SS doctors also controlled and supervised the inmate doctors who alone did whatever actual medical treatment was done. ", From the "Guilt without atonement" series, a project of DW's Polish department, the Interia portal and the Wirtualna Polska media group. '', Some inmate-doctors also viewed Mengele as a demon and wished to divest him of his professional status. The inmate artist described him as so distant from others that ''he seemed to be from a different planet.'' 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. He was ''very sensitive about bad smells,'' an inmate doctor reported, so that before he arrived, ''the doors and windows had to be opened.'' In May 1933, Karl Mengele joined the Nazi Party. A management consultant was hired to save the firm from insolvency, and several banks waived their demands on the firm, Jaumann said. From there, the article continues, Mengele went to a rural area south of Rosenheim. "One hundred and sixty children aged 2 to 16 years, were left in the barracks," she said. For Mengele has long been the focus of what could be called a cult of demonic personality. Bavarian Economic Minister Anton Juamann said Bavaria's state government helped bail out the 110-year old agricultural machinery firm, which has been in the Mengele family for three generations. The plaque was designed by the students, and the inscription quotes the Austrian philosopher Jean Amery, who fought in Belgium with the resistance and was interned in Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen: "No one can escape from the history of his people." . When he joined the SS in 1940, he had refused to have his blood group tattooed on his arm, as was customary for SS members. Frankfurt prosecutor Hans-Eberhard Klein says Rolf is the son of the Nazi doctor and his first wife, Irene, who also lives in Freiburg. But the truth was that for years, the leaders of the government and the agency were simply not all that interested. The family quickly labeled the allegations as lies, and the Bavarian government later said there was no indication the payments had been made. ,'' ''Zwillinge heraustreten! Mengele's ideology considerably influenced his intellectual choices. That evil, generally speaking, is neither inherent in any self nor foreign to it. They dealt with physical characteristics and abnormalities and, in each case, emphasized the role of heredity -an emphasis in keeping with trends in German and international scholarship at the time. In 1962, the agency recruited Wilhelm Sassen, a former Nazi and an acquaintance of Mengeles, who provided information indicating that Mengele had found refuge among a group of Nazis and their sympathizers near So Paulo. . An inmate anthropolo-gist whom Mengele had eagerly recruited to assist him described the arrival of a group of Hungarian Jews ''like a river . '', Measurements were taken of the twins' skulls and bodies and various characteristics of the nose, lips, ears, hair and eyes. In July 1977, the cabinets security committee secretly approved a proposal from Begin to instruct the Mossad to renew its search for Nazi war criminals, in particular Josef Mengele. . As a child I heard from one of my parents best friends about living through Mengeles infamous selection process at Auschwitz. 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. 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. Read more:Holocaust survivor Eva Kor dies, aged 85. . Mengele the eldest son of Karl and Walburga Mengele, who ran a farm machinery company in the town of Gnzburg in the southern German state of Bavaria Until Rolf broke silence about his father's death, no member of the family had ever said anything in public about the notorious relative. When he returned about an hour later, Mengele said calmly: ''You are right. Josef Mengeles second wife, Martha, lives in the northeastern Italian city of Merano. . As one of them described: ''It was like a laboratory. When his skeleton was exhumed in 1985 many questioned whether it was really his. The letters also show that, although he now lived in a country where interracial marriage was the rule, rather than the exception, Mengele had not changed his racist views. Harel mobilized the entire agency to deal with it. 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. According to his friend, Mengele arrived at the camp with a special aura because he was coming more or less directly from the front. HIS BONES DO NOT SATISFY. Josef Mengele, a.k.a. One reason he appeared to be especially important was that he was extraordinarily energetic. "I can't remember his face, just his polished boots," Maksymowicz said. How can we explain his murderous behavior in Auschwitz? dw.com/zbrodniabezkary. Scientists believe they've found untapped helium reserves, Person hired to promote new 'Scream' movie prompts 911 calls, Polish basketball player breaks slam dunk world record, Most Americans with diabetes don't get recommended new medications, Extra food support ends for millions of low-income U.S. taxpayers. Being a twin gave one a much better chance to survive. ''On the one hand, he was my father,'' Rolf Mengele said. But their post-mortem study had still greater fascination for him. From the hundreds of thousands of prisoners, he could collect twins in quantities never before available to a scientist. one survivor said. It was the coming together of the man and the place, the ''fit'' between the two, that created the Auschwitz Mengele. In his record of this period, Josef Mengele wrote: ''At war`s end, my unit (a medical unit) was in Czechoslovakia. He outlived many of his victims. Mengele "could have been born anywhere," said Kppler, who is 83. Since it is known that a few ordinary siblings masqueraded as twins, upon discovering the advantages of doing so, there is reason to doubt the reliability of Mengele's research. He could quiet his fears of death in that death-dominated environment by performing the ultimate act of power over another person: murder. Login. Photographs and an identity card found in the house in Brazil where Josef Mengele lived. His gruesome experiments on helpless inmates are the stuff of nightmares and he is considered by some to be among the vilest men in modern history. Dr. Josef Mengele, the cruel staff doctor at Auschwitz death camp, acquired a certain legendary quality even before his death in 1979. See the article in its original context from. '', Identical twins, Mengele's most treasured research objects, were often examined together. FRANKFURT, West Germany (AP) _ Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele has a son who works as a lawyer in the Black Forest region of West Germany, while other relatives run a prosperous farm machinery company in Bavaria. Her family life suffered from the trauma of her imprisonment at Auschwitz. When Begin came in, he thought that not enough was being done and that there was a need to go on hunting Nazis, Hofi later said in a classified interview with the Menachem Begin Heritage Center. I am sorry to say, however, there was not even that much understanding between us. . When they arrived at Auschwitz, packed by the hundreds into freight and cattle cars, they were unloaded and herded down a ramp. Mengele drew his gun and shot both the woman and her child. Mengele fled Germany to Argentina in 1948, using false documents given to him by the Red Cross. On July 23, 1962, the Mossad operative Zvi Aharoni (who had identified Eichmann two years earlier) was on a dirt road by the farm where Mengele was believed to be hiding when he encountered a group of men including one who looked exactly like the fugitive. But being a doctor was part of Mengele's demonology: he took on the dark side of the omnipotent Svengali-like physician-shaman. Sometimes, though, as the inmate doctor reported, Mengele would bring some gypsy twins sweets and invite them for a ride in his car, which turned out to be ''a little drive with Uncle Pepi, to the gas chamber. 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. In 1931, at the age of 20, Mengele joined a right-wing, nationalistic organization. ''Slowly a legend is being formed that Guenzburg is a stronghold of incorrigible Nazis who stand behind Mengele. these two especially . Their heads were not shaved. '', Guenzburg citizens are upset at the invasion of reporters and television cameras. These procedures, when done on young children, resulted sometimes in loss of consciousness, deafness and - among the smaller children - death. DW sends out a selection of the day's news and features. Israeli operatives installed listening devices in Rolfs home and office, and in his phones. It all amounted to nothing. 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. The relatives` silence has frustrated some in Guenzburg who are unhappy about the reputation of their town but still feel loyalty to the family that provides jobs for 1,200 people, one-fourth of the city labor force. It has since gone broke. One Gunzburg defender of Dr. Mengele is Josef Baumeister, a former schoolteacher who knew Dr. Mengele and has caused heated debate in the local Many inmates thought that Mengele alone conducted the large ''selections.'' He used to come always with an entourage, very-well decked out, very elegant. Karl Mengele was elected city councilor and mayor, and, in 1952, with his son on the run to escape charges of committing atrocities on behalf of the Nazis, Karl Mengele was made a gold-medal citizen of the city. The marriage was dissolved in 1954. Nazis no longer posed a threat. Residents also installed a plaque to honor Mengele's victims in the courtyard of the historic Dossenbergerhaus, which today is an elementary school. We offer our comprehensive marcom They include Josef Mengeles nephews Karl-Heinz, 40, and Dieter, 34, the sons of his brothers Karl and Alois. 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. Their diet was rich by Auschwitz standards, often including white bread and milk. Check out our current live radar and weather forecasts for Weaverville, North Carolina to help plan your day ''I felt aghast at the accusations, at the facts, and I always tried to make clear to my father that for me, the presence in Auschwitz alone, other than as a prisoner, was an intolerable thought,'' he said. TEL AVIV For decades, Israels espionage agency, the Mossad, kept a file on Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor responsible for, among other atrocities, selecting which new inmates at Auschwitz would die immediately in the gas chambers and which would be put to work first or subjected to his horrible medical experiments. Mengele the eldest son of Karl and Walburga Mengele, who ran a farm machinery company in the town of Gnzburg in the southern German state of Bavaria studied medicine and anthropology. The children suffered from hunger and cold. Inmate doctors, mostly Jewish, with specialized training in various laboratory and clinical areas, were called upon to contribute to his work by diagnosing, sometimes treating, X-raying and performing post-mortem examinations of his research subjects. Mengele's marriage to a professor's daughter was in keeping with his academic aspirations. The son of a well-to-do Bavarian industrialist, Mengele is remembered by an acquaintance as a popular young man, an enthusiastic friend. '', The mayor added that the publicity has created a ''monstrous shadow'', over the town. In 2009, Alois Mengele's son, Dieter, created the Familie Dieter Mengele Sozialstiftung, a foundation that reports having donated over a quarter of a million euros to charitable causes. The reason, according to Bunte, was that had he been caught and convicted, his victims could have claimed damages from the company. Still, I believe that the decision not to prioritize capturing him was the right one. (I have preserved the anonymity of the people I interviewed. But Koeppler voiced doubt that the body found in Brazil is the doctor`s. He was describing Mengele's Auschwitz self, the new self that can take shape in virtually anyone in adapting to an extreme environment. What is more, he could exercise total control over them. ( The Jewish Chronicle ) When Rolf Mengele, the son of Josef Mengele, finally got to meet his notorious father hiding out in Brazil in 1977, his father flatly denied He spent three years with a Waffen SS unit, mostly in the East, including action in Russia, where, according to SS records, he was wounded and declared medically unfit for combat. For the first time, its possible to say why the Mossad failed to apprehend the man who was perhaps the most wanted Nazi to survive World War II. Most of the letters were addressed to Wolfgang Gerhard, an Austrian Nazi Mengele befriended in Brazil. At the same time he was depressed and resentful about his lonely, hard-up life in exile. . Half a year later, Harel was replaced by Meir Amit, who ordered the Mossad to stop chasing after ghosts from the past and devote all our manpower and resources to threats against the security of the state. He mandated that the agency deal with Nazis only to the extent it is able to do so, in addition to its principal missions and as long as it doesnt impinge on the other operations.. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. ''For that reason, it was no typical father-son relationship,'' he said. Several family members still live in the Bavarian city of Guenzburg, where Josef Mengele was born on March 16, 1911. Also, Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies in Los Angeles, said his office recently learned about two phone calls last year to Mengele`s son, Rolf, in West Germany. They spoke of being examined as frequently as twice a week for a period of five months in late 1944, and also remembered vividly a special visit to the Auschwitz main camp for photographs. Now I feel lonely, or rather abandoned, more painfully than ever.". 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. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. The Mengele family firm, Soehne Maschinenfabrik und Eisengiesserei GmbH und Co. of Guenzburg, Bavaria, specializes in agricultural machinery and is the largest of The twin survivor also spoke of Mengele's supervising ''a lot of research with chemicals'' and of how Mengele's assistants ''might stick a needle in various places from behind,'' including the performing of spinal taps. ''Instinctively, I would recommend, as you probably would too, that everything be burnt up at once,'' he continued. He often sent prisoners with skin blemishes - even those with small abscesses or old appendectomy scars - to the gas chamber. Rolf says he never knew about the divorce. One day Lidia's mother sneaked into the children's barracks to bring her daughter food and found her lying unconscious with a high fever. ''On the other hand, there were those accusations, those horrible pictures of Auschwitz. The facilities teemed with vermin, there was hay instead of mattresses, and the blankets were stiff with grime. At Christmas time, Fritz had played St. Nicholas for the children, Mrs. Fischer remembered. SS troops were shouting. Viewed in this light, Josef Mengele emerges as he really was: a visionary ideologue, an efficiently murderous functionary, a diligent careerist - and disturbingly human. Take the first step to help. Josef Mengele, who fled Germany after World War II, was wanted for committing wartime atrocities against Jews and gypsies at the Auschwitz concentration camp in then Nazi-occupied Poland. '', There was an easy rhythm in his approach to selections. The two boys, the radiologist added, had been favorites with all the doctors - including Mengele. In 1938-39, Mengele served six months with a specially trained mountain light-infantry regiment, followed by a year in the reserve medical corps. 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