Josef Mengele – the Creation of a Myth

[Komintasavalta]

Eva Kor is not the only survivor who claims to have seen flames coming out of the chimney of a crematorium. The book "Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz" is full of such stories. I copied the quotes below from this post: https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.ph...t=7538&p=62606.

From page 9:

> During Mengele's mandated "recreation periods," males twins played soccer under a sky made brighter by flames pouring out the crematoriums.

From page 12:

> The sights of the camp - the dead bodies, the bones, the crematoriums spewing bright red flames into the vermillion skies - have continued to haunt Mengele's twins.

From the account by Zvi Klein:

I try to forget. I try to erase the memories. But I can't seem to leave Auschwitz behind, no matter how far I go. I find reminders of the the camp all over the world. Even right here in Israel. From the window of my apartment house in Ashod, I can see a factory-a large industrial plant that manufactures I don't know what. Textiles, I think. It has a large chimney which spews out fire at night. And when I look out my window in the evening, I see not a factory chimney, but the crematorium of Birkenau with its flames, its tall red flames leaping out at the sky.

From an account of Hedvah and Leak Stern:

> From our Moshav, we could see the chimney of a factory in downtown Ashod. We were reminded of the chimneys of Auschwitz, especially at night, when the flames poured out.

From the account of Judith Yagudah:

> It was like a nightmare when we arrived. We could see the chimneys, and the flames pouring out of these chimneys. My father turned to my mother and said, "You see, Rosie, the Germans are taking us to burn us." [...] my father had no idea what Auschwitz was when we arrived. But when we got out of the cattle car, and he saw the dogs, and the Nazis in uniform, and the flames billowing out from the crematorium, he guessed.

The father of the twins Lea and Menashe Lorinczi said:

> The children would stand for hours just watching the flames. The crematoriums were located only one hundred meters away from the twins' barracks. There was just a small fence in between.

Jewish twin Peter Somogyl recalled:

> We arrived at Auschwitz on July 9, 1944. It was early in the evening, and when we stepped out of the cattle cars, we could see the chimneys, with very, very high flames leaping out of them.

It's questionable if the crematoria would even produce smoke, but Carlo Mattogno wrote that even though they were designed to not emit smoke, they might have still produced smoke under certain conditions: https://codoh.com/library/document/f...crematoria/en/.

On the website of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a photo was famously photoshopped to add smoke coming out of a chimney (http://web.archive.org/web/200002291...0/pg22035.html):



Here's the original photo which is included in the book "Auschwitz Album" (http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/...smokeFake.html):

[Komintasavalta]

This post consists of notes about the book "Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz" by Lagnado and Cohn from 1991: http://libgen.lc/index.php?req=children+flames+mengele, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AIj...zfooUOGYRy7tbt.

The book starts out by saying that "most" of the early members of CANDLES had never told anyone before that they were Mengele survivors, despite how profitable it is for Jews to play the victim. They found CANDLES members through newspaper ads, or at least that's what they claim:

> In the winter of 1984, I was asked by Parade magazine to seek out the longlost child survivors of Dr. Josef Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz during World War II. Of the estimated three thousand twins - most of them young children - who had passed through Mengele's laboratories between 1943 and 1944, only about a hundred were known to have survived. Many fewer were thought to be still alive when I undertook my search for them in America and Israel.
> I was aided in this effort by Eva and Miriam Mores, twin sisters who had undergone painful experiments at Mengele's hands. Eva, an American housewife living in Terre Haute, Indiana, had long believed the twins' ordeal, which had received no more than a passing reference in the history of the Holocaust, should be told. Determined to reunite all the surviving twins, Eva and her sister had just founded an international society of Auschwitz twins - CANDLES - an acronym for Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Laboratory Experiments Survivors.
> Through this group, the twins hoped to piece together what had been done to them in Mengele's laboratory. For unlike other death-camp survivors, these child victims had kept totally silent about their past. Ridden with guilt and with shame, most had never breathed a word about their ordeal as guinea pigs of the notorious Dr. Mengele, not even to loved ones. Theirs was the untold story of the Holocaust.
> A few well-placed ads in Israeli newspapers yielded gratifying results.
> Within days, dozens of twin survivors (most of whom had ended up in Israel after the war) came forward to join CANDLES.
> ...
> Each session began with the whispered confession,
> > "I have never spoken of this to anyone."

This actually seems believable, but it would also be a good way to avoid having inconsistensies in your story:

> A few of the twins insisted they had no memories of Auschwitz whatsoever.

Other sources have said that blood was extracted twice per week, but this book says that there were "daily blood tests". It also says that there was a cholera epidemic at the Auschwitz camp complex, but I don't know if it's supported by mainstream historians, because when I searched Google Books for the word "cholera" combined with words like Auschwitz, Birkenau, or Mengele, I only found a few references to a cholera outbreak at Auschwitz, which were all in obscure books or popular works by non-experts, and I found one book which said that inmates were deliberately infected with cholera in order to test vaccines.

> Twins as young as five and six years of age endured torture, daily blood tests, and starvation diets, as well as facing exposure to epidemics of cholera, tuberculosis, and other deadly diseases that were rampant because of unsanitary conditions.

I don't remember hearing from other sources that playing soccer was "mandated":

> During Mengele's mandated "recreation periods," male twins played soccer under a sky made brighter by the flames pouring out of the crematoriums.
> Little girls were taken to fields on the outskirts of the camp, where they picked bunches of wildflowers.

I hadn't realized that CANDLES was set up before the hunt for Mengele in 1985:

> CANDLES' dramatic weeklong pilgrimage to Auschwitz in January 1985, the twins' march across the desolate Birkenau camp a few miles away, and their emotional televised prayers at the long-standing crematorium, attracted worldwide attention. Partly as a result of their moving appeals, three separate countries decided to reopen their Mengele files. By the spring of 1985, Israel, West Germany, and the United States officially joined forces in a full-fledged hunt for the greatest killer of the Holocaust known to be still at large. A network of intelligence agencies, from the CIA and the Israeli Mossad to Interpol, agreed to cooperate to find the notorious Nazi doctor.
> Mengele's children had effectively spurred the largest and most ambitious hunt ever for a war criminal.

The husband of the book's second author was not a twin, but he still claimed that he was a Mengele survivor:

> I met Alex Shlomo Dekel while living in Israel in January 1962, and we were married one year later. My American upbringing had intrigued him; his European past had fascinated me: the gallant widowed mother, who had raised him and his brother before they were transported to Auschwitz in the first convoy from his native Hungary; his experiences in the concentration camp as a Mengele guinea pig; and his liberation from Birkenau by American GIs, who saved his life at the time by intravenous feedings.
> Alex was not a twin, but he had been spared an almost certain death because of his Aryan good looks and his German-language fluency. Not long after we started seeing each other, he began to tell me his story.
> Especially haunting, I thought, was his final memory of his mother, whom he had spotted despite her shaved head in an adjacent yard behind a barbed-wire fence. As one of Mengele's "privileged" children, he knew he had more rations than she, and so he saved up all his food for the day to give to her.

The husband of the book's second author had "high-ranking intelligence contacts", and he was a Mengele hunter who was called "one of our most devoted companions" by Evil Weasel:

> That fateful summer of 1983, we were planning to go to Israel, where a high-ranking intelligence contact had promised Alex access to Israel's file on Mengele.
> ...
> "I am sad and heartbroken," Elie Wiesel had telegraphed me from Washington when He heard of Alex's passing. "He was one of our most devoted companions. Few have endured his agony. Few have lived with it as deeply.
> For myself and all the members of the United States Holocaust Council, we shall always remember him."

In this book, it was still said that Eva Mozes-Kor was an identical twin of her sister, even though later she said that they were not twins but they just looked similar:

> EVA MOZES: American founder of CANDLES, the international organization of Mengele twins. Launched drive in 1984 to find and reunite all the twins and publicize their story. Born in Cluj, Romania, in 1935.
> Deported to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944 along with her identical twin sister, Miriam, her parents, and two older sisters. Entire family slaughtered except for twins. Currently resides in Terre Haute, Indiana.

For some reason you can burn Holocaust victims without wood or any other kind of fuel:

> All over Israel yesterday, the little children were celebrating by building bonfires.
> ...
> As I watched the children making their bonfires yesterday, I thought of the fire made OF the children. The fire without wood. The fire of Auschwitz Birkenau.

The following comments by Zvi Klein were missing from my previous post where I collected accounts of fire shooting out of the chimney of a crematorium:

> For four months, forty years ago, I also saw fire day and night. I lived in barracks with a group of twins. Twins! Twins! Dr. Mengele only wanted twins.
> Our barracks were located just a few yards away from the crematorium.
> We could see it from our window, from our door, wherever we turned we saw fire. Every day and every night those four months, we watched as Mengele motioned people toward this crematorium.

Magda Spiegel said that the crematoria produced so much flames that the whole sky was red. And she also said that Mengele was the only person who was always standing at the ramp when the trains arrived:

> "You see these chimneys?" they replied, pointing toward the crematoriums. "Your child is there. Your parents are there. Your entire family is there. And one day, you will also be there."
> This was told to me the same day I had come - the same day.
> Dr. Mengele was the only person who was always standing there when the trains came. He was constantly making selections.
> The sky was red - red - the whole sky was red!
> It was the last year of the transports, and the Germans were putting masses - masses and masses - of people into the crematorium.
> It was like watching a movie.
> Even early in the morning, the sky over Auschwitz looked opaque and foreboding, as if it were covered by a vast blood-soaked sheet.

Vera Blau also said that Mengele was at the ramps every morning, and she pointed out how elegant he looked:

> Just one year after arriving at the death camp, Mengele was thoroughly absorbed in his research, the first step of which was selecting his subjects. Every morning, at the crack of dawn, he could be seen in the area where the transports disembarked, scanning the new arrivals.
> Standing there in his perfectly tailored SS uniform, white gloves, and officer's cap, Mengele looked impeccable - a host greeting guests arriving at his home. He sometimes stood for hours without flinching, a hint of a smile on his face, his elegantly gloved hand beckoning the prisoners to the right or to the left. Often, he whistled softly as he worked, the Blue Danube waltz, or an aria from his favorite Puccini opera.

What's so interesting about hunchbacks? Everyone says that Mengele was interested in hunchbacks, including Vera Blau:

> Only when an interesting "specimen" came along did Mengele really spring to life. He urgently motioned to a nearby guard to yank the new arrival out of the line. SS guards were ordered to watch for any unusual or striking genetic material - the dwarfs, the giants, the hunchbacks - and to bring them immediately to Mengele. But most important of all to him were the twins.

Now the book again says that there were daily withdrawals of blood:

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

I don't remember other witnesses mentioning that they were naked during Mengele's experiments:

> EVA MOZES: We were always naked during the experiments. We were marked, painted, measured, observed.

The book "Giants" said that because Red Cross received post cards that everything was fine at Auschwitz, "The International Red Cross decided that with everything being so satisfactory, a trip to Poland was an unnecessary investment of time and energy." But now the quotation below says that "children were taken out in Red Cross trucks." If the Nazis were trying to keep Auschwitz a secret from Red Cross, then why did they allow their trucks there?:

> No one at Auschwitz-not the prisoners, not the SS guards, not even other doctors-knew precisely what Mengele was doing with his twins, either while they were alive or after they had died. Even the children who themselves were the subjects of his tests did not know what the objectives of the experiments were. Rumors were rampant, especially when children were taken out in Red Cross trucks, never to be seen again.

Next Peter Somogyl says that after he was selected at the ramp, "We were placed in an ambulance, and whisked off to the twins' barracks." However the barracks were right next to the selection ramp at Birkenau, so couldn't they just have walked? However it's not clear from his account if the camp where he arrived was Birkenau or Auschwitz I:

I wonder if all of these accounts were just written by a single person, or if the witnesses were following the same script, because Peter Somogyl also said that there were outbreaks of tuberculosis and cholera, but he didn't mention typhus:

> The massive number of Hungarian transports sent many more guinea pigs Mengele's way. Although the twins were from the start the focus of Mengele's work at Auschwitz, like every other SS doctor there he had his share of routine duties, such as signing death certificates and making sure outbreaks of contagious maladies like TB and cholera did not get out of hand.

I think the following story about Ibi Hillmann is taken from Gisella Perl, because there were only 7 hits on Google search for `"ibi hillman" mengele`, but apparently she was mentioned in Gisella Perl's book (https://books.google.com/books?id=qOX_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT15):

> Mengele encountered such a woman in Ibi Hillman. Tall, blond, and statuesque, fifteen-year-old Ibi had been the pride of her small village in Transylvania. When Ibi removed her uniform in the course of an "inspection," Mengele found himself staring at her, transfixed. The other female inmates, and even his own assistants, watched him, aware of his attraction to the young Jewish woman. Any other SS officer would have simply made her his mistress. But Mengele evidently could not and would not concede feeling an attraction toward a Jew. In a loud voice, he dispatched Ibi to the infamous Block Ten, where the Nazis were performing sinister gynecological experiments. Few women survived Block Ten.
> 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 must have been very busy, because earlier one witness in this book said that Mengele was always present when the twins were being inspected, and another witness said that Mengele was the only person who was always at the ramp when the train arrived, but now another witness said that Mengele "wanted to be present during each and every birth at Auschwitz." In Vera Alexander's testimony, she said that when Mengele "saw that there was only one baby and not twins, he tore the baby right out of the mother's uterus, threw it into an oven and walked away." So I was wondering if the women gave birth in the immediate vicinity of an oven, but now Magda Spiegel says that they did:

> 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.

Apparently Gisella Perl was already saying that Mengele was interested in hunchbacks and that he was handsome:

> 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."

Next the authors write that the smoke from the chimneys of the crematoria was "blood-red":

> 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.

Apparently inmates were allowed to have pocket knives, or at least children were. By searching Google Books for `birkenau pocket knife`, I also found the book "Smoke Over Birkenau" which says (https://books.google.com/books?id=ZrTm829sYboC&pg=PA147): "'You're Liana,' the girl repeated. 'I slept next to you in the quarantine barrack, remember? I used to lend you my pocket-knife to cut your bread. Don't you remember?'"

> 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.

The book includes 12 accounts where survivors tell about being selected at the ramp, where one of them is the account of a pair of twins combined together. In 8 out of 12 accounts, it seems to be implied that Mengele was personally at the ramp performing the selections, even though I'm not sure about one of them. In the remaining 4 accounts, it is not specified if Mengele was at the ramp, but there's also no specific person named who was performing the selections:

- Apart from being selected by Mengele, Hedvah and Leah Stern also witnesed him engage in a dramatic event during their selection: "But we didn't want to be separated from our mother, and so the Nazis separated us by force. My father begged Mengele to give us some food and water. But Mengele motioned to an SS guard, who beat him up on the spot."
- Solomon Malik said: "Dr. Mengele made an immediate impression. He was very handsome, very nicely dressed. When my family arrived at Auschwitz in May 1944 from Romania, we heard Mengele asking for twins."
- Alex Dekel was selected by Mengele even though he was not a twin: "Dr. Mengele was standing at the head of the selection line. He noticed me immediately because I didn't look Jewish. I had very blond hair, and blue eyes, and I was in excellent physical shape. When he started talking to me, I answered him in fluent German. Mengele wasn't only looking for twins - he wanted triplets, midgets, hunchbacks, any unusual types. Even people like me - Jews who looked like perfect Aryans."
- Eva Kupas said: "While our mother and little brother continued marching in the direction of the crematorium, we ran back toward the selection lines. There was Dr. Mengele, standing at the head of the line. My first impression of Mengele was that he was so nice-looking very nice-looking."
- Judith Yagudah is another survivor featured in this book who was not a twin: "There was Mengele, standing at the head of the line. He was telling people where to go, in what direction - to the right or to the left, to work or to the gas chambers. When it was our turn, Mengele immediately asked us if we were twins. Ruthie and I looked identical. We had similar hairdos. We were wearing the same outfits."
- Eva Mozes-Kor was one of the survivors who didn't name Mengele, but she only said that she was selected by an unnamed SS man: "As I clutched my mother's hand, an SS man hurried by shouting, 'Twins!'"
- Leah Lorenzi is another survivor who didn't name Mengele, but she said that she was selected by unnamed "Germans": "When we got off the trains, we could hear the Germans yelling, 'Twins, twins!'"
- Zvi Spiegel had such a commanding presence that he was instantly selected by Mengele to act as the "Twins' Father": "'Were you ever a soldier?' Mengele asked me after he had pulled me out of the selection line. I had been standing with a group of twins. Because of my years as an officer, I tended to stand very straight. Mengele noticed that immediately. I told Mengele about my background in the Czech military. Because of this, Mengele appointed me to be in charge of the twin boys. My title would be 'Twins' Father.' I was to supervise about eighty boy twins. But he warned me that if anything went wrong, I would be killed on the spot."
- Magda Spiegel said: "My mother, my son, and I were told to go to the left side, toward the crematoriums. SS guards were yelling, "Twins, twins, we want twins." I saw a very good-looking man coming toward me. It was Mengele."
- Zvi the Sailor said: "When we stepped off the cattle car, there was Dr. Mengele. He was making the selections, deciding who would go to work and who would go to the gas chambers."
- Menashe Lorinczi's account only consisted of three sentences, but he didn't name Mengele: "Nobody knew whether it was good or bad to be a twin. Although the SS guards were going around asking for twins, families were afraid to volunteer their children. Many twins died because their parents didn't want to be separated from them. Mothers walked with their twins straight into the gas chambers."
- Peter Somogyl only mentioned unnamed guards: "Unarmed guards walked up and down the selection line asking for twins."

In 4 of the 12 accounts quoted above, it's also mentioned how Mengele was nice-looking or handsome, which is another symptom of the Mengele Effect, as was explained by Marwell (http://libgen.lc/index.php?req=marwell+mengele):

> There are some who recall a confrontation with Mengele but are mistaken, having confused him with another SS doctor or simply having assumed it must have been Mengele who carried out the monstrous deed that left them alive while taking so many they loved. Historian Zdenek Zofka notes that many survivors recall Mengele speaking to them in Hungarian, a language he did not speak but which was spoken by his colleagues, the pharmacist Viktor Capesius and the physician Dr. Fritz Klein. "Often Mengele would be described as tall and blond, when he was only 5ft 8½ inches tall and dark-haired."[31] "Almost all inmates" at Auschwitz, according to Zofka, maintain that they had been selected by Mengele.
> Hermann Langbein, a former Auschwitz inmate and author of the authoritative _People in Auschwitz_, wrote of this phenomenon, which he deemed the "Mengele Effect," a particular form of "memory displacement":
> > If a member of the SS is repeatedly named in public in connection with especially monstrous deeds, it is possible that survivors will project their experiences on to him. . . . More than once I heard survivors say that Mengele did this or that to them, even though Mengele had not yet arrived in Auschwitz at the time. Olga Lengyel has described him as a blonde angel, even though Mengele was a markedly dark-haired type. In short, crimes of an anonymous SS physician were imputed to Mengele, about whom people had read so many bad things. . . .
> > Some well-known SS men have been positively idealized after the fact. Thus Fania Fénelon has called Mengele a "handsome Siegfried," and Therese Chassaing writes, "Mengele is immaculate in his belted uniform, tall, with shiny black boots that bespeak cleanliness, prosperity, and human dignity." Elie Wiesel mentions as one of Mengele's characteristic attributes "white gloves, a monocle, and the rest."[32]
> Langbein saw Mengele "almost every day in the office of the SS infirmary where he was doing routine bureaucratic work," and he claims that Mengele never struck him as either attractive or elegant. He never saw him with a monocle. Doris Bergen, describing the work of Israeli historian Na'ama Shik, wrote about the "so-called Mengele Effect," noting that survivors' accounts decades after the fact could be shaped by what "they have read and heard in the meantime."[33]
> Geoffrey Hartmann, who wrote extensively on survivor testimony, observed that "every Auschwitz survivor seems to have gone through a selection by Mengele, as if he manned his post 24 hours a day."[34] In fact, Mengele took his turn at "ramp duty" like the rest of the medical staff in the camp. There is no evidence that he served there more frequently or for longer hours than his colleagues. It does seem, however, as Zofka suggests, that "the name Mengele had become detached from the man" and had become "a synonym" for every doctor at the Auschwitz camp.[35] Similarly, historian Christopher Browning, in describing witness testimony about a selection by Mengele that was proved never to have occurred, called such an encounter with the Angel of Death on the ramp in Auschwitz "one of the most broadly recognized archetypical episodes of the Holocaust, widely disseminated in both books and films."[36]

[Komintasavalta]

I searched for references to Mengele in the documents of the Nuremberg trials: https://www.google.com/search?q=site...+%22mengele%22. There were a total of 4 results.

The 11th volume of the Nuremberg Trial Proceedings just mentions that Mengele performed experiments on twins, but it doesn't go into more detail (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/04-15-46.asp):

> HOESS: Medical experiments were carried out in several camps. For instance, in Auschwitz there were experiments on sterilization carried out by Professor Klaubert and Dr. Schumann; also experiments on twins by SS medical officer Dr. Mengele.

After one witness mentioned that Mengele performed experiments on twins, next she said that during the process of selection at the ramp, there was an orchestra playing which consisted of girls dressed in "little white blouses and navy blue skirts" (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/01-28-46.asp):

> There was also, in the spring of 1944, a special block for twins. It was during the time when large convoys of Hungarian Jews about 700,000-arrived. Dr. Mengele, who was carrying out the experiments, kept back from each convoy twin children and twins in general, regardless of their age, so long as both were present. So we had both babies and adults on the floor at that block. Apart from blood tests and measuring I do. not know what was done to them.
> M. DUBOST: Were you an eye witness of the selections on the arrival of the convoys?
> MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes, because when we worked at the sewing block in 1944, the block where we lived directly faced the stopping place of the trains. The system had been improved. Instead of making the selection at the place where they arrived, a side line now took. the train practically right up to the gas chamber; and the stopping place, about 100 meters from the gas chamber, was right opposite our block though, of course, separated ,from us by two rows of barbed wire. Consequently, we saw the unsealing of the cars and the soldiers letting men, women, and children out of them. We then witnessed heart-rending scenes; old couples forced to part from each other, mothers made to abandon their young daughters, since the latter were sent to the camp, whereas mothers and children were sent to the gas chambers. All these people were unaware of the fate awaiting them. They were merely upset at being separated, but they did not know that they were going to their death. To render their welcome more pleasant at this time - June-July 1944 - an orchestra composed of internees, all young and pretty girls dressed in little white blouses and navy blue skirts, played during the selection, at the arrival of the trains, gay tunes such as "The Merry Widow," the "Barcarolle" from "The Tales of Hoffman," and so forth. They were then informed that this was a labor camp and since they were not brought into the camp they saw only the small platform surrounded by flowering plants. Naturally, they could not realize what was in store for them. Those selected for the gas chamber, that is, the old people, mothers, and children, were escorted to a red-brick building.

Another witness said that he was being bled by Mengele (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/02-18-46.asp):

> "A 9-year-old boy, Andrasz Lerintsiakosz, a native of the city of Klez, Hungary, testified:
> '"After we had been driven to Block 22 of the camp, we were beaten, mainly by German women who were put over us as guards. They beat us with sticks. During my stay in the camp, Dr. Mengele bled me very frequently. In November 1944 all the children were transferred to Camp A, known as the Gypsy Camp. During roll call it was discovered that one child was missing. Thereupon, the leader of the women's camp, Brandem, and her assistant, Mendel, drove us all into the street at 1 o'clock in the morning and left us standing there in the cold until noon."'

After an unnamed witness speaks of selections performed by Mengele, next they mention how "the fats and oils necessary for cremations were partly derived from the bodies of gassed people" (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/02-08-46.asp):

> I will now quote an extract of the appeal to the public opinion of the world from the representatives of several thousand former internees at Auschwitz:
> "The gassing of unbelievable numbers of people took place upon the arrival of transports from various countries: France, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland, the U.S.S.R., Norway, and others. The new arrivals had to pass before an SS doctor or else before the SS commandant of the camp. The latter pointed his finger to the right or left. The left meant death by gas. Out of a transport of 1,500, an average of 1,200 to 1,300 were immediately to be gassed. Rarely the quota of people sent into the camp was a little higher. It often occurred that the SS doctors Mengele and Thilo performed this selection while whistling a lively tune. The people destined to be gassed were obliged to strip in front of the gas-chambers, after which they were driven with whips into the gas-chambers. Then the door of the underground gas-chamber was closed, and the people were gassed. Death occurred approximately 4 minutes later. After 8 minutes the gas chamber was opened, and workmen belonging to a special commando, the so-called Sonderkommando, transported the bodies to the cremation ovens which burned day and night.
> "There was a shortage of ovens at the time of the arrival of transports from Hungary; consequently enormous ditches were dug for the purpose of cremating the bodies. Fires made of wood soaked in gasoline were laid in these ditches and the bodies were thrown into them. However, the SS men frequently hurled live children and adults into those ditches, where these unhappy victims died a terrible death. To save gasoline, the fats and oils necessary for cremations were partly derived from the bodies of gassed people. Fats and oils for technical purposes and for the manufacture of soap were also obtained from the corpses."

Carlos Porter has compiled a list of some of the most ridiculous claims that were made during the Nuremberg trials: https://www.cwporter.com/partone.htm. (He has also translated one of PHDNM's book to English.)

[Komintasavalta]

In 1985, the New York Times said this about the testimony of Elizabeth Ovitz (https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/07/w...f-mengele.html):

> Thirty of the twins and dwarfs testified at the Yad Vashem memorial here before a six-member board of inquiry led by Gideon Hausner, the chief prosecutor in the Adolf Eichmann trial, and Telford Taylor, chief American counsel for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.
> ...
> At one point, she testified, Dr. Mengele forced their entire family to sing naked for the entertainment of the SS chief Heinrich Himmler and 2,000 Nazi soldiers and officials.
> "They prepared a small stage for us," she said. "Mengele stood on the stage with us. We were completely naked. Himmler sat in the front row with a movie camera, enjoying the performance."

However in the book "Giants: The Seven Dwarfs of Auschwitz", they changed their story (http://libgen.lc/index.php?req=giant...arfs+auschwitz):

> To spare them the effort of mounting the podium, Prosecutor Zvi Terlow came down to the first row to conduct the inquiry. As always, Elizabeth spoke out more than her sister but both she and Perla captured the imagination of the world press. Newsweek, for example, described how the Lilliputs 'entertained their tormentors. On one hellish night, the entire family was stripped naked and marched on to a stage to perform for SS chief Heinrich Himmler' - it was not him; he's confused here with a minor Nazi official who strongly resembled him - 'and 2,000 Nazi officers and soldiers. Mengele acted as MC while Himmler sat in the front row and recorded the fun with his movie camera'.

In place of the phrase "Newsweek, for example, described how the Lilliputs" in the quotation above, the earlier edition of the book from 2004 had the phrase "Newsweek, for example, blended some fact with much fiction in describing how the Lilliputs", which made it seem like it was Newsweek that was responsible for introducing fictional elements to the story.

The book "Giants" still says that the Ovitz family were made to appear naked on a stage in front of a crowd of Nazi officers, but it doesn't mention how many people there were in the audience, and it doesn't say that the audience included Himmler, and it doesn't mention that there was someone with a movie camera in the audience:

> 'Off you go,' the sergeant whispered. Marching forward in a long line, they mounted the stage. To their relief they saw Mengele at the front of the stage. A solemn master of ceremonies, he waited for them to take their places in a line that stretched from one end of the stage to the other.
> The auditorium was packed; they had never seen so many medals and decorations. There was a murmur in the hall. The audience stared at the assortment of men, women and children onstage. The Lilliputs smiled in confusion, for they did not know how to begin. They looked to Mengele for a cue.
> He turned to them and snapped, 'Undress!'
> Aghast, their hands trembling, they fumbled with their buttons. The Lilliputs tried to shrink into themselves and wished they could disappear altogether. They bent their shoulders forward, in an attempt to cover their genitals with their hands. 'Straighten up!' barked Mengele.

I wonder if the transcript of the testimony from 1985 is still available, so we could check if Elizabeth said that the audience included Himmler.

[Komintasavalta]

These days the lore seems to be that the majority of the medical experiments at the Auschwitz camp complex were performed by Mengele, or at least they were carried out under orders by Mengele, but during the Nuremberg Trials, they had a much larger repertoire of doctors to choose from. The Soviets even named six doctors apart from Mengele who took part in the selection of inmates to be killed. The following quotation is from Carlos Porter's translation of the USSR-8 Soviet War Crimes Report on Auschwitz, May 6, 1945 (http://www.cwporter.com/ussr8.htm):

> In Auschwitz camp, German fascists professors and doctors performed extensive "medical" experiments with monstrous ingenuity on living people. Former inmate doctors rescued by the Red Army -- STEINBERG, (Paris), GORDON (Vilnius, Prof. GROSSMAN (Yugoslavia), Dr. of med. WALENTIN ERWIN (Berlin), KEPPICH ANNA (Hungary), DE WIND EDUARD (Netherlands), FLECHNER ALBERT (Paris) -- established they had seen a great number of "medical" experiments with their own eyes, arbitrarily performed by German fascist professors and doctors on prisoners in order to learn surgical techniques. A young German doctor sought out prisoners with ulcerating sores on their limbs, and practised performing amputations on them. The German doctors TILLE and FISCHER gathered great groups of prisoners and then carried out fracturing operations on them.
> The leading doctor at the hospital, Dr. ENDERS, performed stomach operations in the absence of the slightest complaint of any stomach trouble; he also practised ulcer operations on them.
> Sterilization experiments were performed on women in the camp hospital division of Auschwitz camp. 400 women prisoners were housed in Block 10 of the camp, and simultaneously subjected to sterilization experiments with x-rays, and then by removal of the ovaries; the neck of the uterus was infected with cancer, experiments were performed to induce premature birth artificially and to test contrast substances, as well as to test x-ray exposure of the uterus. In Block 28, doctors tested methods of artificially wounding the skin with kerosene oil, various salts, pastes, and powders. They also used Arichink to study artificially induced jaundice. These experiments were led by the German, Dr. Emil KOSCHUB.
> In Block 21, mass experiments were performed in the castration of men and to study the possibility of sterilization with x-rays. Castration was performed some time after treatment with x-rays. These x-ray and castration experiments were led by Prof. SCHUMANN and Dr. DERING. The operations frequently consisted of removing one or both testicles for study after treatment with x-rays.
> All these facts are attested to by the testimonies of former inmates, KLEIN JUDITH, AUSSEN KLARA, HORBANN MINNA, SONDERS NONNA, SKURNIKC JAKOB, SURES DAVID, and many others on whom the German doctors performed various experiments.
> Upon order of the German doctor Dr. ENDERS, in 1941-1944, prisoners were killed in the hospitals by injection of phenol in the heart. First, the injections were given by Dr. DERING; later by nurses. A German named KLER, a former shoemaker, proved himself especially enthusiastic, killing thousands of victims in this manner. A prisoner named PANSZIK, a Pole, killed 12,000 men with phenol injections (he was later killed by Polish prisoners). A German named STESS killed 10,000 people with these injections.
> The fact that inhuman experiments were performed on prisoners is also confirmed by a number of documents found in the camp offices. A report from the surgical division of the camp hospital testified that in three months -- October, November, and December 1943 -- there were 89 removals of the testicles (castration), five sterilizations, five removals of the ovaries among the many operations performed by surgeons of the division. In the telegram no. 2768 of 28 April 1943, the Obersturmführer Colonel SOMMER issues an order to the office of the camp commandant, stating that 128 women are to be included in a list with the designation "prisoners for experiments". A statistical survey of the camp commandant is concerned with the number and distribution of female prisoners to the various categories, and is signed by the representative camp commandant. There is one constant column: prisoners for various experiments. The column is entitled "women for experiments". On 15 May 1944, 440; on 5 June 1944, 413; on 19 June 1944, 348; on 30 July 349, etc.
> German doctors played a leading role in the so-called "selection" of prisoners for gassing and incineration. They carried these "selections" out everywhere -- near the crematories, in the hospitals, in the barracks. Exhausted, sick people who were unable to work were sent to the gas chambers.
> The following German doctors participated in the selection of prisoners for the purpose of killing: WIRTS, MENGELE, RODE, FISCHER, TILLE, KOENIG, KLEIN, and many others.
> Upon order of the leading German doctor of the Auschwitz division, the populations of entire barracks were murdered by poison gas during typhus epidemics.
> The forensic medical experts found that German doctors of Auschwitz camp performed the following experiments on living people:
> 1) removal of tissues from the neck of the uterus or even complete removal of the same;
> 2) testing of a number of unknown substances for the purpose of x-ray exposure of the uterus and ovaries. These substances were injected under pressure into the uteral region with the help of special installations, and often caused frightful pain to the victim of the experiment;
> 3) sterilization of women by x-rays of the pelvic region, followed by the removal of the ovaries. These experiments were performed chiefly on younger women;
> 4) study of the reactions of various chemical preparations to the order of German firms. According to the eyewitness testimony of a German doctor, Dr. med. Erwin VALENTIN, the representatives of German chemical industry -- GLAUBER, a gynecologist from Koenigshuette, and GEVEL, a chemist -- actually bought 150 women from the camp administration at one time for such experiments.
> 5) sterilization of men through x-rays;
> 6) experiments on men using chemical irritant preparations on the skin of one leg for the artificial inducement of ulcers and inflamed tumours;
> 7) a number of other experiments, such as artificial infection with malaria, artificial insemination, etc..
> Very many experiments ended in the rapid, excruciating death of the prisoner involved. When the victims for experimental purposes were no longer useable, they were killed and cremated. In this manner, the Germans attempted to wipe away their inhuman experiments.
> Samuel Abramowitsch STERN, a former prisoner from Bucharest, testified:
> "...In Auschwitz camp, I worked as the assistant to the doctor. On the orders of Ober-Sergeant Major KOSCHUB, I subjected prisoners to injections with other manipulations. I know every well that kerosene was injected into the leg... Experiments were performed on the irritability of the skin... For these purposes, an 80% solution of alum actinium was used. The entire layer of skin was then removed and sent for examination. Those who had deep-seated skin inflammations had the entire piece of flesh cut out, together with the skin, and this was also sent for examination...
> KOSCHUB infected prisoners with artificial jaundice and gave them malarial blood transfusions. WALIGUVA M, a test subject, testified:
> "...Several days after my arrival at Birkenau, I believe it was the beginning of December 1942, all younger men between 18 and 30 were sterilized by x-ray exposure of the scrotum. I was also among those sterilized. Eleven months after I was sterilized, that is, on 1 November 1943, I was castrated... together with 200 other men who were sterilized in one day."
> The witness DAVID SURES, from Salonika (Greece), gave the following testimony:
> "Approximately in July 1944, I was entered onto a list, together with many other Greeks, and sent to Birkenau. There, we all had to undress, and were all sterilized with x-rays. A month after sterilization, we were all ordered to the camp central division, where we were all castrated."
> The former inmate M. HAUSER (Paris, Citemilion 9), testified:
> "In Auschwitz, we were housed in Block 10. The reason why we were housed in this block was unknown to us. It contained a hospital division, although we were all entirely healthy women. In Block 10, they took a syringe full of blood from me, I don't know for what purpose. At the end of August 1943, I was taken to the operating room, received an anaesthetic, and an operation was performed on my sexual organs. The operation was performed by a prisoner, Dr. SAMUEL, under the leadership and instruction of the German, Dr. WIRTZ. After the operation, I was sick for 11 months in Block 10. Among those who were subjected to the sterilization operation was a Jewish woman named Bella, from Greece, whose last name I can no longer remember. After she was x-rayed, she was operated on. She received an abdominal incision. After the operation, she got well and her abdomen healed. The German doctor Dr. SCHUMANN came to Block 10 to examine her, and took Bella away to Block 28. There he made a second incision, this time in a sideways direction. I myself saw the criss-cross incision. Within a few days of the second operation, Bella died."

The quotation above says that Dr. Enders was the "leading doctor at the hospital", and it also says that "upon order of the German doctor Dr. ENDERS, in 1941-1944, prisoners were killed in the hospitals by injection of phenol in the heart". I think it refers to Anton Endres, who was one of the medical officers who were sentenced to death after the war (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Endres):

> From December 1940 to June 1941 he served as an SS medical officer for the troop doctor and was responsible for the medical care of the guards at the Dachau location. He then took on additional tasks in the prisoner infirmary of the Dachau concentration camp until May 1942.
> ...
> Together with Erich Mußfeldt, Endres was briefly assigned to the Auschwitz concentration camp at the beginning of April 1943. While Mußfeldt got to know the cremation of corpses in open pits there, Endres was supposed to "familiarize himself with the type of extermination in gas chambers".[2] From mid-1943 he was again employed as a paramedic in a Dachau satellite camp in Augsburgused.
> ...
> On November 15, 1945, Endres was indicted as a war criminal by a US military court in the Dachau main trial, which took place as part of the Dachau trials, and sentenced to death by hanging on December 13, 1945 along with 35 other co-defendants. In the judgment, the severe abuse of prisoner patients, the two-time participation in executions and the killing of a prisoner by an injection were taken into account as individual excesses at Endres.[3]

Wikipedia says that Endres was only briefly stationed at Auschwitz, and that he was next employed as a paramedic at a satellite camp of Dachau, so I don't know why he would've been the leading doctor at any of the hospitals in the Auschwitz camp complex, or why he would've had the authority to order the killing of tens of thousands of inmates through injections of phenol to the heart.

The chief medical officer at the Auschwitz camp complex was actually Eduard Wirths (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Wirths):

> Eduard Wirths (4 September 1909 – 20 September 1945) was the chief SS doctor (SS-Standortarzt) at the Auschwitz concentration camp from September 1942 to January 1945. Thus, Wirths had formal responsibility for everything undertaken by the nearly twenty SS doctors (including Josef Mengele, Horst Schumann and Carl Clauberg) who worked in the medical sections of Auschwitz between 1942 and 1945.

Mengele was appointed by Wirths (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele):

> Mengele's application was accepted and he was posted to Auschwitz, where he was appointed by SS-Standortarzt Eduard Wirths, chief medical officer at Auschwitz, to the position of chief physician of the Zigeunerfamilienlager (Romani family camp) at Birkenau,[21][31] a subcamp located on the main Auschwitz complex.

[Insuperable]

...

So can you summarize all of your posts and tell us in a nutshell what is it all about?

[Komintasavalta]

So can you summarize all of your posts and tell us in a nutshell what is it all about?

That the orthodox historiography about Mengele's time at Auschwitz is based on phony eyewitness testimony and atrocity propaganda.

If you don't believe me, then watch Aaron Kasparov's documentary about Mengele: https://odysee.com/@DanTheOracle:d/J...eed-Debunked:4. You can skip the introduction and start at time 4:55.

Hans Sedlmeier, who allowed Mengele to live with his family in Brazil, said: "I could tell you what Mengele did, what he did during Auschwitz, what he did after Auschwitz, but you wouldn't believe me. The newspapers won't print the truth, because it's not in the interest of the Jews." (https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/13/w...to-brazil.html)