DEKEL, LUCETTE MATALON LAGNADO SHEILA COHN (30 page)

MOSHE OFFER: After I left Blumenthal for the second time, I went back to school and resolved to change my life.

I decided to become a chemist. I worked very hard at my studies.

I also got married again, to an Iraqi woman. I was anxious to have a real home. We settled down and had children very quickly. We had five daughters, one after the other, and at last the son I had always wanted. I named him

“Shai,” which means “gift” in Hebrew.

I got my break when I was offered a job in a film laboratory in Tel Aviv. This laboratory made photo-developing film.

I was still very inexperienced, but this elderly German professor who worked there took me under his wing. He ran the laboratory, and he was a leading expert in his field. He taught me day and night. He gave me hundreds of pages of notes and formulas to study.

But this professor turned out to be corrupt. He was stealing silver used to make the film. The owners of the laboratory found out about it. They let him steal and steal and steal, until they built a case against him. One day, detectives came in, and they caught him with six kilos of silver.

They fired him and gave me his position. I was placed in charge of the laboratory. A lot of people worked under me. And people all over the country asked me for advice. I was an expert, after all the old German had taught me everything he knew.

Because of my expertise, I became known throughout Israel. I got a lot of job offers. One day, Israeli television offered me a job. They offered me a lot of money. And so I left the laboratory to work for them.

JUDITH YAGUDAH: After years of struggle, my husband decided to start his own business.

My uncle helped us buy an apartment for my mother in the same building.

She lived on the first floor, and we lived on the third floor. But at least we lived on our own. It was wonderful.

I helped my husband a lot in his new business, an electronics company.

I encouraged him. I would even type letters for him, because he had nothing then, neither a secretary nor his own office. And little by little, he became successful. Our lives started to improve. We were even able to buy our own house.

We left my mother in the apartment in Netanya, and we moved to another town. I wanted to be free of her influence. I didn’t want to live in the past.

With the Frankfurt trials, Germany atoned for its sins before the rest of the world. Once the proceedings were concluded, the Germans never launched as intensive a hunt for Mengele-or any other war criminal-again. As Mengele himself pointed out, many prominent Nazis continued to be rehabilitated, and resumed positions of importance.

His old mentor, Verschuer, retired from the University of Monster in 1965 after a decade of honors and high praise. He had succeeded in building one of the largest genetics institutes in West Germany.

When he spoke publicly on the subject of the Nazi era, he managed to sound as if he had only been an innocent bystander.

While Verschuer relished the glittering prizes heaped on him, his former protege spent sleepless nights working on his memoirs. He also composed long letters to his family in Germany, as if to make sure they did not forget him. He was especially upset when his kinfolk failed even to acknowledge his birthday. When he turned sixty, he noted bitterly that Karl Heinz was the only one to send him a birthday card.

PETER SOMOGYL: Every year on December 16, I would remember my dead sister’s birthday.

I would think to myself

“Now, she would be this old.” I pictured what she would have been like if she had survived Auschwitz. I would imagine what would have happened if she were still alive, if we still had our family intact. But I didn’t tell anyone my thoughts, not even my wife.

Mengele’s greatest source of distress came from Alois, once his favorite younger brother. In the postwar years, Lolo had worked very hard to build up the factory. The natural heir to Karl Sr Lolo successfully expanded the family empire. In the process, he also earned the reputation of being an exceptionally kind, fair, and honorable man. Both in and around Gunzburg, Lolo was liked for his personal generosity and admired for his sound business sense.

At the start of his brother’s exile, Alois had maintained cordial ties with him, even flying out to Argentina to visit. But later, Lolo deliberately sought to distance himself from Josef and barely kept in contact with him. A review of Mengele’s letters to Alois suggest that he gave his older brother a hard time about his allowance, even though there was obviously money to spare. Since Alois controlled the family purse strings, Mengele was placed in the humiliating position of pleading for handouts from his younger brother.

Publicly, Alois Mengele continued to defend his sibling. But the townspeople of Gunzburg say that over the years, Lolo became increasingly disturbed by the persistent stories about Josef’s cruelty and sadism at Auschwitz. Alois evidently told Josef he had serious misgivings about what he had done during the war. According to the mayor of Gunzburg, Lolo even chose to do his own research, going as far as to seek out witnesses who could corroborate his brother’s version of events. But the mere fact that a family member would have doubts about him distressed Mengele terribly. The letters suggest there was a large rift between the two brothers who had once been inseparable, who had shared a passion for automobiles and pretty women, for swimming parties along the Danube and evenings in the Cafe Mader.

ZYL THE SAILOR: A few years after the war, I stopped talking with my twin brother. We had always fought as children. We even fought in Auschwitz-and we continued to fight after the camp. There were a million things we didn’t agree on. He didn’t like my wife, for example. He never accepted her.

Finally, he moved away to America, and I never heard from him again.

I sent him money, letters-but he never replied. I knew he got them, because I sent them through registered mail. I never got an answer.

One day, his wife, who comes to Israel frequently, dropped by to see me out of the blue. She said to me,

“Leave your wife. Come to the States. We shall help you.”

I told her,

“Are you mad? You come to me after all these years and you ask me to leave my wife?”

In America, men do things like that-they leave many wives. What is that song, about buying a one-way ticket? The man who drops everything and leaves. Or the son who promises to keep in touch, and never sends his own parents a postcard? In Israel, family is much more important.

And even though I was always leaving Israel, I always, always came back.

MENASHE LORINCZI: My sister and I were very close after the war, but we drifted apart after she got married. Her husband was Hassidic-and she became very religious, too. I was no longer able to talk to her. She adopted all her husband’s ideas.

We parted even more when she left for America. I wrote her letters-and she never even answered them.

VERA BLAU: My twin sister is my only surviving relative-and I love her, but with the years I found we had nothing in common.

When I get depressed, I have a “switch,” and I can turn it off I switch it off and I stop feeling sad.

But my sister is always thinking about the Holocaust. She lives completely in the past. I can’t bear to see her the way she is now.

There are two forms of theater-comedy and tragedy. I am a comedy, and my sister is a tragedy. She does not even like to laugh-while I enjoy Mickey Mouse.

And even though we both live in the same city, we hardly ever see each other.

When Alois developed cancer in the early 1970s, Mengele tried to mend fences with him. Upon learning of Lolo’s fatal illness, Josef sent him a long letter expressing his deep sadness. He conveyed once again his dismay at the lack of regular contact between them. He complained he had only learned of his brother’s illness “belatedly” and by chance.

“Perhaps that is also part of my fate,” he wrote mournfully, “but now, I only have the urge to communicate with you, dear brother.”

Mengele confessed he had suffered greatly because of the “bizzare” conduct of his youngest brother. In a desperate attempt to effect a reconciliation, Mengele resorted to flattery, telling Alois what a wonderful job he had done running the factory. “As a reward for your exemplary lifestyle and great accomplishments, town has bestowed on you the title of honorary citizen,” he wrote in what was one of his last letters to Lolo. “It is a great honor, and I am very happy about the commemoration of your life’s work, which has indeed been exemplary.”

Mengele noted how their own father had always thought Lolo could run the business better than anyone. He urged his brother to rest, and let his son and nephew take over the duties. “You should train your offspring to work in the business before it is too late,” he warned.

Sensing the end was near, Josef thanked his brother for the help he had provided him over the years. He stressed how proud he was of Lolo and his excellence “as a speaker for our family, whose importance you have so greatly increased.” The contrast between his brother’s achievements and his own shambles of a life wasn’t lost on Mengele.

“I am especially happy over the distinction [you’ve earned] since I am part of the shadow,” he sadly noted. The letter showed how much Alois’s impending death had affected him.

MOSHE OFFER: With the years, I found myself thinking more and more about my brother, Tibi. I pictured Mengele taking him away for the experiments.

I remembered how sad he was at the end, when he could no longer walk.

I would ask myself,

“Why did I stay alive while he died?”

A twin brother is something very special. I have a very nice family, wonderful children. But I have no one to confide in. I feel that I want to say things I could only tell my twin. Instead, I keep a lot bottled inside of me.

With the years, I missed Tibi more and more. I kept wishing he were alive so I could show off my children to him. I liked to fantasize about the wedding he would have had; I wanted very much to see him happily married. I thought about the children he would have had.

Most of all, I wanted to introduce him to Shai, my son who is so much like him.

I would fantasize about this all the time.

Mengele’s extreme sense of solitude was alleviated when he made some new friends. Gerhard introduced him to an Austrian couple, Wolfgang and Liselotte Bossert, who were also die-hard Nazis. Wolfgang had been a Hitler Youth leader during the war and had retained an abiding respect for the leader of the Third Reich. A locksmith by trade, he fancied himself a philosopher, and genuinely admired Dr. Mengele.

Bossert considered it an honor to frequent the home of such an illustrious Nazi. His wife also enjoyed the company of the urbane, charming Auschwitz doctor.

The Bossert children “adored” Mengele, Liselotte would later tell the armies of reporters who swarmed around, asking for information about Mengele’s years in hiding. Undoubtedly, the Auschwitz doctor was at his best with the Bosserts’ son and daughter, as he had always been with young children. And they, in turn, Liselotte said, were thoroughly captivated by him. To them, he betrayed none of the mania that characterized his relationship with adults. Even as all old man, Mengele was more at ease with children than with grownups. The youngsters affectionately called him “Uuo”-little uncle-in a manner reminiscent of the twins and the Gypsies of Auschwitz. Both Liselotte and her husband considered the Angel of Death a good influence on their family. They had no qualms about their little ones spending time in his company.

His new friendship with the Bosserts provided Mengele with a badly needed social outlet. He was on intimate terms with the Austrian couple, and spent entire weekends with them in their beach house or exploring the countryside. At night, Mengele and Bossert, with Gerhard occasionally joining them, sat together chatting. They talked about politics, history, and modern-day Germany, which all agreed could not compare with the mighty Reich. Mengele’s friends were dazzled by his wide range of knowledge, his ability to quote Greek and Latin texts, and, of course, the fact that he had once been a great doctor.

OLGA GROSSMAN: I was in the hospital for months-but I hated the doctors in the white coats so much, I got worse-I rejected treatment. I wanted to die.

I missed my children, and they wouldn’t let me see them. I wanted to go through the walls and run and find my kids.

The doctors were a little afraid of me. They didn’t know how to approach me. I would strike at them, sometimes.

I was placed in another hospital, and there I met Dr. Stern. She was a young woman, herself a survivor of the camps.

She was very kind to me. I didn’t feel I was just another patient to her. I felt she really cared. When I met her, I was twenty-five years old and I felt like a little girl. I believed she wanted to take care of me.

She was like a mother to me.

My own mother was a sick woman. She couldn’t cope with my problems.

She had four children still at home, and she didn’t have time for me.

She couldn’t come to visit me in the hospital as often as I wanted.

Dr. Stern was so sensitive to my feelings. For example, whenever she saw me, she removed her white coat, and stayed in her regular clothes.

She never let me see her in white because she knew I was afraid of white coats. Dr. Mengele had always worn a white coat when he saw me.

Under Dr. Stern’s care, I began to change. I started going out on walks. When I had been on many tranquilizers, I had lost a lot of weight. Now, I ate more, and even put on a few pounds. That was seen as a sign of progress.

I had always been terrified of taking a shower. I would faint when I took a shower. But now, when nurses offered to help me, I refused: “I am going to take a shower by myself” I would tell them.

I finally made one request to Dr. Stern: to let me go home and see my children. “I promise to come back to the hospital,” I told her. “I won’t run away.” Miraculously, she said yes. She told me she trusted me to go and return at a certain time.

I left for a day’s visit. And I found that I wanted to come back. I asked Dr. Stern if I would ever be well enough to leave the hospital permanently. “Yes, yes-I promise you that one day, you will go home for good,” she told me.