DEKEL, LUCETTE MATALON LAGNADO SHEILA COHN (8 page)

The work habits Mengele had developed over the years in Munich and Frankfurt stood him in good stead at Auschwitz. Since his arrival in May 1943, Mengele had distinguished himself in the eyes of the Nazi hierarchy. A superior’s evaluation praised him for being “an excellent officer,” who had shown “maturity and strength.” The report stressed how Mengele had not displayed “any weakness in character or inhibition,” in the resolute way he selected people to die. And one doctor who served with Mengele at Auschwitz, Dr. Munch, remembers him as much more diligent than other SS physicians, many of whom had been dragooned into service at the death camp. This perception of Mengele as more hardworking than his Nazi colleagues is echoed by numerous adult survivors who had the chance to observe him at close range, and who would go on to write about it in their memoirs and testimonies.

Mengele’s experimental barracks were a showcase of the concentration camp, talked about and admired by the Nazi hierarchy.

In many ways, the twins’ compound at Auschwitz was a realization of Mengele’s-and Verschuer’s-greatest scientific dream. Verschuer, from his position as director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, was closely involved in his protege’s research, and the two men corresponded regularly. Mengele periodically dispatched to his mentor not only reports about his research, but also laboratory samples from his experiments.

TWINS’ FATH R: The moment a pair of twins arrived in the barrack, they were asked to complete a detailed questionnaire from the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. One of my duties as Twins’ Father was to help them fill it out, especially the little ones, who couldn’t read or write.

These forms contained dozens of detailed questions related to a child’s background, health, and physical characteristics. They asked for the age, weight, and height of the children, their eye color and the color of their hair. They were promptly mailed to Berlin when they were completed.

After the form was filled out, I would take the twins to Mengele, who asked them additional questions. Mengele had an office and a beautitul blond secretary. Because many of the children only knew Hungarian-and Mengele spoke only German-I would serve as the translator. His gorgeous secretary would write it all down.

Much of the information Mengele was seeking had to do with demographics-where the family was from, what the parents had done fora living.

His secretary would measure the children, while Mengele examined them.

He was especially interested in their hair. I recall he would look closely at the roots, to see how it was growing.

The questions were connected to the experiments Mengele would later make on the twins.

One day, I was filling out forms for a new pair of twins and I noticed the date of birth one child had given me was different from the birth date of his sibling. It was obvious they were not really twins. But I knew that if anyone learned of this, the boys would immediately be put to death.

And so I decided to take a chance, and put down false information.

I “made” them twins. I knew if Mengele learned of what I had done, he would kill both me and the children on the spot.

And throughout my stay at the camp, I was always afraid-but also secretly delighted-at what I had done in slipping through these false twins. I felt I had tricked the great Dr. Mengele.

The detailed questionnaires were designed to ensure the validity of Mengele’s work. If the experiments were to have any relevance, they had to be precise and carefully controlled. While Nazi racial scientists considered identical twins, whose gene pool was exactly alike, as most desirable for study, fraternal twins were also useful.

Whatever the case, the more information gathered about a twin’s genetic background, the greater the chances of conducting meaningful experiments.

Mengele’s overall aim-and that of Verschuer-was to test various genetic theories in support of Hitler’s racial dogmas. Like other Nazi scientists, Mengele hoped to prove that most human characteristics, from the shape of the nose to the color of the eye to obesity and left handedness were inherited. In addition, it is believed Mengele was searching for ways to induce multiple births, so as to repopulate the depleted German Army. The ultimate goal was to produce an ideal race of Aryan men and women endowed with only the finest genetic traits, who would rapidly multiply and rule the world.

For the sake of his experiments, Mengele tried to create an atmosphere that was, in sharp contrast to everything else taking place in Auschwitz, as close to normal as possible. He installed a small furnished office at one end of the twins’ compound to help him monitor his child guinea pigs. He decreed that guards were to be held accountable if any of the twins fell ill or died, hoping this would motivate them to look after the children. If a twin died during the night, Mengele would storm through the compound in the morning, screaming at the guards, demanding an explanation. He also implemented a strict routine to regulate the twins’ lives. Every morning at six o’clock, they were to be up for roll call in front of their barracks.

Then came breakfast, a mug of tepid, muddied water the Germans called coffee, and perhaps a slice of moldy bread. Then Mengele would appear at the compound shortly thereafter for an inspection tour.

EVA MOZES: My first meeting with Dr. Mengele was the morning after I had arrived.

The twins had to stand on roll call, no matter how young they were, no matter how cold it was. The procedure could last anywhere from fifteen minutes to over an hour.

The Germans had to account for everyone. Once that was finished, Mengele came. He was very much like a general reviewing his troops -except we were his guinea pigs.

I remember Mengele came almost every day, and he always wore his SS uniform and tall black boots. They were very shiny boots.

I was terrified of him.

As an SS doctor, Mengele had many concerns and responsibilities in addition to the twins. He performed selections among the new arrivals on the Birkenau ramp and also inside the women’s compound, daily dispatching hundreds to be killed. He oversaw a kind of sham hospital for the sick, where, alas, little care was provided. But he seemed to spend most of his time with the children. Typically, Mengele gave daily orders to have several of the twins “prepared” for experiments.

He would ask Twins’ Father or other adult supervisors to get the children ready by taking them to be bathed and cleaned. Special trucks emblazoned with fake Red Cross insignia arrived to pick up the youngsters and deliver them to Mengele’s laboratories. Depending on the type of tests, the twins were driven to any one of several locations either within Birkenau or at Auschwitz proper. The children learned what to expect, depending on their destination. In one laboratory, they knew it was a matter only of routine X rays and blood tests. Other clinics were reserved for more complicated-and painful-experiments. One Mengele lab the twins never saw was his pathology unit, located convenienlly on the site of a crematorium.

There, an assistant to Mengele toiled quietly, performing autopsies on the bodies of the twins who had died, or been killed, in the course of experiments.

The blood tests were the most basic component of Mengele’s program.

Virtually all the twins were subjected to daily withdrawals of blood.

These tests may have been connected to the grant he received from the prestigious German Research Association to study “specific proteins,” a project funded at Verschuer’s express request. Blood, often in large quantities, was drawn from twins’ fingers and arms, and sometimes both their arms simultaneously. The youngest children, whose arms and hands were very small, suffered the most: Blood was drawn from their necks, a painful and frightening procedure. The blood was then analyzed in a special laboratory located near Birkenau.

Although Mengele was invariably present during the experiments, the tests themselves were often administered by his assistants. Typically, these were Jewish inmates who had been doctors and nurses before the war, and had been spared the gas chamber because of their skills.

Most had profound misgivings about their work. But they knew that to betray any hesitation in administering an injection or test, even a very gruesome one, would result in their immediate execution. In spite of their anguishing position, a few managed also to alleviate suffering and helped save some lives.

ALex DeKEL: I never saw a doctor smiling. They were very depressed, all of them.

I lived in the same place as these doctors. I saw them going through their duties like robots, like machines. They would come back at night to sleep, and wake up early in the morning to report back to the laboratory.

If I ever approached any of them and tried to ask them a question, they would not answer me.

MAGDA SPIEGEL: There were many Jewish doctors living in our section of the camp women doctors, men doctors, anthropologists, eye doctors, ear doctors.

Mengele came every day to speak with them and give them orders on what to do with each twin.

There was a beautiful female doctor named Anna. She was originally from Czechoslovakia, and she had been a very famous physician before the war. She was one of the few Jewish doctors who was able to get close to Mengele.

He liked beautiful women, and Dr. Anna was lovely. Dr. Anna was always walking around with Mengele, accompanying him on his rounds.

She was very kind-very compassionate toward the twins. She knew, for example, that I was upset about my son. She tried to comfort me. She would never admit to me he had been gassed.

Finally, she said to me,

“Ask Mengele.”

I went over to Mengele and asked him as calmly as I could,

“Where is my little boy?”

“He is in kindergarten,” he replied, smiling. Then, he walked away.

I wanted to die. There was a fence near our barracks-a barbed wire fence-where inmates would commit suicide. I threw myself on the barbed wire, but some women prisoners ran and pulled me off of it.

Although Mengele’s assistants were responsible for administering the tests, Mengele occasionally liked to step in and lend a hand. He looked the twins over carefully, searching for genetic abnormalities or any other unusual conditions. Then, he would demonstrate the “proper” way to insert a syringe or draw blood. He would lecture the Jewish doctors on how to avoid hurting the children. As if he were their old family physician, he brought candy or chocolates along to pacify the youngsters. Mengele knew how to treat children and calm them down so the experiments could proceed. He intuitively understood how much he needed the children’s trust for his research to succeed; good results would be obtained only if they were cooperative.

But he also knew that the twins, especially the very young ones, were terrified of the procedures, especially the injections.

EVA KUPAS: Once, I wanted to go see my twin brother. So Dr. Mengele took me by the hand and walked with me over to where he was staying.

Mengele held my hand the whole way.

VERA BLAU: They took blood from us every day. But when Mengele made the blood tests, he was much more gentle than the nurses. He liked little children and was strict about keeping them well. He would get very angry if a twin was sick.

Countless experiments were performed on the twins at any given time.

Although the full scope of those tests will never be known, although the records are scanty and the child victims of Mengele’s most diabolical work are gone, some details are known about both his practices and intent.

EVA MOZ S: We were always naked during the experiments.

We were marked, painted, measured, observed. Boys and girls were together. It was all so demeaning. There was no place to hide, no place to go.

They compared every part of our body with that of our twin. The tests would last for hours.

And Mengele was always there, supervising.

SOLOMON MALIK: Mengele would look at each of the twins and see what interested him the most. We were his guinea pigs. We were his laboratory.

Mengele once put a needle in my armonly the needle, not the syringe.

Blood started spurting out. He calmly placed the blood in a test tube.

Then, he gave me a sugar cube.

Mo SHE OFFER: One morning, at roll call, my number and that ofTibi were announced as part of the group that was going for experiments. We were taken with some other children by ambulance to a laboratory. The doctors took many X rays of us.

Then, Dr. Mengele walked in. He was wearing a white gown, but underneath his gown I could see his SS uniform and boots.

He gave me some candy, and then he gave me an injection that was extremely painful.

“Nicht angst,” Mengele told me in German. “Don’t be afraid.”

The line between science and quackery was not a very fine one at Auschwitz. Mengele’s experiments, although ostensibly performed in the name of scientific truth, followed few scientific principles. Mengele would test one twin and not the other. At times, siblings were injected simultaneously as they stood naked side by side. Despite the preferential treatment, the occasional shows of kindness, the children endured unspeakable pain and humiliation.

The eye studies were especially gruesome. In their desire to create a race of perfect Aryans, the Nazis wanted to produce children with lustrous blond hair and blue eyes. Was it possible to genetically engineer such traits? A major focus of Mengele’s studies involved changing the color of the twins’ hair and eyes. (His fascination with hair had led him to allow the twins to wear it long. Their hair was continually being analyzed and compared with that of their siblings.) The eye studies were in part undertaken on behalf of Mengele’s Berlin colleague Dr. Karin Magnussen, one of Versclluer’s top assistants at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute, who was preparing a special study on eyes using data gathered by Mengele at Auschwitz. This data came from painful and barbaric tests that were difficult to administer. At times, Mengele’s assistants used eye-drops to insert chemicals into the children’s eyes; other times, they used needles.

H DVAH AND LEAN STERN: Mengele was trying to change the color of our eyes. One day, we were given eye-drops. Afterwards, we could not see for several days. We thought the Nazis had made us blind.