DEKEL, LUCETTE MATALON LAGNADO SHEILA COHN (2 page)

For most, the passage of time has failed to bring peace of mind.

Nearly half a century later, they feel guilty at having been born twins. after all, despite all they suffered as Mengele’s guinea pigs, they still enjoyed the privileged status he bestowed upon them.

Mengele’s twins are condemned to live with a terrible double-edged sword: the hell they endured because of Mengele, and the life they owe him as “his” children.

“Why were we spared?” Mengele’s twins ask themselves today. “Why were we the only ones in our family to survive?” The more fortunate ones turn to their lone surviving sibling for comfort and answers, only to find the same sense of bewilderment and despair.

The sights of the camp-the dead bodies, the bones, the crematoriums spewing bright red flames into the ver million skies-have continued to haunt Mengele’s twins. They emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust dazed, anxious to leave the past behind them, but they have learned the past will never leave them. And although they last saw Josef Mengele in the winter of 1944, he has remained an ever-present force in each of their lives. This is his story-and theirs. LUCE MA TALoN LAGNADO I came to the story of Mengele’s children through my late husband, and although I am an American, his story became mine. I met Alex Shlomo Dekel while living in Israel in January 1962, and we were married one year later. My American upbringing had intrigued him; his European past had fascinated me: the gallant widowed mother, who had raised him and his brother before they were transported to Auschwitz in the first convoy from his native Hungary; his experiences in the concentration camp as a Mengele guinea pig; and his liberation from Birkenau by American GIs, who saved his life at the time by intravenous feedings.

Alex was not a twin, but He had been spared an almost certain death because of his Aryan good looks and his German-language fluency. Not long after we started seeing each other, he began to tell me his story.

Especially haunting, I thought, was his final memory of his mother, whom he had spotted despite her shaved head in an adjacent yard behind a barbed-wire fence. As one of Mengele’s “privileged” children, he knew he had more rations than she, and so he saved up all his food for the day to give to her.

She refused to take it from her child, so he threw it over the fence, where she was forced to retrieve it. Later he told me that he had survived by dreaming at night of consuming huge meals, and that this had given him the strength to face the starvation of the next day.

Nourished on dreams!

That he had been a child prisoner of Auschwitz I understood. That it would color his entire life I did not. But after we were married, I discovered and gradually came to share his all-consuming passion to find Mengele and bring him to justice. Auschwitz was never far beneath the surface of his thoughts. He would try to forget, but from time to time it would emerge, in episodes of unexplained rage and in periods of deep depressions that I now understand are scorched into the Auschwitz legacy of all the survivors.

Israel became his raison d’etre. I told him it was his revenge. His life was often in danger, starting with his swimming ashore illegally from Cyprus where his ship had been detained by the British, through his dare-devil exploits, first in the Haganah and, later, in the service of the Israeli government (some of which still cannot be revealed). His entire life was shaped by forces outside of himself.

Like so many others, Israel became his lost family. I sensed he was sometimes more at home in the memories of Auschwitz than in the real world. For the survivor, all is always Auschwitz.

As an archivist attached to the Israeli consulate in New York, Alex began to collect information on Mengele’s every move. At first, I didn’t pay much attention to the pieces of information he shared with me on the death-camp doctor’s whereabouts. Given enough time, I was sure I could make him forget. after all, we were living in America now. We had each other. But being married to him was like being married to a secret agent. There were always secrets. His wasn’t exactly the kind of work a wife could innocently ask about at the end of the day. “What did you do today, dear?” I tried that only once!

His compulsive search for Mengele gradually escalated into a full-scale, one-man hunt. He began to contact anyone who had ever heard of Mengele and might have knowledge of him. I remember being awakened one night by a telephone call at 3:00 A.M. from South America: Someone had phoned to report a sighting. There were many such calls.

The papers Alex accumulated began to take on the dimensions of a personal library. Every newspaper clipping and magazine article, anything related to Mengele’s whereabouts, helped Alex put pieces of evidence together in the manner He had learned during his twenty-five years as an intelligence officer for the Israeli government. Alex soon pinpointed Mengele’s various residences and many of his movements in and out of South America. He even located a wholesale pharmacist supplying drugs to Brazil-and concocted a wild scheme to take Mengele’s medicine to him (which I vetoed as being far too dangerous). Anyone who had even the remotest connection with Mengele or with South America was a welcome visitor in our home.

In 1976, Alex contacted the editors of Time and convinced them of the critical need to locate Mengele. They financed his research as he pursued the trail all over Europe, uncovering important new facts.

From Vienna, where he conferred with Simon Wiesenthal, he went to Poland, where he persuaded the government to open its files on Auschwitz and Mengele’s experiments there. Elated, he brought the evidence home, where I slept innocently with Josef Mengele’s fingerprints and SS files under our bed.

Time published these findings in September 1977, and soon after, Alex began to set down his experiences for a memoir that he hoped would someday help arouse the world’s conscience and lead to Mengele’s arrest. In the meantime, he initiated another Mengele story with Life magazine and spent hours with Dr. Robert Lilton, giving oral testimony for Dr. Lilton’s book on the Nazi doctors. And although at the beginning I had little patience with Alex’s hunt to find Mengele, I could no longer ignore the major theme of his life.

“Live now,” I had urged him. “Remove that tattooed reminder from your arm,” I begged. “Remove my arm,” was Alex’s response. Would I have married him if I had known how his life would be consumed by this obsession?

Yes, I know I would have.

That fateful summer of 1983, we were planning to go to Israel, where a high-ranking intelligence contact had promised Alex access to Israel’s file on Mengele. Before that, the man arrived in New York in June, and when Alex returned home after meeting his plane, I noticed he was distracted, talking of many things but not about Mengele. Nor was he feeling well. He brushed aside my pleadings to go to the hospital when he complained of pain in his left arm. His lack of concern for his own well-being was irresponsible but typical. He always felt immune from the ravages of time and fate-after Auschwitz, what else could happen to him?

When Alex died suddenly after suffering a massive stroke and heart attack, I realized retrospectively what his contact must have told him that night; what the Israeli government already knew: Josef Mengele was dead. I could not help but feel that the hunted had finally caught up with the hunter. This knowledge surely must have broken Alex’s heart, dissolved his resolve to live.

after Alex’s death, I resolved to carry on his mission. I met Lucette Lagnado, whose own interest in Mengele and his child victims paralleled Alex’s. Many events took place in the course of writing this book, including the discovery of Mengele’s remains on June 21, 1985-two years to the day after Alex’s funeral. Their destinies would remain inextricably intertwined in death as they had been in life.

“I am sad and heartbroken,” Elie Wiesel had telegraphed me from Washington when He heard of Alex’s passing. “He was one of our most devoted companions. Few have endured his agony. Few have lived with it as deeply.

For myself and all the members of the United States Holocaust Council, we shall always remember him.” As I sorted through Alex’s papers to gather material for this book, I came across this fragment repeated throughout his notes: Tell your children of it, And let your children tell their children, And their children another generation.

-Joel 1:3 It is this spirit that has guided me in completing his work.

-SHEILA CoHN DEKEL New York City TwINS FATHER: Born 1915 in Budapest, Hungary. Real name: Zyl Spiegel. Family moved to Munkaks, Czechoslovakia. Was twenty nine years old when he and twin sister, Magda, were deported to Auschwitz. Assigned by Dr. Mengele to be in charge of the twin boys. The children called him

“Zvilingefater” or “Twins’ Father.”

MAGDA SPIEGEL: Twin sister of Zyl Spiegel. Married with a seven-year-old son when deported to death camp. Worked as Mengele’s cleaning woman.

HEDVAH AND LEAH STERN: Identical twins. Born in Hungary in 1931. Age thirteen and a half when sent to Auschwitz with their mother. The Stern sisters, as they became known in the camp, are virtually indistinguishable from one another. They speak in one voice, agree completely with what the other says, feel what the other feels, think as the other thinks.

MOSHE OFFER: Born 1932 in small town in Hungary (now a part of Soviet Union). Deported to Auschwitz at age twelve, along with his twin brother, Tibi, parents, and five brothers. Entire family, except for twins, sent immediately to the gas chambers.

zvl THE SAILOR: Born Zyl Klein in Galicia. Not quite thirteen years old when he and identical twin brother, Ladislav, were deported to Auschwitz, along with extended family. All but the twins perished.

Brothers estranged since the war.

EVA MOZES: American founder of CANDLES, the international organiZation of Mengele twins. Launched drive in 1984 to find and reunite all the twins and publicize their story. Born in Cluj, Romania, in 1935.

Deported to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944 along with her identical twin sister, Miriam, her parents, and two older sisters. Entire family slaughtered except for twins. Currently resides in Terre Haute, Indiana.

MIRIAM MOZES: Twin sister of Eva, now living in Israel. Cofounder and organizer of CANDLES in Israel and Europe. Works as head nurse in Israeli hospital. Suffers severe health problems believed due to experiments undergone at the hands of Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz.

JUDITRI YAGUDAH: Born May 25, 1934, in Braov, a small town in what used to be Hungary, but is now part of Romania. Nazis sent entire family to ghetto in Cluj, and from there to Auschwitz. Was ten years old when she, identical twin sister, Ruthie, and parents were deported to Auschwitz. Father killed immediately by Nazis.

Judith and Ruthie sent with their mother to twins’ barracks.

OLGA GROSSMAN: Born in 1938 in Czechoslovakia. Was six years old when deported to Auschwitz with her twin sister, Vera. Family spent time in other concentration camps before Auschwitz. Has absolutely no memories of her stay in the camp, and is unable to talk about the war. Suffers from recurrent hallucinations about Mengele. Frequently institutionalized as an adult.

VERA GROSSMAN: Olga’s fraternal twin sister. Was so different in appearance from her sister that Mengele did not believe they were really twins. Unlike twin, claims to have very vivid memories of Auschwitz. Has no difficulty discussing the war. Outgoing. Active in CANDLES and other Holocaust groups. Travels to Germany to lecture about the twins of Auschwitz. Served as author’s interpreter for all Hebrew-language interviews of Israeli twins.

ALEX DEPEL: Born in Cluj, Romania, in 1930. Age thirteen at time of deportation to Auschwitz. Though not a twin, selected by Mengele to go to the twins’ barracks because of his striking

“Aryan features.

Subjected to medical experiments like the twins.

PETER SOMOGYL: Born in Pecs, Hungary, in 1930. Deported to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944 on one of the last transports of Hungarian Jews.

Mother and sister perished in the gas chambers.

Only Peter and twin brother survived. Extremely popular with Dr. Mengele-he nicknamed them “the intelligentsia” because of their fluency in several languages, their knowledge of classical music, and their ability to play the piano.

VERA BLAU: Was eleven years old when deported to Auschwitz in April 1944 from Czechoslovakia. Arrived with twin sister, Rachel, mother, and little brother. Only twins survived. Vera, an artist in Tel Aviv, insists Mengele “loved” little children.

MENASHE L0R1NCZ1: Born in small town in Romania in 1934.

Shortly after Menashe and twin sister, Lea, celebrated their tenth birthday in the Cluj Ghetto, they and their grandparents were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz. Grandparents immediately killed. Fate of mother unknown. Became a messenger boy for Mengele. One of the few child inmates permitted to wander freely around the death camp.

LEA LORINCZI: Twin sister of Menashe. Became an active Communist in Romania after World War II. Later emigrated to Israel, married ultra-Orthodox man, and joined Hassidic sect.

Moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Now owns ladies’ garment store on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

EVA KUPAS: Deported to Auschwitz with twin brother in spring 1944.

Birth date unknown. No recollection of prewar life. Her only memory of the death camp is the day she and other twin girls were taken to pick wildflowers in a field just outside of Birkenau.

SOLOMON MALIK: Deported to Auschwitz in May 1944, at the age of thirteen, along with parents, twin sister, and another pair of twin brothers. Only the four twins survived.

JOSEF MENGErE: Born March 16, 1911, in Gunzburg, Germany.

Son of wealthy factory owner. Became a scientist with a special interest in twins. Volunteered to go to Auschwitz to work as a doctor in the spring of 1943, at age thirty-two. Disappeared after the war.

Also known as Helmut Gregor, G. Helmuth, Fritz Ulmann, Fritz Hollmann, Jose Mengele, Peter Hochbicler, Ernst Sebastian Alvez, Jose Aspiazi, Lars Ballstroem, Friedrich Edler von Breitenbach, Fritz Fischer, Karl Geuske, Ludwig Gregor, Stanislaus Prosky, Fausto Rindon, Fausto Rondon, Gregor Schl;lastro, Heinz Stobert, Dr. Henrique Wollman, and