| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE |
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known to do her measurements, it is possible that they may
be expressing some confusion between his control of the situation (which was
virtually absolute) and what he actually did. But Mengele undoubtedly performed
some examinations, perhaps especially with identical twins They described him
as very methodical: “He concentrated on one part of the body at one time.
…Like [one day] he measured our eyes for about two hours.” They
stressed that, although they, were always examined nude, Mengele was proper and
“never rude,” approaching them detachedly and more or less
professionally. 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 to be photographed. (Mengele seems to have
varied the frequency according to the interest particular twins held for him,
again undoubtedly giving much more attention to identical twins.) During these
examinations a certain amount of family history was taken, involving sicknesses
of all kinds; but “mostly he wanted to know if there were more sets of
twins … in the family.” And, like other twins I spoke to, these two
were impressed by the amount of blood taken from them — an estimated ten
cubic centimeters at every session. Given the inadequate Auschwitz diet (though
theirs was better than ordinary prisoners) “We were wondering where [the
blood] came from”; and toward the end they remembered it as being
difficult to draw: “It wasn't coming any more … from our arms.”
The more sinister side of Mengele’s twin research emerged in
his elaborate arrangements for pathological examination of corpses. For Dr.
Miklos Nyiszli, his main prisoner pathologist, Mengele prepared a special
dissection room including a dissecting table of polished marble a basin with
“nickel taps” and “three porcelain sinks,” and windows
“with green metal screens to keep out flies and mosquitoes.” The
adjoining working room had a large table, “comfortable arm chairs,”
three microscopes and “a well-stocked library, which contained the most
recent editions.” The overall arrangement, as Nyiszli later wrote, was
“the exact replica of any large city's institute of pathology.”30
Nyiszli s earlier deposition (made in
July 1945) reveals Mengele to be a direct murderer of his twins: |
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In the work room next to the dissecting room,
fourteen Gypsy twins were waiting [about midnight one night], guarded by SS
men, and crying bitterly. Dr. Mengele didn’t say a single word to us, and
prepared a 10 cc. and 5 cc. syringe. From a box he took evipan, and from
another box he took chloroform, which was in 20 cubic-centimeter glass
containers, and put these on the operating table. After that, the first twin
was brought in, … a fourteen-year-old girl. Dr. Mengele ordered me to
undress the girl and put her on the dissecting table. Then he injected the
evipan into her right arm intravenously. After the child had fallen asleep he
felt for the left ventricle of the heart and |
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