In 1979, a certain Wolfgang Gerhard, a quiet 67-year-old German emigrant who settled here after the Second World War, drowned off the coast of Brazilian Sao Paulo. The old man was buried in a local cemetery and soon forgotten about him. However, 7 years later, Wolfgang’s neighbors accidentally received folders with his archive. Opening the papers, the neighbors gasped - these were descriptions of inhumane experiments on children. Their author was the most wanted Nazi criminal Josef Mengele, a doctor whose medical experiments included thousands of Auschwitz prisoners. Just think: the monster who created a real hell on earth, sending hundreds of people to the next world every day, lived in a real paradise on the Brazilian coast for 35 post-war years. This is the very case when there is no talk of justice.

Josef Mengele was the eldest son in the family. Known fact, the child is formed in the image and likeness of the parents. Looking at them, he acquires certain features and qualities that will be fully revealed in mature age. This is what happened with Joseph. His father paid practically no attention to the children, and his mother was a despotic fury prone to sadism. So the question arises, how should a child grow up when the father pays practically no attention, and the mother does not skimp on beatings at the slightest disobedience or poor grades? The result was a brilliant doctor and a cruel sadist.

Josef was barely 32 years old when he entered service at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The first thing he did was eliminate the typhus epidemic. In a peculiar way, of course: Josef ordered the complete burning of several barracks where the disease was noticed. Effective, to say the least.

But the main thing that Mengele became famous for was his interest in genetics. The Nazi doctor's stumbling block was the twins. Perform experiments without anesthetics? Easily. Dissect still living babies? Just what you need. You can also stitch twins together, change their eye color using chemicals, develop a substance that causes infertility, and so on. The list of inhumane experiments can be continued endlessly.

Another question arises, why was the doctor from hell most interested in the twins? Let's go back to basics. Even in pre-war Germany, the authorities noticed that the birth rate was decreasing and infant mortality was increasing; this pattern was true for representatives of the Aryan nation. Other races and nationalities living in Germany had no problems with fertility at all. Then the German government, frightened by the prospect of the extinction of the “chosen” race, decided to do something. Joseph was one of the scientists tasked with increasing the number of Aryan children and reducing their mortality. Scientists have focused on artificially breeding twins or triplets. However, the offspring of the Aryan race must certainly have blonde hair and blue eyes - hence Mengele's attempts to change children's eye color through various chemicals.

First, the experimental children were carefully selected. The assistants of the ‘Angel of Death’ measured the height of the children and recorded their similarities and differences. The children then met Josef in person. He infected them with typhus, gave them blood transfusions, amputated limbs and transplanted various organs. Mengele wanted to track how the identical organisms of twins would react to the same intervention in them. Then the experimental subjects were killed, after which the doctor conducted a thorough analysis of the corpses, examining the internal organs.
Mengele himself believed that he was acting for the benefit of science.

Naturally, many legends have developed around such a colorful character. One of them, for example, says that Dr. Mengele’s office was decorated with the eyes of children. However, these are just fairy tales. Josef could simply spend hours looking at body parts in test tubes or spending time doing anatomical research, dissecting bodies, wearing an apron stained with blood. Colleagues who worked with Josef noted that they hated their jobs, and in order to somehow relax, they got completely drunk, which could not be said about the ‘Angel of Death’. It seemed that his work not only did not tire him, but even gave him great pleasure.

Now many are wondering whether the doctor was an ordinary sadist covering up his atrocities scientific activity. According to the recollections of his colleagues, Mengele often took part in executions himself: he beat people, threw them into pits with lethal gas.

When the war ended, a manhunt was announced for Joseph, but he managed to escape. He spent the rest of his days in Brazil, eventually taking up medicine again. He made his living mainly by performing abortions, which were officially prohibited by the country's authorities. Retribution overtook him only almost 35 years after the war.

The most amazing thing is that the story of “Doctor Death” does not end there. A few years ago, Argentine historian Jorge Camaraza wrote a book in which he claimed that Mengele took up fertility experiments again after escaping from justice. As an example, the researcher cited the strange story of the Brazilian town of Candido Godoy, where the birth rate of twins suddenly jumped sharply. Every fifth woman in labor gave birth to twins, and blonde ones at that! Kamarasa was sure that this was Mengele’s machinations. Local residents really remembered the strange veterinarian Rudolf Weiss, who came to the city to treat livestock, but examined not only animals, but also people. Whether Doctor Death has anything to do with this phenomenon is not known for certain.

I continue to publish materials that I commemorate the 65th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. This time the hero of my story is the famous “angel of death from Auschwitz” Dr. Mengele.

Josef Mengele (German: Josef Mengele; March 16, 1911, Günzburg, Bavaria - February 7, 1979, Bertioga, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil) - German doctor, who conducted experiments on prisoners of the Auschwitz camp during World War II. Dr. Mengele was personally involved in the selection of prisoners arriving at the camp, and during his work sent more than 40,000 people to the gas chambers of the death camp.

After the war he moved from Germany to Latin America, fearing persecution. Attempts to find Mengele to bring him to trial were unsuccessful, although, according to Rafi Eitan and another Mossad veteran, Alex Meller, they tracked down Mengele in Buenos Aires during the operation to kidnap Adolf Eichmann, but captured him at the same time with Eichmann or immediately after the latter's capture was too risky. He died in 1979 in Brazil. Among Josef Mengele's acquaintances, the name was Beppo (Italian Beppo, the Italian diminutive of Giuseppe - Joseph), but he became known to the world as the “Angel of Death from Auschwitz” (the prisoners nicknamed him the Angel of Death).

The first concentration camp in Germany was opened in 1933. The last one working was captured by Soviet troops in 1945. Between these two dates there are millions of tortured prisoners who died from backbreaking work, strangled in gas chambers, shot by the SS. And those who died from “medical experiments.” No one knows exactly how many of these last ones there were. Hundreds of thousands. Why are we writing about this many years after the end of the war? Because inhumane experiments on people in Nazi concentration camps are also History, the history of medicine. Its darkest, but no less interesting page...

Medical experiments were carried out in almost all of the largest concentration camps in Nazi Germany. Among the doctors who supervised these experiments there were many completely different people. Dr. Wirtz was involved in lung cancer research and studied surgical options. Professor Clauberg and Dr. Schumann, as well as Dr. Glauberg, conducted experiments on sterilization of people in the concentration camp of the Konighütte Institute.

Dr. Dohmenom in Sachsenhausen worked on research into infectious jaundice and the search for a vaccine against it. Professor Hagen in Natzweiler studied typhus and also looked for a vaccine. The Germans also researched malaria. Many camps conducted research into the effects of various chemicals on humans.

There were people like Rasher. His experiments in studying methods of warming frostbitten people brought him fame, many awards in Nazi Germany and, as it later turned out, real results. But he fell into the trap of his own theories. In addition to its main medical activities, he carried out orders from the authorities. And by exploring the possibilities of infertility treatment, he deceived the regime. His children, whom he passed off as his own, turned out to be adopted, and his wife was infertile. When the Reich found out about this, the doctor and his wife were sent to a concentration camp, and at the end of the war they were executed.

There were mediocrities, such as Arnold Dohmen, who infected people with hepatitis and tried to treat them by puncturing the liver. This heinous act had no scientific value, which was clear to Reich specialists from the very beginning. Or people like Hermann Voss, who did not personally participate in the experiments, but studied the materials of other people’s experiments with blood, obtaining information through the Gestapo. Every German medical student knows his anatomy textbook today.

Or such fanatics as Professor August Hirt, who studied the corpses of those who were exterminated at Auschwitz. A doctor who experimented on animals, on people, and on himself.

But our story is not about them. Our story tells of Josef Mengele, remembered in History as the Angel of Death or Doctor Death, a cold-blooded man who killed his victims by injecting chloroform into their hearts so he could personally perform autopsies and observe their internal organs.

Josef Mengele, the most famous of the Nazi doctor-criminals, was born in Bavaria in 1911. He studied philosophy at the University of Munich and medicine at the University of Frankfurt. In 1934 he joined the SA and became a member of the National Socialist Party, and in 1937 he joined the SS. He worked at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. Thesis topic: "Morphological studies of the structure of the lower jaw of representatives of four races."

After the outbreak of World War II, he served as a military doctor in the SS Viking division in France, Poland and Russia. In 1942, he received the Iron Cross for saving two tank crews from a burning tank. After being wounded, SS-Hauptsturmführer Mengele was declared unfit for combat service and in 1943 was appointed chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The prisoners soon nicknamed him “the angel of death.”

In addition to its main function - the destruction of "inferior races", prisoners of war, communists and simply the dissatisfied, concentration camps performed another function in Nazi Germany. With the arrival of Mengele, Auschwitz became a "major scientific research center." Unfortunately for the prisoners, the range of Joseph Mengele’s “scientific” interests was unusually wide. He began with work on “increasing the fertility of Aryan women.” It is clear that the material for research was non-Aryan women. Then the Fatherland set a new, directly opposite task: to find the cheapest and effective methods restrictions on the birth rate of “subhumans” - Jews, Gypsies and Slavs. Having mutilated tens of thousands of men and women, Mengele came to the conclusion: the most reliable way to avoid conception is castration.

“Research” went on as usual. The Wehrmacht ordered a topic: to find out everything about the effects of cold on a soldier’s body (hypothermia). The experimental methodology was the most simple: a concentration camp prisoner is taken, covered on all sides with ice, “doctors” in SS uniforms constantly measure body temperature... When a test subject dies, a new one is brought from the barracks. Conclusion: after the body has cooled below 30 degrees, it is most likely impossible to save a person. The best remedy to warm up - a hot bath and “the natural warmth of the female body.”

The Luftwaffe, the German air force, commissioned research on the effect of high altitude on pilot performance. A pressure chamber was built in Auschwitz. Thousands of prisoners suffered a terrible death: with ultra-low pressure, a person was simply torn apart. Conclusion: it is necessary to build aircraft with a pressurized cabin. By the way, not a single one of these aircraft took off in Germany until the very end of the war.

On his own initiative, Joseph Mengele, who became interested in racial theory in his youth, conducted experiments with eye color. For some reason he needed to prove in practice that brown eyes Jews under no circumstances can become the blue eyes of a “true Aryan.” He gives hundreds of Jews injections of blue dye - extremely painful and often leading to blindness. The conclusion is obvious: a Jew cannot be turned into an Aryan.

Tens of thousands of people became victims of Mengele’s monstrous experiments. Just look at the research on the effects of physical and mental exhaustion on the human body! And the “study” of 3 thousand young twins, of which only 200 survived! The twins received blood transfusions and organ transplants from each other. Sisters were forced to bear children from their brothers. Forced gender reassignment operations were carried out. Before starting the experiments, the good Doctor Mengele could pat the child on the head, treat him with chocolate...

However, chief physician Auschwitz was engaged not only in applied research. He was not averse to “pure science.” Concentration camp prisoners were deliberately infected with various diseases in order to test the effectiveness of new drugs on them. Last year, one of the former prisoners of Auschwitz sued the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. The makers of aspirin are accused of using concentration camp prisoners to test their sleeping pill. Judging by the fact that soon after the start of the “approbation” the concern additionally purchased 150 more Auschwitz prisoners, no one was able to wake up after the new sleeping pills. By the way, other representatives of German business also collaborated with the concentration camp system. The largest chemical concern in Germany, IG Farbenindustri, made not only synthetic gasoline for tanks, but also Zyklon-B gas for the gas chambers of the same Auschwitz. After the war, the giant company was “disintegrated.” Some of the fragments of IG Farbenindustry are well known in our country. Including as drug manufacturers.

In 1945, Josef Mengele carefully destroyed all the collected “data” and escaped from Auschwitz. Until 1949, Mengele worked quietly in his native Günzburg at his father’s company. Then, using new documents in the name of Helmut Gregor, he emigrated to Argentina. He received his passport quite legally, through... the Red Cross. In those years, this organization provided charity, issued passports and travel documents to tens of thousands of refugees from Germany. Perhaps Mengele's fake ID simply could not be thoroughly checked. Moreover, the art of forging documents in the Third Reich reached unprecedented heights.

One way or another, Mengele ended up in South America. In the early 50s, when Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest (with the right to kill him upon arrest), Joseph moved to Paraguay. However, all this was rather a sham, a game of catching Nazis. Still with the same passport in the name of Gregor, Joseph Mengele repeatedly visited Europe, where his wife and son remained. The Swiss police watched his every move - and did nothing!

The man responsible for tens of thousands of murders lived in prosperity and contentment until 1979. The victims did not appear to him in his dreams. Justice was not served. Mengele drowned in the warm ocean while swimming on a beach in Brazil. And the fact that the valiant agents of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad helped him drown is just a beautiful legend.

Josef Mengele managed a lot in his life: to live happy childhood, get an excellent education at the university, make a happy family, raise children, get to know the taste of war and front-line life, work out " scientific research", many of which were important for modern medicine, since vaccines were developed against various diseases, and many other useful experiments were carried out that would not have been possible in a democratic state (in fact, the crimes of Mengele, like many of his colleagues, made a huge contribution to medicine), finally, being already old, Joseph received relaxing holiday on the sandy shores of Latin America. Already on this well-deserved rest, Mengele was more than once forced to remember his past deeds - he more than once read articles in newspapers about his search, about the fee of 50,000 American dollars assigned for providing information about his whereabouts, about his atrocities against prisoners. Reading these articles, Joseph Mengele could not hide his sarcastic, sad smile, for which he was remembered by many of his victims - after all, he was in plain sight, swimming on public beaches, conducting active correspondence, visiting entertainment venues. And he could not understand the accusations of committing atrocities - he always looked at his experimental subjects only as material for experiments. He saw no difference between the experiments he carried out on beetles at school and those he carried out in Auschwitz.

Josef Mengele went down in history as one of the symbols of the Nazi Reich. A neat parting, a perfectly ironed dark green uniform, an SS cap pulled to one side and boots polished to a shine. The main attribute of his image was gentle manners and a smile, but behind this mask there was something terrible hidden. This concentration camp doctor completely dispassionately controlled the destinies of people. It was he, with obvious pleasure, who met the trains with new prisoners arriving at the camp, and decided which of them would work, who would go to his experiments, and who would immediately go to the gas chamber. He always held a whip in his hand, but not to beat the prisoners passing him with it - he simply used it to indicate the direction in which they should go - “links oder rechts” - left or right...

"Harmless" beginning

On June 28, 1933, Reich Minister of Internal Affairs of Germany Wilhelm Frick, speaking before an expert council on racial policy, raised the issue of the danger of low birth rates. The reason that german women they give birth less than is necessary for the prosperity and development of the state, he saw the disastrous policies of democrats and liberals. Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler and head of the party chancellery Martin Bormann prepared new legislation on marriage and family. They proceeded from the fact that after the war three to four million German women would be left without husbands, but in the name of the interests of the state they would have to give birth. Bormann considered it necessary to provide “decent, strong-willed, physically and mentally healthy men» the right to marry not one, but two women.

Himmler proposed forcibly dissolving marriages in which there had been no children for five years: “All married or unmarried women, if they do not have four children, are obliged to give birth to these children before reaching the age of thirty-five from racially impeccable German men. Whether these men are married or not does not matter.” But not everyone was welcome german child. The sick and weak were treated as ballast. “If in Germany,” Hitler said frankly, “a million children were born every year, of which seven hundred to eight hundred thousand weak ones were immediately destroyed, then the end result would be the strengthening of the nation.”

Many agreed with this statement, as a result of which young, ambitious scientists and doctors were quickly found who were simply eager to participate in large projects developed by the party apparatus. They perceived this kind of assignment as an opportunity to advance, prove themselves and climb the career ladder to unprecedented heights.

Dr. Mengele was a geneticist. He firmly believed that there were only two types of gifted people in the world: Germans and Jews. The only question is who will become supreme. Therefore, the idea was clear and understandable to him that the latter should be destroyed. In 1943, Mengele was appointed senior doctor in the women's barracks of the Auschwitz concentration camp, where his “colleagues” greeted him as a hero, and the prisoners soon nicknamed him the “Angel of Death.”

Immediately upon arrival, Mengele demonstrated his professional “talent” and his serious intentions. Shortly before this, a typhus epidemic began in the camp. About a thousand Roma were affected by the disease. Without thinking twice, Josef decided that only extreme measures could save the rest of the prisoners from infection. Kneeling before him, women and children begged to spare them, but this did not help. They were brutally beaten and forced into trucks, after which they were taken to the gas chambers.

This information is not for the faint of heart!

Mengel was omnipresent, and the range of his “scientific” interests was extremely wide. He began with work to “increase the fertility of Aryan women.” Naturally, non-Aryan women served as the material for research. Later, the leadership of the Nazi Party set the doctor a new, directly opposite task: to find the cheapest and most effective methods of limiting the birth rate of “subhumans” - Jews, Gypsies and Slavs. To develop the most effective and fastest technique, Mengel performed several hundred operations. There was no talk of any anesthesia. Having mutilated tens of thousands of men and women, including a group of Polish nuns, he came to the conclusion that the most reliable way to avoid conception was sterilization.

All prisoners who miraculously survived the brutal experiments were immediately burned. Once, when the crematorium was overcrowded, Mengele ordered to dig a large pit, fill it with gasoline and set it on fire. The living and the dead, adults, children and infants, were thrown into the pit and burned under his personal supervision.

And the “research” continued to take its course. The Wehrmacht ordered a topic: to find out everything about the effects of cold (hypothermia) on a soldier’s body. The experimental technique was very simple: a concentration camp prisoner was covered with ice on all sides, and “doctors” in SS uniform constantly measured his body temperature. When a test subject died, a new one was brought from the barracks. Conclusion: after the body has cooled below 30 degrees, it is most likely impossible to save a person. The best way to warm up is a hot bath and the “natural warmth of the female body.”

The Luftwaffe, the German air force, commissioned research on the topic: the effect of high altitude on pilot performance. A pressure chamber was built in Auschwitz. Thousands of prisoners suffered a terrible death - with ultra-low pressure, a person was simply torn apart. Conclusion: it is necessary to build aircraft with a pressurized cabin. By the way, not a single one of these aircraft took off in Germany until the very end of the war.

On his own initiative, Joseph Mengele, who became interested in racial theory in his youth, conducted experiments with eye color. For some reason, he needed to prove in practice that the brown eyes of Jews under no circumstances could become the blue eyes of a “true Aryan.” Then he began injecting hundreds of Jews with blue dye into the eyeball, which was extremely painful and often led to blindness. Victims monstrous experiments Tens of thousands of people became Mengele. He often researched the effects of physical and mental exhaustion on the human body, but his main goal was always the desire to uncover the secrets genetic engineering and develop methods to destroy the carriers of the "inferior" genes in the human population in order to create a superior Germanic race. Mengele saw one of the ways to increase the birth rate by artificially increasing the number of twins and triplets, so he was most interested in research on twins.

Mengele reserved a special barracks for them, as well as for dwarfs, freaks and other “exotic individuals.” In general, Joseph was particularly interested in exceptional cases. He took great care to ensure that his beloved subjects, the so-called “Children of Mengele,” did not die. To keep their health in good condition, he protected them from beatings and forced labor. However, Mengele was not guided by humanistic motives, but only by his desire to keep these “individuals” healthy for further experiments, which were the most perverted and cruel. When it came to inventing torture for victims, Mengele's imagination knew no bounds.

Preliminary examinations of the twin children were quite routine. They were questioned, measured and weighed. However, as soon as they fell into the hands of Mengele, everything changed. Before starting the experiments, the “kind” Doctor Mengele usually patted the child on the head and treated him to chocolate. He took blood samples from them daily and sent them to Professor Verschuer in Berlin. He injected blood from one twin into another (often even from a different pair) and recorded the results. Typically there was a fever, a severe headache that lasted several days, and other inflammatory symptoms. Young children were placed in isolated cages and given various stimulants to test their response. Some were spayed or neutered. Others had organs and body parts removed, also without anesthesia, or were injected with infectious agents to see how quickly they would cause disease. Sisters were forced to bear children from their brothers. Forced gender reassignment operations were carried out.

One day Mengele noticed two twin brothers, one of whom sang wonderfully, and the other did not have such a voice. Mengele cut out the vocal cords of both of them to understand their differences. He once led an operation in which two gypsy children were sewn together to artificially create Siamese twins. Of the three thousand young twins, only two hundred survived. However, the “famous” Auschwitz doctor was engaged not only in applied research. Concentration camp prisoners were deliberately infected with various diseases in order to test the effectiveness of new drugs on them. Mengele transplanted animal organs into people and then documented the painful death during rejection.

You won't get away from yourself

At the end of 1944, Mengele began to realize that the war was lost. His “work spirit” noticeably worsened. January 17, 1945, amid the roar of advancing artillery Soviet army, ten days before Auschwitz was entered soviet soldiers, he, having destroyed all the documents and changed the uniform of an SS officer to the jacket of a Wehrmacht officer, fled to the west along with the retreating units.

In April 1945, Mengele was detained by American soldiers. Josef was saved from justice only by the fact that he did not have the usual tattoo for SS men (they had their blood type applied under their armpits). At one time, he managed to convince his superiors that there was no point in a tattoo - they say, a professional doctor would in any case do a basic blood test before starting a transfusion. However, his wife said that Mengele simply did not want to spoil his smooth skin with a tattoo. Thus, Mengele’s identity could not be established, and he was released. He decided to flee to Latin America. The wife, who by that time already had another man, refused to follow him. And Mengele left alone. Rich relatives gave him money and helped him get false documents. He moved to Argentina.

During the famous Nuremberg trials, Mengele was not included in the list of twenty-three doctors accused of conducting inhumane experiments on thousands of prisoners. Fifteen of them were found guilty: seven faced execution, eight were held for many years behind bars, and Josef Mengele lived free...

In May 1960, when an Israeli intelligence task force captured Adolf Eichmann, number one on the Nazi list, in Argentina, a frightened Mengele fled to Paraguay. From there he fled to Brazil, where, according to some sources, he continued to conduct experiments on people. Perhaps it is because of this that in one of the Brazilian towns, called Candido Godoy, an unprecedented number of twins, often blond and blue-eyed, are born to this day. Local residents said that in the 1960s, a mysterious doctor appeared in the city who called himself Rudolf Weiss. He treated livestock and people, and also performed artificial insemination.

In different countries, the percentage of twins born varies, but on average, the chance of their birth is one in eighty, while in Candido Godoy every fifth pregnant woman gives birth to twins. There are suggestions that the city may once have served as a “laboratory” where Mengele was finally able to fulfill his dreams of creating a “super race of blond, blue-eyed Aryans.” After all, for many years Doctor Death hid from the national intelligence services here, leading a secluded, reclusive lifestyle. As a result, he managed to avoid the “earthly judgment”.

Mengele died accidentally. In 1979, while swimming in the ocean, he suffered a stroke, as a result of which he drowned. The fascist was buried under a false name in the cemetery of the town of Embuba near Sao Paulo. In June 1985, Brazilian police received permission to examine the remains. Research has confirmed that they indeed belong to the most ruthless fanatic doctor of Auschwitz, Josef Mengele...

Congenital deformity saved an entire family from death in a gas chamber

At midnight on May 19, 1944, another train carrying Jews arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The SS guards habitually herded people into groups, and the shepherd dogs burst into hoarse barking. And suddenly seven midgets appear at the door of the carriage: five women dressed as if for a ball and two men in elegant suits. Not at all embarrassed by the situation, they look around with interest, and one of them begins to hand out business cards to the stunned guards: let them know that this strange place The world famous “Lilliput Troupe” has arrived!

Having found out that all these kids were brothers and sisters, the SS officer ordered his subordinates to urgently wake up the doctor Joseph Mengele. Everyone knew that he was “assembling” his own cabinet of curiosities and simply adored all sorts of deviations from the norm. And here are seven Lilliputian relatives at once. Mengele, having listened to what was the matter, immediately jumped out of bed.

Music connected them

The dwarfs did not yet know that the “doctor” they were expecting preferred to treat using radical methods. For example, when a typhus epidemic began in one of the women's barracks, he simply sent 498 of its inhabitants to the gas chambers. And they also didn’t know about the monstrous experiments on living people. Therefore, when Herr Mengele began to ask questions, they gladly told the story of their family.

Shimshon Ovitz from the Romanian town of Roswell was a Lilliputian, which did not stop him from marrying women of normal height twice. Seven of his children were born small, three - ordinary. The head of the family died when the youngest, Perla, was not even two years old. Shimshon's second wife, Batya-Bertha, was left alone with ten offspring in her arms. It occurred to her that children should learn music, and she was right. Everyone quickly mastered various instruments, created a family ensemble and began touring. Troupe Ovitsev was a great success and, accordingly, a good income. They could even afford a car, a rarity in those days. But in 1940, part of Romania came under the control of Nazi Hungary, and restrictions on Jews came into force. In particular, they were forbidden to speak in front of representatives of other nationalities. The team temporarily stopped giving concerts, and during the downtime, the Ovits were able to provide themselves with fake documents in order to start performing again. But in 1944, the secret became clear, and the entire family - 12 people aged from 15 months to 58 years - were sent to Auschwitz.

Saved by the Devil

Dr. Mengele's family members were of little interest in the musical abilities. But the union of a dwarf with an ordinary woman and the ratio of normal offspring to children with disabilities is incredible! Therefore, he ordered not to touch the Ovits. Confidently lying to the monster about his close relationship with unusual family, their neighbor Simon Shlomowitz saved his own - ten people. All of them were housed separately from other prisoners. They were allowed to wear their own clothes and not shave their heads. Sometimes they even fed us not gruel, but more or less decent food.

“Perhaps we amused him and he wants us to put on a show here,” the Ovitz thought. Therefore, when they were called to the doctor, the women dressed up and put on makeup (they were allowed to keep their makeup with them). However, in the laboratory they simply took blood from everyone. A week later again. And then again and again. Such volumes were pumped out of the poor Lilliputians that they fainted. But as soon as they came to their senses, the execution was repeated.

They made careless punctures, and blood splashed in all directions. We often felt sick. When we returned to the barracks, we fell onto the bunks. But before we had time to regain our strength, we were called to a new cycle,” she recalled Perla Ovitz.

Family members were checked for the functioning of their internal organs, looked for for typhus, syphilis and other diseases, and pulled out healthy teeth and pulled out eyelashes. Psychiatrists endlessly asked questions, supposedly testing intelligence. But most terrible torture there were infusions into the ears: boiling water followed by ice water, and so on in a circle. The most offensive thing is that Joseph Mengele himself did not understand how to use the results of his monstrous experiments and what they could tell him about the mystery of this family. But at the same time, he enthusiastically asked the wife of the eldest of the dwarfs, Abraham, Dora (she was of normal height), about the smallest details of their sex life.

However, at least they remained alive. But another hunchback dwarf who appeared in the camp was much less fortunate. The fanatical doctor decided that the skeletons of the little freaks should be exhibited in the Berlin Museum, and ordered the unfortunate man to be thrown into a cauldron and boiled until the meat was separated from the bones.

And ordinary twins were the fanatic’s favorite “material.” He transfused blood and transplanted their organs into each other, tried to change eye color using chemicals, and infected them with viruses. I wanted to understand how twins are produced and make sure that German women give birth to two or three racially pure children at a time

So the Ovitses were even grateful to their “savior.” And they always tried to appear neat and cheerful before him. The women even flirted with Josef, and he brought their children toys from the kids killed in the camp. The youngest of the family, named Shimshon in honor of his grandfather, even once called Mengele dad. He gently corrected the one-and-a-half-year-old boy: “No, I’m not dad, I’m just Uncle Josef.”

The youngest of the Lilliputians, Perla, who was then 23, seemed to have what would be called “Stockholm syndrome” many years later.

Dr. Mengele looked like a movie star, only more handsome, she said. - Anyone could fall in love with him. But none of those who saw him could even imagine what his beautiful face a monster is hiding. We knew that he was merciless and capable of the most terrible forms of sadism. That when he was angry, he became hysterical. But, being in bad mood, immediately calmed down as soon as he crossed the threshold of our barracks. Seeing him in a good mood, everyone in the camp said, “Probably visited the kids.”

Visual aid

One evening the doctor looked into the dwarfs, holding a small package in his hands. He informed his charges that they would have a special trip the next day. Noticing how the Lilliputians turned pale, he reassured them with a smile. And he left a package containing lipstick, blush, nail polish, eye shadow, and a bottle of cologne. The women were delighted.

The next day, at dawn, all the Lilliputians were put into a truck and taken to a building located in the SS residential camp. They even fed us a hearty lunch, served on porcelain plates and silver cutlery.

Then the troupe was brought onto the stage. The hall was full - entirely the management team. The Ovits became poised, but then Mengele barked: “Take off your clothes!” They had no choice but to obey. Trying to cover their private parts, the Lilliputians hunched over. “Straighten up!” - the tormentor shouted to them. And then he began to give a lecture entitled “Examples of work with anthropological and hereditary biology in concentration camps,” the essence of which was that the Jewish people were degenerating, turning into a nation of freaks. Lilliputians were ideally suited as a visual aid. So the SS officers gladly groped the Ovits at the end of the performance.

This was another test for the family, but nevertheless Mengele saved them from death. Another camp doctor, jealous of Josef's position, sent brothers Abraham and Miki to the gas chamber behind his back. But Mengele managed to get them out. Therefore, the Ovitzes were even offended by the doctor who did not take them with him when he was transferred from Auschwitz to the Gross-Rosen camp. And not in vain. The Lilliputians who were left without the support of the devil were going to be sent to the gas chamber. But they were lucky again. Their execution was scheduled for January 27, 1945, but on that day Soviet soldiers entered Auschwitz. A few months later, the miraculously surviving Ovitses returned to their looted and destroyed home. Later they moved to Antwerp, Belgium. And after the formation of Israel they moved to Haifa. They lived a long life: the older sister Rozika died at 98, the younger sister Perla died at 80. She did not feel any malice towards her torturer.

If the judges had asked me whether he should be hanged, I would have answered that he should be released,” she said. - I was saved by the grace of the devil - God will give Mengele his due.

Think about it!

Prisoner of Auschwitz, Czech Dina Gottlibova, on the orders of Dr. Mengele, she made drawings of the heads, ears, noses, mouths, arms and legs of his experimental subjects, including Ovitz. She recalled that Joseph called the dwarfs after the seven dwarfs from the fairy tale. Ironically, Dina married an artist after the war Arthur Babbitt, who drew the characters for Disney's Snow White.

Keep in mind

* Josef MENGELE(1911 - 1979) - SS Hauptsturmführer, awarded the Iron Cross 1st degree for saving two tank crews from a burning tank.

*The topic of his doctoral dissertation was “Racial differences in mandibular structure.”

* In Auschwitz, he dissected live babies, castrated boys and men without anesthesia, subjected women to blows electric current high voltage, to find out their endurance, sterilized a group of Polish nuns using X-rays.

* Received the nickname Angel of Death.

* Until 1949 he was hiding in Bavaria, from there he fled to Argentina. When he was tracked down by agents of the Israeli secret service Mossad, Mengele was the most wanted Nazi criminal after Adolf Eichmann, moved to Paraguay and later to Brazil.

* While swimming in the state of Sao Paulo, a ghoul suffered a stroke and drowned.

With rare exceptions such as Hitler and Himmler, no man has been as vilified in recent decades as the "Nazi devil" Dr. Josef Mengele. The legend of Mengele became the basis for two short stories, on which Hollywood made two popular films: "Marathon Man" by William Goldman and "The Boys From Brazil" by Ira Levin.
IN last movie Gregory Peck plays the ruthlessly evil Dr. Mengele, who cloned dozens of baby Hitlers as part of a diabolical Latin American conspiracy.
In countless newspapers and magazines articles dr. Mengele was systematically accused of murdering 400,000 people in gas chambers during his tenure as chief physician at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943 and 1944. The man nicknamed the "Angel of Death" allegedly carried out gruesome "experiments" on Jewish victims while reveling in his sadistic atrocities.

For example, U.S. News and World Report on June 24, 1985, stated that he rejoiced "giving candy to children whom he, for fun, sent alive to crematorium ovens while listening to Mozart and Wagner." The Washington Post wrote on March 8, 1985 that Mengele "routinely sent babies into ovens alive" and "knocked pregnant women down and trampled them until they miscarried."
The media campaign reached its climax in June 1985, when Mengele's name was repeated many times daily both in the pages of the press and on the evening television news. Mengele's face stared out from the cover of the gossip-loving weekly People. Years of persecution subsided when an international team of forensic experts identified remains exhumed in Brazil as those of Dr Josef Mengele. Testimony from relatives and friends confirmed that Mengele drowned in February 1979.

The basic claim that Mengele "gassed 400,000 Jews at Auschwitz" is a lie based in part on distortions. It is true that, along with other camp doctors, Dr. Mengele examined new arrivals to the camp.
Holocaust “exterminators” (“exterminists”) claim that all Jews arriving at Auschwitz who were unable to work were immediately killed in gas chambers. The figure of 400,000 is a rough estimate of the number of disabled Jews who arrived in Birkenau in 1943-1944, when Mengele was chief physician.

Indeed, many disabled Jews were interned in the camp. Official German records, consistent with other evidence, state that a very significant proportion of the Jews who arrived in Birkenau in 1943-1944 were disabled. (See G. Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 125, and A. Butz, Hoax, p. 124).

Many Jews survived the war thanks to treatment in the camp isolation ward under the direction of Dr. Mengele. One of these patients was Otto Frank, the father of the famous Anne Frank. The sick Otto was transferred to the camp hospital. where he stayed before joining Soviet troops to Auschwitz in January 1945.

For example, Time magazine wrote on June 24, 1985, that Mengele "had a penchant for sophistication and gallantry: after sending a pregnant Jewish doctor to Krakow to do research for him, Mengele sent her flowers on the occasion of the birth of her son." Camp personnel who committed crimes were subject to severe persecution. For example, the Buchenwald doctor Waldemar Hoven was sentenced to death by an SS court for killing prisoners.

International columnist Geoffrey Hart told readers that he doubts the "Monster Mengele" stories peddled in the media... As a professional historian, I am prejudiced against many anecdotes commonly accepted as fact," Hart wrote. "My Experience as a Historian indicates that most of them are myths, deliberately concocted... I do not believe that he killed women with blows to the throat with his boot. This kind of thing was done long before historians began to sift the truth from the lies about Dr. Mengele." (The Washington Times, July 9, 1985)

And if Hart deliberately shielded Mengele, then how can one evaluate his views on the Holocaust in general? What about his support for the popular Holocaust tale, announced at Nuremberg, about the Nazis producing soap from the corpses of Jews? What about the tales of gassing in Dachau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Auschwitz?

Witnesses claim that Dr. Mengele performed medical research operations on Auschwitz prisoners. However, similar “research” conducted by the United States both during and after the Second World War did not create any resonance. For example, American military doctors infected blacks with syphilis to develop new ways to treat sexually transmitted diseases.

And in the 1950s, CIA-funded psychiatric experiments included administering LSD, sleep deprivation, mass shock therapy, and attempts to brainwash hospital patients without their consent or knowledge.

One victim, Louis Weinstein, is described as "a human guinea pig, a miserable, pathetic man with no memory, no life." The US government was forced by court to pay damages to Winstein and eight other patients. (The Washington Post, August 1, 1985, editorial).

An informative article about Dr. Mengele by New York University professor Robert Lay Lifton appeared on July 21, 1985 in The New York Times Magazine. The lengthy article began with the statement that "Mengele for a long time was at the center of all that demonic personality cult. He is presented as the embodiment of absolute evil..." But, as Lifton explains, he was not "neither the inhuman nor the superhuman forces" depicted in the media.

As a young man, Mengele was popular, intelligent and serious. For three years service, mainly on the eastern front, he proved himself a brave and diligent soldier and received five decorations, including the Iron Cross, First and Second Class. As chief physician of Auschwitz-Birkenau, he was part of a large staff of doctors, most of whom were Jews.

Lifton notes that the "witness" testimony about Mengele, as well as the published materials from the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, are riddled with errors. For example, although Mengele was one of many doctors who made decisions about the working capacity of Jews newly arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Jewish prisoners at the trial insisted that Mengele always made the selection alone. To the judge’s comment: “Mengele could not have been there all the time,” the witness replied: “According to my observations, always. Night and day.”

Other former prisoners Mengele was described as having a "very Aryan appearance" or "tall blond", although in reality he was a dark-haired man of average height.

Lifton writes that among the many myths about Mengele are stories that he advised Paraguayan President Stroessner on how to destroy the indigenous population of Paraguay, and that he succeeded in organizing a successful drug trade with former Nazis.

Significant information about the character and qualities of Dr. Mengele from his contemporaries during his work at Auschwitz is contained in the “Evaluation of SS Captain Dr. Josef Mengele,” dated August 19, 1944, prepared by the Auschwitz medical department. (The original is kept in the Berlin Central Archives). The report is very flattering:
Dr. Mengele has an open, honest, integrity character. He is absolutely reliable, straightforward and purposeful. He does not show any weaknesses of character, bad passions or inclinations. His emotional and physical makeup is outstanding. During his service in the Auschwitz concentration camp, he used his practical and theoretical knowledge to prevent several serious epidemics.

With prudence and persistent energy, and often under the most difficult conditions, he carried out the most difficult leadership assignments. He has shown himself capable of handling any situation. In addition, he used his meager personal time to improve his knowledge in the field of anthropology. His tactful and moderate behavior is characteristic of a good soldier. Because of his behavior, he is especially respected by his comrades. He treats his subordinates with absolute fairness and the necessary severity, without allowing any exclusivity or preference.

With all his behavior and attitude towards work, Dr. Mengele demonstrates an absolutely integral and mature attitude towards life. He is a Catholic. His manner of speaking is spontaneous, free, persuasive and lively.
The personal assessment ends with the remark that Mengele “made an invaluable contribution to the fight against typhus in Auschwitz.” She lists the awards he has received for his bravery and selfless service and concludes that he is worthy of promotion.

After fleeing to South America to avoid trial, Mengele lived for 10 years in Argentina and Paraguay under his own name. There is no evidence that he was ashamed or hid anything about what he did at Auschwitz. On the contrary, in a letter to his son Ralph, he wrote: “I have not the slightest reason to justify or be ashamed of my decisions or actions.” (Time, July 1, 1985).

Among his personal papers found by Brazilian police in June 1985 was a scattered semi-biographical essay entitled in Latin: "Fiat Lux" - "Let there be Light", apparently written by Mengele while he was living on a farm in Bavaria immediately after the war. The contents of the essay have not yet been published. (The New York Times, June 23, 1985).

Mengele spoke occasionally about his past with Mr. and Mrs. Stammer, the couple with whom he lived for 13 years on their farm near Sao Paulo, Brazil. Mr. Stammer recalls that Mengele said that the Jews were alien social group, who worked against Germany, which the Germans wanted to remove from their country. Mengele repeatedly insisted that he had not committed any crimes, but, on the contrary, was the victim of the greatest injustice. (New York Times, June 14, 1985; Baltimore Sun, June 14, 1985).

IN recent years Mengele lived with an Austrian couple, Wolfram and Liselotte Bossert, on their farm in Brazil. In the interview, the Bosserts expressed great admiration and great affection for their humble guest. In response to a question about the crimes Mengele was accused of at Auschwitz, Wolfram Bossert said: “I admire him as a person with an abundance of positive qualities, and not for the crimes he is accused of, the reality of which I strongly doubt.” (Washington Post, June 10, 1985).

An old friend of Dr. Mengele and the Mengele family in Germany, Hans Saddlemeyer, told this reporter:
“I can tell you what Mengele did, what he did in Auschwitz, what he did after Auschwitz, but you won’t believe me. The newspapers don’t want to print the truth because it’s not in the interests of the Jews... I don’t want to talk about Mengele’s stories, journalists wrote so many lies that were spread by the Jewish press...” Clearly outraged, he did not finish his sentence. (New York Times, June 13, 1985).

Mark Weber
The Journal of Historical Review, Fall 1985 (Vol. 6, No. 3), pages 377 ff.

P.S. While in Auschwitz, the Jewish woman Sadovskaya was seriously injured at work and lost her ability to work. Here's what she said:
"Since I could no longer work, I was afraid that I would be sent to the gas chamber. Everyone knew that everyone who was unable to work was sent to the gas chamber."
In the end, Sadovskaya was sent - no, not to the gas chamber, which she was so afraid of and what was sure to happen according to legend - but to the camp hospital, where she remained until she recovered. Seven days later she was sent to Dr. Mengele himself. He allegedly began to conduct very painful experiments on Sadovskaya; She did not specify which ones exactly. As she claimed, these experiences left her crippled.

In this case, according to legend, she certainly should have been sent to the gas chamber, since now she was not only incapacitated, but also unsuitable for experiments, as she herself stated. But then another “miracle” happened: they began to look after her again until she finally recovered.

Just think about it all: a Jewish prisoner from Auschwitz had a serious accident and was sent to a hospital where she was cared for for a week. Then the SS doctor began performing unpleasant surgical operations on her, after which she made a full recovery.
This clearly proves that the SS did everything possible (including surgery) to restore this woman’s health and ability to work. However, at the post-war inquiry, Sadovskaya tried to turn everything upside down: they allegedly did not treat her, but tried to kill her.
Please also note that the investigator who conducted this inquiry in 1959 did not even try to find out what kind of experiment (that is, surgery) was performed on her. This once again confirms the childish gullibility of these investigators.
…
1285. Staatsanwaltschaft beim LG Frankfurt (Main), ibid. (note 462); Bd. 1, S. 132.
1286. Copy of witness statements dated August 30; there, Bd. 2, S. 223ff.
1287. Letter from the Auschwitz Committee, October 20, 1958; there, Bd. 2, S. 226.
1288. Ibid., Bd. 2, S. 250.
1289. Interrogation dated November 7, 1958; there, Bd. 2, S. 279f.
1290. Interrogation dated November 14, 1958; there, Bd. 2, S. 283.
1291. Ibid., Bd. 3, S. 437R.
1292. See the verdict at the Frankfurt trial, ibid. (note 1041).
1293. Interrogation of March 5, 1959 in Stuttgart, ibid., Bd. 3, S. 571-576.
1294. Interrogation of March 6, 1959, ibid., S. 578-584.
1295. Ibid., Bd. 5, S. 657, 684, 676, 678f.
1296. Ibid., S. 684.

P.P.S. The creator of the “myth of Mengele” was his assistant, the Hungarian Jew Dr. Miklos Nyisli, according to whose testimony 22 million people were killed in Auschwitz. And the last point: arbitrary beatings and murders of prisoners in the camps. Upon entering service in the concentration camp, each SS man had to sign a statement with the following content:
“I know that only the Fuhrer has power over the life and death of the enemy of the state. I have no right to physically harm or kill an enemy of the state (prisoner) ... I know that I will be immediately held accountable if I violate this obligation.”

State Archives of the Russian Federation. 7021–107-11, S. 30.