DEKEL, LUCETTE MATALON LAGNADO SHEILA COHN (11 page)

A few weeks later, Ibi was spotted by some inmates wandering by herself, in a daze. They hardly recognized her. The beautiful young girl looked like a shriveled old woman. Her slender limbs were now swollen and disfigured, while her stomach was bloated from the numerous surgeries that had been performed on her. Sickly and grotesque, Ibi Hillman no longer held any possible attraction-for Dr. Mengele or any other male.

Mengele also seemed to take a perverse pleasure in exterminating women who were pregnant. “This is not a maternity ward,” he replied easily, when asked why these women were sometimes automatically sent to die.

Mengele even boasted he was being “humanitarian In having these women killed. Auschwitz, he would point out, had no facilities to take care of newborn children. But Mengele fluctuated erratically in his policy.

Some weeks, he issued orders that pregnant women were to be kept alive and given every consideration. Other weeks, he ordered them killed immediately. At times, Mengele permitted a woman to deliver her baby, but then he promptly dispatched mother and infant to the gas chambers.

Even by Auschwitz standards, Mengele’s obsessive cruelty to pregnant women stood out. When he first met an expectant inmate, Mengele liked to quiz her at length about her condition. He asked dozens of precise, detailed questions that allowed him to assume the protective coloration of a concerned physician. But the questions were often more personal than scientific, more voyeuristic than impartial. When did she become pregnant, he wanted to know, before or after arriving at Auschwitz? By whom? In what circumstances was the child conceived? In posing the questions, Mengele would try to maintain his usual detachment, but the intensity of his curiosity seemed odd both to the unfortunate women he addressed and to the assistants who overheard such exchanges.

Pregnancy, after all, was an everyday occurrence. And unlike twins, triplets, dwarfs, or giants, pregnant women could hardly be deemed a scientific phenomenon.

MAGDA SPIEGEL: Pregnant women were always coming to Mengele’s office.

He wanted to be present at the birth of their children-he wanted to be present during each and every birth at Auschwitz.

There were red-brick ovens in the middle of the barracks. The women were forced to give birth on these ovens: That was where Mengele “delivered” the babies. These poor women were given nothing, no pillows, no blankets.

JUDITH YAGUDAH: If a woman was pregnant, or even if Mengele simply thought she was pregnant, he sent her immediately to the gas chambers.

My aunt, my mother’s sister, was a bit overweight. She had a stomach.

Mengele was convinced she was pregnant, and so he sent her to be gassed.

Mengele’s Jewish assistants, like Dr. Gisella Perl, took to performing abortions just to save the lives of women who faced automatic death if their pregnancies were discovered. In an effort to rescue as many of these women as possible, Perl secretly performed crude abortions. When a pregnancy was too advanced, she would deliver the baby, then kill it with an injection of phenol, telling the mother her baby had been born dead.

Perl, who worked closely with Mengele, came to know him well and to despise him. In I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, a searing account of her experiences at the concentration camp written shortly after the war, Perl described Mengele as a supreme sadist who lorded his power over the frailest subjects of Auschwitz’s kingdom of Death: the pregnant women and their newborn children, the deformed hunchbacks and freakish giants, the dwarfs and midgets. Mengele was “so proud of his index finger which could distribute life or death at will, of his attractive, elegant physique … [of his sham-medical profession.” Perl wrote with emotion. The people who caught Mengele’s eye, she pointed out, were life’s most vulnerable.

As chief doctor of Birkenau, Mengele was also in charge of the Gypsy camp. Located near the twins’ barracks, it was unique in the death camp, where the rule was to separate family members the moment they arrived. The Gypsies were allowed to stay together, perhaps because they were faithful Christians, despite their inferior racial stock.

It was their one privilege.

Several thousand Gypsies were crowded into one encampment, whose borders were grimly defined by the crematoriums. At any time of the day or night, they could look up and see the blood-red smoke pouring out of the chimneys, or the Sonderkommandos pushing streams of people to their deaths. Because of the overcrowding, insufficient food, and poor sanitary conditions, epidemics ravaged the Gypsy population.

The wretched conditions notwithstanding, the Gypsies alone among the inmates of the concentration camp had the comfort of being with their loved ones. Their encampment looked like a vast playground. In an open area, dark-haired, dark-eyed men and women with traces of their former beauty sat watching their children at play.

The youngsters ran around as if they were still in their own camps in the crossroads of Europe. It was an ongoing carnival, right in the middle of Auschwitz. The adults exchanged stories, sang songs, even danced. Some of the old melodies were so haunting that even the SS guards making their rounds would stop to listen. The music seemed to conjure up another life, far from Auschwitz and the war.

Mengele, the benevolent despot of this enclave, passed through the camp every day on the way to his laboratories. He appeared fond of these children, too, and they liked him in return, just like the twins in the compound next door. When Mengele came to see them, they crowded around him, extending their hands for candy, daring to reach for his bulging pockets that promised chocolates and other treats. “Uncle Mengele!

Uncle Mengele!” they cried out. And Mengele would pat the children’s heads and, reaching into his pockets, smilingly retrieve a bonbon or two. At the same time, he kept his eye out for potential experimental subjects. Tests were being conducted on several pairs of Gypsy twins, and Mengele was always watchful for more.

There was one little boy of exceptional beauty who was Mengele’s favorite companion as he made his daily rounds at the Gypsy camp.

What a striking pair they made-the tall, graceful doctor and the dark, delicate child who barely came up to his knee. Mengele had him dressed all in white, so that the boy looked strangely regal. Sometimes he would ask the little boy to perform a jig or sing a melody. Afterward, Mengele would lean over and hug him, and ply him with chocolates and candies.

Mengele knew that conditions in the Gypsy camp were deteriorating quickly and that the death rate was mounting. He also knew why the Gypsies’ situation was so abysmal: The Nazi hierarchy in Berlin had decided to exterminate them. Although Berlin kept wavering, it was only a matter of time before the inhabitants of the camp were to be put to death.

As their fate was being decided, the Gypsies formed little orchestras.

They played tinny waltzes, lively mazurkas, touching ballads and operettas. Little girls danced to the music. The Gypsies always played when Mengele passed through because they knew how much he loved music.

The summer of 1944 dragged on. They were starving to death!

Gypsy babies died, emaciated, after only a few days. There was no running water. Still, they danced. They did not realize it was a dance of death. Only Mengele knew.

The order finally came down from Berlin on August 2, 1944. At seven o’clock that evening, the Gypsy camp was sealed shut.

MENA5HE L0RINGzI: We heard a terrible cry. The Gypsies knew they were going to be put to death, and they cried all night.

They had been at Auschwitz a long time. They had seen the Jews arriving at the ramps, had watched the selections where old people and children went to the gas chambers. And so they cried.

And when the Gypsies cried, all the twins heard them.

And even though I was a child, only nine or ten years old, I understood.

Toward the end of that terrible night, when nearly all the Gypsies had been slaughtered, Mengele went to get the boy who had been his little mascot. Hand in hand, they walked around the camp, as they had done for so many months. Then Mengele took the child to the gas chamber and showed him the way inside. He obediently climbed in.

Efficient as ever, Mengele did not forget the sets of Gypsy twins on whom experiments were being conducted. They were gassed with the rest of the Gypsies, but he had the letter X marked on their chests so they would not be cremated. The corpses were duly delivered to his pathology laboratory, where his assistant, Dr. Nyiszli, performed analyses of them as ordered. His work complete, Nyiszli turned over his reports to Mengele. That same night, the two sat for hours calmly discussing the findings.

A few weeks later, in September, Mengele’s wife, Irene, arrived.

It was her second trip to the death camp. She had been there the previous year as well, and had brought along little Rolf. This time, she left the child behind in Germany.

Irene and Josef had spent little time together since their marriage four years earlier. Although Mengele’s wife was certainly aware of what was happening at Auschwitz, her diary suggests she did not let it mar her reunion with her husband. The couple went swimming and enjoyed outings in nearby fields, where they picked berries. Irene’s Auschwitz holiday was interrupted when she contracted typhoid fever and had to be hospitalized. After receiving every care, she became well enough to travel back to Germany with Josef. In an entry she made after the trip, she observed that her darling husband had seemed a bit depressed.

She did not elaborate. But the course of the war-as well as his activities in the camps may well have been weighing on Mengele. On a visit made to the Berlin home of Professor Verschuer at about this time, Mengele appeared dour when asked how Auschwitz was. “Simply horrible,” he replied.

In those final months of the war, Mengele made more selections than ever. To observers, he acted like a man possessed, as though he was driven by the notion that if he worked hard enough, performed enough experiments, tested a sufficient number of twins, he might still make some important scientific discovery.

One of Mengele’s greatest fears was that the hated

“Bolsheviks” would get their hands on his research material, so painstakingly collected over the last couple of years. One day, he invited Dr. Ellanngens, a non-Jewish physician who was a political prisoner, to review the reports he had compiled. As Lingens leafed through the thick sheaves of papers, charts, and graphs, Mengele bitterly observed,

“Isn’t it a pity all this work will fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks?”

And, indeed, that fall Russian troops were reported to be rapidly approaching. As they drew nearer and confusion at the camp mounted, the twins’ protected status became increasingly imperiled.

PETER SOMOGYL: One day, a new doctor came around to inspect the twins.

His name was Dr. Thilo. He made a selection, which had never been done on us. He selected all the male twins-we were all to be sent to the gas chambers. Every twin’s number was marked down as destined for the crematorium.

Our barracks were sealed. All the doors were boarded up. We were not allowed to leave.

ALEX DEKEL: It was November when I was sent into the barracks with the other children. I was thirteen at the time, and I knew exactly what was going on. I knew everyone was selected to go to the gas chambers.

You were selected in the afternoon, and by midnight you were picked up and sent to the gas chamber.

Our barracks had small windows-they were four feet, five feet, off the ground. I jumped up to one of those small windows. It was impossible to reach, but I jumped. Somehow I reached it, and I just hung there, barely grasping the windowsill with my fingers. Then, I do not know how, I managed to jump outside. I landed in the snow and saw a building in front of me. I climbed through the window and found myself in a toilet. Outside, I heard truck engines. And so I jumped down into the toilet. I heard a German guard enter. He took a flashlight, shined it around the room, but he didn’t see me. I stayed there all night, hidden inside the toilet.

TWINS’ FATHER: The children were very upset, very frightened. They knew what was going to happen to them. They knew the end was coming-that the Nazis were planning to kill them.

PETER SOMOGYL: I remember trying to plot ways to get revenge. I had a little pocketknife-we all did, to cut our bread in the morning. The Nazis never thought there was any danger in giving little children pocket knives.

I remember sharpening my knife like a fanatic. I knew we would be taken to the gas chambers in trucks, with several SS guards inside to watch over us.

Although I was only eleven years old, I remember this very distinctly, wanting to kill a Nazi. I said to myself

“Before I go, I am taking at least one SS man with me.”

TWINS’ FATHER: I don’t know how I got the authority, but somehow I was able to leave the barracks.

I ran toward Mengele’s office. I ran even though it was very dangerous to run through the camp, because the SS shot anyone who moved too quickly. But I knew time was of the essence.

I told the guards outside Mengele’s office that I wanted to speak with him. This was a bit like saying you wanted to speak with God.

To this day, I don’t know why they didn’t shoot me for that request, either. But somehow, I was allowed in to see Mengele. I told him about Thilo’s order to kill all the twins.

Mengele was quite upset. He immediately went to reverse the order, and said the children should be kept alive.

PETER SOMOGYL; The Nazis came and opened up the doors to our barracks.

To our surprise, we were told we could go outside.

When Twins’ Father returned a bit later, we kept asking him,

“What happened? Why didn’t we die?”

He told us simply that Mengele had called off the selection.

Later that fall, the twins were alarmed to hear they were being moved into the deserted Gypsy barracks. No explanation was given for the change. The children were afraid they had been marked again for extermination. Rumors spread through their barracks, despite the fact that Mengele was proceeding with his tests and experiments as diligently as before. Even with the end closing in on him, even as Hitler, his generals, and his professors brought Germany to ruin with their notions of a superior race, Mengele still hoped to make some great scientific discovery that would validate them all, save the crumbling Third Reich-and his own disintegrating dreams.