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Of the atrocities that proliferated during the Holocaust, few were as gut-wrenching or as unthinkable as the vile "medical experimentation" that took place in Nazi concentration camps and hospitals, much of which occurred at the hands of trained physicians, and subjected victims to fates worse than death. Journalist and historian Robert J. Lifton exhaustively researched the specifics for his 1986 book The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide; Lifton also headlines the documentary Robert J. Lifton: Nazi Doctors. Co-directed by Hannes Karnick and Wolfgang Richter and produced in 2009, the film revisits many of the concerns explored in the 1986 tome. Appearing onscreen, Lifton speaks openly and candidly about the methods that he used to locate and interview surviving Nazi doctors -- many of whom were both still practicing in the mid-'80s and affluent as well. Lifton also pontificates on the "acculturation to killing" engendered by the camps, the psychological mechanisms called "doubling" and "splitting" that turned healers into torturers and murderers, and his own disturbing conviction that any man or woman could be thrust into the same sort of behavior under the right circumstances.