We were transferred to many camps and then released in the U.S. Mengele's ideological worship, then, included the worship of Nazified ''science,'' and from that stand-point he told his friend that ''it would be a sin, a crime . ''Everything,'' he said in an interview, ''comes together like a zipper. For Mengele has long been the focus of what could be called a cult of demonic personality. WebJosef Mengele (1911-1979) was the oldest of three brothers. and 5 cc. He often sent prisoners with skin blemishes - even those with small abscesses or old appendectomy scars - to the gas chamber. Mengele, his friend said, was the only doctor in Auschwitz who possessed that array of medals, and he was enormously proud of them; he frequently referred to his combat experience to bolster his arguments on a variety of matters. Dr. Josef Mengele, the cruel staff doctor at Auschwitz death camp, acquired a certain legendary quality even before his death in 1979. '', There was an easy rhythm in his approach to selections. He was enabled to feel nothing in killing a young twin, even one he had been fond of, to make a medical point. But Mengele's version of the Auschwitz self - his ease in harming and killing - carried psychic numbing to a remarkable extreme. His impulse toward omnipotence and total control of the world around him were means of fending off anxiety and doubt, fears of falling apart - ultimately, fear of death. The surge in terrorism, the surprise Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the Syrian military buildup with Soviet assistance took precedence. We have never been so close to Meltzer, a Mossad operative wrote to Amit, using Mengeles code name. Mengele had the same frenzied attitude in carrying out his research. I had to realize that toward me he did not express any kind of guilt or remorse.''. I thought he would not find me.". Verschuer, his mentor, was taking science in a Nazi direction when he declared that research with twins would demonstrate ''the extent of the damage caused by adverse hereditary influences'' as well as ''relations between disease, racial types, and miscegenation.'' And the townspeople, concerned about the reputation of the farm machinery company that has annual sales of $80 million, cannot understand why the family members have not publicly dissociated themselves from their uncle. In a process I call ''doubling,'' a new self takes shape that adapts to the evil environment, and the evil acts become part of that self. he was very playful. The doctor insisted in the statement that he had selected Jews not for death in the Auschwitz gas chambers but for work in the German armament industry. The son of a well-to-do Bavarian industrialist, Mengele is remembered by an acquaintance as a popular young man, an enthusiastic friend. Verschuer notified the German Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in this branch of research. It was late at night. Mengele brought such flamboyance and posturing to the selections task that it was his image inmates remembered. Petra Kelly, deputy director of Germany`s Green Party who also was born in Guenzberg, indicated that Mengele may have made clandestine visits to the town in the early years of his exile. In one instance, a mother refused to be separated from her teen-age daughter and scratched the face of the SS trooper who tried to enforce Mengele's decision. Mengele drew his gun and shot both the woman and her child. He equated Yasir Arafat with Hitler. His friend suggests something else special about Mengele: He had asked to be sent to the Auschwitz death camp because of the opportunities it could provide for his research. He could quiet his fears of death in that death-dominated environment by performing the ultimate act of power over another person: murder. Asked if she would be willing to speak for an interview, she responded: "We are not interested in contacts with the media." He tested vaccines on the girl. Rolf did not know that a romance was blossoming between his ''uncle'' and Martha. The television interview was among a series of gestures that, in an effort to erase the stigma that stains the family name, Rolf Mengele has made since the opening of the grave in a Brazilian cemetery. Frankfurt prosecutor Hans-Eberhard Klein says Rolf is the son of the Nazi doctor and his first wife, Irene, who also lives in Freiburg. He was also intelligent, a serious student who showed ''a very distinct ambitiousness.''. ", From the "Guilt without atonement" series, a project of DW's Polish department, the Interia portal and the Wirtualna Polska media group. She hung up. The Los Angeles Times Syndicate has purchased the North American rights to the Bunte articles for an undisclosed amount; Bunte was reported to have asked between $200,000 and $350,000. The children suffered from hunger and cold. . [Twins out!] . In Auschwitz-Birkenau alone, 200,000 children were called. We may say that the lives of twins had unique existential value in Auschwitz. The inmate artist described him as so distant from others that ''he seemed to be from a different planet.'' ''Angel of Death'' kept silent, shielding the secret that protected one of the most infamous Nazi fugitives. Many children died during these experiments; others were deliberately killed. July 17 (UPI) -- CPI Aerostructures has secured a five-year contract worth $21 million to manufacture and supply fuel panel assemblies for Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. By 1943, he held the rank of Sturmbannfhrer, the equivalent of a major, and was transferred to Auschwitz, where he worked as camp doctor. We have seen that his death has partly dispelled this demonology. . In 1968, the Mossad received fresh confirmation that Mengele was living on the farm near So Paulo, sheltered by the same people who had been under surveillance six years earlier. A deposition given by Dr. Nyiszli in 1945 described one such event: ''In the work room next to the dissecting room, 14 gypsy twins were waiting . and crying bitterly. BONN In the nearly 40 years since Dr. Josef Mengele left West Germany, family members have lived under a ''monstrous shadow'' cast by the Nazi fugitive, running a farm machinery business and saying almost nothing of their infamous relative to the world. AUSCHWITZ WAS BOTH AN ANNIHILA-tion camp and a work camp for German industry. The evidence is that Mengele took his turn at the ramp, like everyone else, but he also appeared there frequently to make sure that any twins in a ''transport,'' as the trains were called, would be collected and saved for his research. Survivors repeatedly commented on his confusing duality of affection and violence, an extreme manifestation of the process I call ''doubling. Those who are identified had previously made themselves known in books or other public documents.) '', The twins lived in an atmosphere that combined sanctuary with terror. Read more:Seventy-five years ago, the Nazis carried out the mass murder of Sinti and Roma people at Auschwitz, Gnzburg made international headlines in February 1985, when a symbolic "tribunal" was held on Mengele at Israel's Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, with cameras recording survivors' stories of the atrocities committed by the doctor. WebProfessional Standards. . I am not sure I agree. Mengele's ideology considerably influenced his intellectual choices. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. He could thereby obtain comparisons of healthy or diseased organs to show the effects of heredity. Later, the radiologist said, he heard from Dr. Nyiszli that Mengele had shot the two boys in the neck and that ''while they were still warm, began to examine them: lungs first, than each organ.''. The prisoners would ''march before him with their arms in the air while he continued to whistle his Wagner - or it might be Verdi or Johann Strauss.'' a 14-year-old girl. But over the course of committing evil acts, an ordinary person becomes something different. He haunted my nightmares. Your email address will not be published. He was active in the selection process at the ramp and particularly interested in children, especially twins and dwarfs. When Mengele himself performed the examination, they said, he was very proper and methodical: ''He concentrated on one part of the body at one timelike [one day] he measured our eyes for about two hours.'' JOSEF Mengele had come to symbolize the entire Nazi killing project. Many inmates thought that Mengele alone conducted the large ''selections.'' Mengele's diary reveals a man who was unrepentant about Nazi actions during the second world war. For those who view Rolf`s statements as an attempt to atone for the evil of his father, it must be remembered that they came only after the search for his father began to intensify and reach its conclusion. The ramp was brightly lit. Mengele, who never worked in the family business, was dubbed the Angel of Death at the Auschwitz concentration camp in then Nazi-occupied Poland for weeding out victims for his gruesome medical experiments from the thousands of Jews and that Gypsies he marked for death. Today, four decades after his death, this is a lesson for the new generations born since World War II. He outlived many of his victims. As a child I heard from one of my parents best friends about living through Mengeles infamous selection process at Auschwitz. When they arrived at Auschwitz, packed by the hundreds into freight and cattle cars, they were unloaded and herded down a ramp. Mengele saw himself as a biological revolutionary, part of a vanguard devoted to the bold scientific task of remaking his people and ultimately the people of the world. Mengele said he met his father only twice, during a skiing vacation in Switzerland in 1956, when he was 12 years old, and 21 years later during a two-week visit to Sao Paulo. We were always sitting together - always nude. Stern, another West German weekly, has also published an account of Josef Mengele`s escape after the war, his exile and his years under another identity. Rolf Mengele, a 41-year-old lawyer in the city of Freiburg, on Tuesday released a statement saying that a body exhumed June 6 near Sao Paulo, Brazil, is that of his father. He investigated a gangrenous condition of the face and mouth called noma. Viewed in this light, Josef Mengele emerges as he really was: a visionary ideologue, an efficiently murderous functionary, a diligent careerist - and disturbingly human. '', Some inmate-doctors also viewed Mengele as a demon and wished to divest him of his professional status. Inmates said Mengele ''conveyed the impression of a gentle and cultured man'' and spoke of the ''cheerful expression on his face . one survivor said. ''With great sorrow I am today complying with the painful duty to inform you and all family members of the passing of our mutual friend,'' Bossert wrote. Im the son of two Holocaust survivors. Take the first step to help. A headline in Britain's Daily Express newspaper called it "The Town Where Dr. Death Still Casts His Evil Shadow.". He commented: "He diminishes himself, showing repentance, that is lamentable.". One can definitely understand their need for vengeance. ''. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. The man he met in Switzerland, however, was introduced to him as an uncle named Helmut Gregor. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. For the next 10 years, backed by Eshkol and his successors as prime minister, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin, almost nothing was done about Mengele. The family has owned a farm machinery manufacturing company in Guenzburg, a town near The man and the place were dramatically summed up by a survivor who did art work for him and spoke of herself as Mengele's ''pet,'' someone who was pleasant to have around. Without Auschwitz, he would probably have kept his destructive potential under control. They had been seized at the home of an Austrian couple, Liselotte and Wolfram Bossert, now dead, who befriended Mengele, and at the small house in the seaside resort of Bertioga, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, where he was living when he died from a heart attack in 1979. My new research sheds light on a time when realism and maturity shaped the agencys priorities, rather than an understandable desire to spill Nazi blood. He collected and studied dwarfs in an effort to determine the genetic reasons for their condition. Mengele became a true ideologue: a man who understood his life to be in the service of a larger vision. With the backing of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Amit focused on the Egyptian missile program until that threat was resolved (with the help of a former high-ranking Nazi), and then on gathering intelligence on the Arab states that proved critical to Israels victory in the 1967 war. In 1949, Mengele told Irene he was leaving for South America, where those who were ''persecuted'' in postwar Germany not only were welcome but respected. Indeed, during recent weeks he had already begun to fall from grace as a symbol of pure evil. Still, I believe that the decision not to prioritize capturing him was the right one. Prisoners were struck by the stark contrast between his calm, playful manner and the horror of what he was doing. For Begin, getting to Mengele was not just a matter of the past. On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. One twin survivor, for example, told how he and his 12-year-old twin sister would be examined and subjected to such procedures as the injection of material into their spines or the clamping of some part of the body ''to see how long you could stand the pressure.''. The same year, the Mossad hoped to tap phone conversations between Mengele and his son, Rolf, who was living in West Berlin. When his skeleton was exhumed in 1985 many questioned whether it was really his. . The business is one of the largest West German farm equipment makers, with annual sales of $83 million. M ENGELE'S TREAT-ment of twins provides important additional clues to his psychology. And they feared visits by the doctor Josef Mengele. His father, Rolf relates, was delighted and eager to join the military. She wanted a family, she wanted to lead a more traditional life. . Mengele said he felt a special moral obligation to speak ''simply because I am always being brought in connection with these ghastly, incomprehensible events on account of my ancestry.''. Mengele fled Germany to Argentina in 1948, using false documents given to him by the Red Cross. Dr. Olga Lengyel, an inmate doctor, described Mengele as ''far and away the chief provider for the gas chamber and the crematory ovens.'' This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Mengele was outraged, and he left the room, ordering the radiologist to remain. For many, that anticipated event took on the significance of confronting the Holocaust and restoring a moral universe. Rolf Mengele said he learned of his father`s death from a letter written by Wolfram Bossert, an Austrian who was a Nazi supporter and who, with his wife, Liselotte, became close friends of Mengele`s in Brazil. She said she did not know where her husband was. The Mengele family firm, Soehne Maschinenfabrik und Eisengiesserei GmbH und Co. of Guenzburg, Bavaria, specializes in agricultural machinery and is the largest of dw.com/zbrodniabezkary. TEL AVIV For decades, Israels espionage agency, the Mossad, kept a file on Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor responsible for, among other atrocities, selecting I was certain that in a little while we would be able to bring Mengele to Israel to be tried.. The boys both had symptoms in their joints that, according to a belief at that time, could be linked to tuberculosis. There isn't a piece of body that wasn't measured and compared. To help him get to South America, family members purchased, at considerable cost, a forged passport. . In the end, Rolf says, it was his mother who wanted to get out of the marriage. That evil, generally speaking, is neither inherent in any self nor foreign to it. It was present in his remark to a Jewish woman doctor who was pleading vainly for the life of her father: ''Your father is 70 years old. In November 1932, Mengele's father offered the Karl Mengele & Shne (Mengele & Sons) farm machine factory space for one of Adolf Hitler's election campaign events. Yet, as far as we know, he had neither killed nor maimed prior to Auschwitz, and had in fact functioned in a more or less integrated way. Several family members still live in the Bavarian city of Guenzburg, where Josef Mengele was born on March 16, 1911. The overall arrangement, as Dr. Nyiszli later wrote, was ''the exact replica of any large city's institute of pathology.'' Mengele possessed unusually intense destructive potential, but there were no apparent signs of aberrant behavior prior to the Nazis and Auschwitz. In describing the swimming accident that took Mengele`s life, Bossert praised Mengele for ''heroically fighting to his last breath as he did throughout his troubled life.'' ORENBURG, Russia, April 16 (UPI) -- A teenage dance group in Russia is under investigation by officials after a twerking performance video went viral this week. He might well have been unclear himself about his exact motivations, but we have reason to see in them a combination of distorted scientific claims and related ideological fantasies. What is more, he could exercise total control over them. It was known to be caused by the kind of debilitation that inmates were subject to, but Mengele focused on what he deemed to be genetic and racial factors. That fear also activated his sadism and extreme psychic numbing. During Rolf`s visit to Sao Paulo in 1977, Josef had sworn to his son ''by the eyesight of my mother'' that he had ''never killed or personally harmed anyone.''. He could try medications meant to prevent, treat or induce a particular illness on an individual twin, or both of a pair of twins. An inmate anthropolo-gist whom Mengele had eagerly recruited to assist him described the arrival of a group of Hungarian Jews ''like a river . She refuses to discuss him. We offer our comprehensive marcom In 1982, the agency even considered abducting a 12-year-old boy and threatening to take his life unless his father, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, a devoted Nazi and a childhood friend of Mengeles, gave them the information that could lead to his capture. Lidia was separated from her mother and sent to the children's barracks, a wooden building with long rows of bunks. The official family position is that Mengele is no longer alive. Then he would examine ''these chambers where they are killed'' and he would inquire about the dog population: ''How many are you? Koeppler feels Mengele`s relatives in Guenzburg--two sisters and two nephews--should ''clear the air.'' Jaumann was traveling Friday and could not be reached for comment on the newspaper report. In March, 1956, Hans Sedlmeier, the family`s loyal employee, came to take Rolf for a skiing holiday in Engelberg, Switzerland, where he also was to meet Uncle Fritz. 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