:30.36)
That's right.

Waitman Beorn (01:19:39.224)
It's all, it's all happening together because he realizes, you know, that he is both guilty and wants to be seen as the victim. And so he has to manufacture this.

Andrew Wisely (01:19:47.855)
Yeah, yeah. And I'm so convinced that the problem with so many biographies is trying to establish, you know, a continuous line of improved or decreasing good character, right? You know, like there's only a linear advancement or retreat that's possible in some sort of a teleological explained way.

Right. And I think real life, especially when you're, you're in this sort of an ongoing situation of partial crisis, but also partial career advancement, you know, how am I going to make the best of this situation? I just don't think you can talk about any sort of continuum. I think you have to talk about ruptures, about going backwards, about going forwards, but

Waitman Beorn (01:20:46.48)
Well, it also, mean, the, the, the fact that, and again, Lucas is a good example of this, that, that, you know, you can also be a good person to certain people in certain circumstances. You know, it doesn't, you're not like monster all the time in a certain sense. Like, you know, this is, this is kind of the, I'm not racist. have a black friend kind of thing, you know, like just because he is, you know, helping perhaps legitimately helping people with tuberculosis.

Andrew Wisely (01:20:46.744)
You

Andrew Wisely (01:21:02.488)
That's right, yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:21:14.382)
You know, doesn't mean he can't also be intentionally sterilizing Roma, right? I mean, like these things are not, are not mutually exclusive that you can, and that, and that, and that Contrate, and this is one of the points that you bring, bring through really well, you know, that, Contrate to his attempt, his attempt to sort of massage his history, could a hundred percent be true that he

saved lives in the tuberculosis clinic, but that doesn't excuse or cancel out other things that he did, you know.

Andrew Wisely (01:21:48.043)
That's precisely the thesis of my book. And as you're talking there, I'm thinking that his North German, you know, OBGYN patients and his wife had never seen his reaction to treating a Jewish patient or, you know, a Sinti and Roma patient. And there is a record that he was disciplined.

for refusing to see a certain female patient. And I'm very curious, you know, who that patient was that he refused to treat.

Waitman Beorn (01:22:19.4)
my gosh. Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:22:24.558)
Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, and it's, you know, even at its most extreme, you know, you can go to it, you can go to any, any camp and look at trials. And, and very often there is a guy who everybody is like, he's the worst guy. but he, you know, saved my life. You know, mean, like, and this is a guy who murders everybody, but for whatever reason, you know, that day he told the guard, don't shoot me, you know, again, like, okay, that was good, I suppose, but the rest of it.

Andrew Wisely (01:22:41.325)
That's right.

Waitman Beorn (01:22:52.496)
is still there, right? And that these two things can coexist and they don't sort of cancel out. And what I think what you show here that's really, really interesting is precisely the fact that he is both intentionally trying to create this image, that he is this good doctor, know, resistor within the system.

Sometimes at the same time that he's doing these things that he clearly has to know are wrong at some level.

Andrew Wisely (01:23:27.596)
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's the reason why in my conclusion I talk about Heinz Baumkirter's assessment of him as trying to have it both ways, right? And that trying to straddle that line actually manifested itself in a sickliness that he could see in Lucas, as though that internal struggle or that internal inconsistency was manifested externally somehow.

I don't want to make too much of that, but I think it's interesting that a fellow perpetrator noticed that about someone who was subordinate to him.

Waitman Beorn (01:24:04.654)
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. And I always, I always, I often bring up this, this, you know, I had a guest on here, Dida Marie Muncheristic, who wrote a book called the moral limits of disgust. really, really fascinating study, you know, and again, it, it could be that these kinds of psychosomatic or these symptoms, you know, don't necessarily indicate moral conflict, but as you point out, they, they, they, they might indicate stress.

Andrew Wisely (01:24:32.8)
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:24:33.212)
You know, know that the stress of like, I'm trying to, I'm trying to essentially curate my, participation in the third right with an eye to where I'm going to up at the end. And this, and this is stress. It's kind of like if you were an undercover, an undercover agent or something, and you're, you're having to kind of live this, live this persona and you have to make sure that you're always, you're acting in character as it were. Right.

Andrew Wisely (01:24:57.996)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. As long as you're in the SS, you might as well exploit the opportunities that that provides. I mean, he's with the program to the end. And I wish I knew more about the details of his so-called escape, how that all came about. But yeah, I think he was definitely OK with the benefits that belonging gave to him.

Waitman Beorn (01:25:24.366)
Well, and this is a good point too, because of course, you know, as an SS doctor, right, he's already an elite sort of in that world and he could have requested a transfer, you know, I mean, and then there were individual SS guards at Auschwitz that requested transfers, not many, but there were some and they got them. like, if, if like, know, private so-and-so can request a transfer, then, you know, a doctor could, I feel like you could find a way.

And it wouldn't be that difficult and it wouldn't put you up against a wall, you know, for doing it. and sticking, as as you point out in the book, you know, sticking, sticking with it all the way to the end, when things are literally falling apart, it makes you question, any kind of resistance, you know, even in the, in the, in the, the most, charitable of lights, you know, for the guy, it's like, you know,

Andrew Wisely (01:25:58.378)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Andrew Wisely (01:26:06.476)
Yeah, yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:26:20.494)
And again, I mean, as a doctor and we're beating around the bush at this point, but as a doctor, know, just, just trying to serve a role as a doctor in a place that's killing people is already kind of has, has deeply, it makes you a deeply tainted professional because like, you you, you shouldn't be doing any of those things in, this situation. Right. I mean, like, it's just, it goes against everything that, that you would have been believed in.

Andrew Wisely (01:26:40.066)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Wisely (01:26:49.154)
Yeah, and so when anyone says that he was such a good, upstanding individual because he did these things, and of course we have to remember that he's just doing the things that an average physician does, right? I mean, nothing above and beyond that. Right. Yeah.

Waitman Beorn (01:27:04.388)
Yeah. He's just not being as awful as some other people, you know, like it's, you he's, he's just because you're not Mengele doesn't mean that you're a great guy, you know.

Andrew Wisely (01:27:16.354)
That's right. That's right.

Waitman Beorn (01:27:18.052)
Well, Andrew, we've taken a lot of your time, but this has been really, really fascinating and I highly recommend folks check out the book. It's again, it's called trial of a Nazi doctor, Franz Lukas as defendant opportunist and deceiver. Before we go, always we asked sort of what is one book on the Holocaust that you found useful, insightful, they'd recommend to our listeners.

Andrew Wisely (01:27:43.823)
Well, I hope I'm not being redundant in suggesting this title, but I did hear an interview with Dan Stone recently where he talks about his book, The Holocaust and Unfinished Story. And because I've done quite a bit of thinking, and that's a 2025 imprint, I've done quite a bit of thinking about extended trauma of Holocaust survivors and how that really has no, you know, statute of limitations. I do like

how he talks about the fact that we have an ongoing legacy that we still have to confront. And we still have a discrepancy between what American, many of them Jewish emigres who become psychiatrists for fellow survivors in the United States, how they were so far ahead of their German counterparts who were still busy providing

let's say a gutachten, right, a medical assessment to either prevent a survivor or to enable a survivor to get compensation from the German government. And it just is a backwards way of thinking about trauma. I like the fact that here's someone who has really probed the ongoing legacy of the after effects of the Holocaust.

Waitman Beorn (01:29:12.048)
Well, that's fantastic. And I will put that down on our reading list along with your book. And once again, thank you so much for coming on and talking about this book. And for everybody else, I hope that you're finding the Fortnightly format OK once every two weeks. But again, I appreciate all of your listening. If you have a chance, know, hey, give us a like. Send me a comment. Maybe you send me messages.

Andrew Wisely (01:29:23.042)
Thank you.

Waitman Beorn (01:29:42.012)
always great to know that I know the numbers tell me that I'm not sending this out into the ether without anybody listening to it but it's always great to hear that people are finding it useful or interesting and once again Andrew thanks so much for coming on appreciate it

Andrew Wisely (01:29:56.665)
Thank you very much.