by Edwin Black
The lab had everything needed for perfect autopsies. It was eerily professional, with light green painted walls surrounding a red concrete floor. A polished marble dissection table with fluid drains abutted a utility basin with shiny nickel faucets. Three white porcelain sinks lined the wall. Mosquito screens covered the windows. In the adjacent room, Nyiszli found a well-stocked library with the latest publications, three microscopes, and a closet full of mortuary supplies-everything from aprons to gloves. Nyiszli recalled it as “the exact replica of any large city’s institute of pathology.”76
Dina, a Czech inmate known for her skillful paintings, was selected at the ramp to become Mengele’s anthropological artist. She would create anatomical drawings of the twins’ features: noses, ears, mouths, hands, feet and skulls. Her artwork would accompany the experimentation data in each patient’s folder.77
Mengele was happy in his work, frequently whistling as he selected human guinea pigs, discarded others to the gas chambers, inflicted his experiments and then reviewed the autopsies. A broad smile lit up his face as he surveyed his precious subjects, especially the children. “Almost like he had fun,” one surviving twin recalled, adding, “He was very playful.” Diligent and detailed, he once noticed a smudge on a bright blue file cover and sternly turned to Nyiszli, asking, “How can you be so careless with these files, which I have compiled with so much love!”78
Love was a corrupted word for Mengele. He certainly loved his work. At times, he seemed to love the youngest twins. All of Mengele’s twins were better fed than other prisoners and even allowed small personal freedoms, such as roaming around the camp. Sometimes he served the children chocolates, patted them on the head affectionately, chaperoned them to camp concerts and made them feel as though he were a father figure looking after them. Eva Kupas remembered that once, when she wanted to see her twin brother, Mengele personally escorted her and “held my hand the whole way.” He seemed to identify with one very young boy who somewhat resembled him, and actually trained the child to say “My name is ‘Mengele.”‘79
But without warning Mengele could fly into uncontrollable murderous frenzies. One teenage girl wept and begged when she was separated from her mother and sisters. She recounted that Mengele “grabbed me by the hair, dragged me on the ground and beat me.” When the girl’s mother pleaded, Mengele brutally beat her with his riding crop. In one case, a frantic mother fought to remain with her younger daughter. Mengele simply drew his pistol and shot the woman and her daughter, then waved the entire transport to the gas chambers, remarking, “Away with this shit!” Another time he caught a woman named rbi, who had cleverly evaded the gas chambers six times by jumping off the truck just in time. A suddenly enraged Mengele shrieked, “You want to escape, don’t you. You can’t escape now!… Dirty Jew!” As he screamed, Mengele viciously beat the woman to death and kept beating her until her head resembled a bloody, formless mass. After these savage incidents, Mengele could immediately Jekyll-Hyde back to the charming, whistling clinician enchanted with his subjects and his science.80
In fact, Mengele loved his twins not because he thought they should be preserved, but only because they briefly served his mad scientific quest. Nyiszli recounted that siblings were subjected “to every medical examination that can be performed on human beings,” from blood tests to lumbar punctures. Each was rigorously photographed naked, and calipered from head to toe to complete the record. But these were only the baselines and vital signs. Then came the actual experiments. The Reichenberg boys, mistakenly thought to be twins because they so closely resembled each other, piqued Mengele’s interest because one possessed a singer’s voice while the other couldn’t carry a tune. After crude surgery on both boys’ vocal chords, one brother lost his speech altogether. Twin girls were forced to have sex with twin boys to see if twin children would result. Efforts were made to surgically change the gender of other twins.81
One day, Mengele brought chocolates and extra clothing for twin brothers, Guido and Nino, both popular with the medical personnel. A few days later the twins were brought back, their wrists and backs sewn together in a crude parody of Siamese twins, their veins interconnected and their surgical wounds clearly festering. The boys screamed all night until their mother managed to end their agony with a fatal injection of morphine.82
Mengele suspected that two Gypsy boys, about seven years of age and well-liked in the lab, carried latent tuberculosis. When prisoner doctors offered a different opinion, Mengele became agitated. He told the assembled staff to wait a while. An hour later he returned and sedately declared, “You are right. There was nothing.” After a brief silence, Mengele acknowledged, “Yes, r dissected them.” He had shot both in the neck and autopsied them “while they were still warm.”83
It was imperative that twins be murdered simultaneously to analyze them comparatively. “They had to die together,” Nyiszli recounted. For example, the bodies of four sets of Gypsy twins under the age of ten were delivered to Nyiszli for autopsy in one shipment. Twelve sets of gassed twins were diverted from the furnace so they could be dissected as a group; to facilitate identification among the hundreds of twisted corpses, the twelve had been coded with chalk on their chests before they entered the chamber. One girl recovered from an implanted infection too soon; he killed her quickly so both siblings would be freshly deceased.84
If one of Mengele’s precious human guinea pigs was harmed before he could complete his work, he became incensed. Guards were under strict instructions to keep Mengele’s twins alive, or face his wrath if they died during the night prior to his handling. Some 1,500 twins were subjected to Mengele’s atrocities. Fewer than two hundred survived.85 Those who lived had simply not yet been killed.
Mengele also sought dwarfs and the physically deformed-really any specimen of interest. He ghoulishly and capriciously explored the effects of genetics, disease and mass breeding. In one case, Mengele removed part of a man’s stomach without administering anesthesia. To investigate the pathology of dysentery, Mengele told Nyiszli to prepare for 150 emaciated corpses, and to autopsy them at the rate of seven per day; Nyiszli protested that he could only complete three per day if he was to be thorough. Eye color was a favorite subject for experimentation. Eager to discover if brown eyes could be converted to Nordic blue, Mengele would introduce blue dyes, sometimes by drops, sometimes by injection. It often blinded the subjects, but it never changed their eye color.86
While evidence of mass murder in the trenches of Russia and the gas chambers of Poland was systematically destroyed, Mengele’s murders were enshrined in the protocols of science. Mengele’s ghastly files did not remain his private mania, confined to Auschwitz. Every case was meticulously annotated, employing the best scientific method prisoner doctors could muster. Then the files were sent to Verschuer’s offices at the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem for study.
An adult prisoner, chosen to help care for the youngest twins, recounted, “The moment a pair of twins arrived in the barrack, they were asked to complete a detailed questionnaire from the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. One of my duties as [the] ‘Twins’ Father’ was to help them fill it out, especially the little ones, who couldn’t read or write. These forms contained dozens of detailed questions related to a child’s background, health, and physical characteristics. They asked for the age, weight, and height of the children, their eye color and the color of their hair. They were promptly mailed to Berlin. “87
Nyiszli, who had to fill out voluminous postmortem reports, recalled Mengele’s warning: “‘I want clean copy, because these reports will be forwarded to the Institute of Biological, Racial and Evolutionary Research at Berlin-Dahlem.’ Thus I learned that the experiments performed here were checked by the highest medical authorities at one of the most famous scientific institutes in the world.”88
The reports, countersigned by Mengele and sent to Berlin, were not just received and warehoused, they were carefully reviewed and discusse
d. A dialogue developed between Verschuer’s institute and Mengele. Another prisoner assistant recounted that Mengele “would receive questions about the twins from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and he would send them the answers. “89
The volume of exchange was massive. In a March 1944 memo from Verschuer to the German Research Society, which financed his work, he asked for more clerical assistance and supplies for the Auschwitz project. The memo, entitled “On the continuation of hereditary-psychological research” and filed under the keyword “Twins camp,” was coded G for geheime, or “secret.” Verschuer explained, “Analysis of material obtained from the twins camp continued during the half-year reporting period October 1943 to March 15, 1944. Some 25 psychological analyses, each of which consisted of about 200 pages, were dictated during this period, continuing to round out the overall description of the experiences gained through the twins camp. These analyses were continued, following the same methods as those analyses which began in the summer of 1943. The evaluation system employed has proven useful and was developed further. Several secretaries will be necessary in order to continue the evaluation, as well as sufficient amounts of typing paper, steno blocks and other writing equipment. Some 10,000 sheets of paper will be needed for the coming quarter-year.”90
More than just reports, Nyiszli sent body parts. “I had to keep any organs of possible scientific interest,” he remembered, “so that Dr. Mengele could examine them. Those which might interest the Anthropological Institute at Berlin-Dahlem were preserved in alcohol. These parts were specially packed to be sent through the mails. Stamped ‘War Material-Urgent,’ they were given top priority in transit. In the course of my work at the crematorium I dispatched an impressive number of such packages. I received, in reply, either precise scientific observations or instructions. In order to classify this correspondence I had to set up special files. The directors of the Berlin-Dahlem Institute always warmly thanked Dr. Mengele for this rare and precious material.”91
Among his many grisly memories, one case especially haunted Nyiszli. Mengele spotted a hunchbacked Jew, a respected cloth merchant from Lodz, Poland, and his teenage son, handsome but with a deformed foot supported by an orthopedic shoe. Mengele ordered his slave pathologist, Nyiszli, to interview the father and son for the file. Nyiszli did so, not in the dissecting room, which reeked of formaldehyde, but in an adjacent study hall, trying his best not to alarm them. After the interview, the father and son were shot. Nyiszli performed detailed autopsies, complete with copious notes. Mengele was fascinated with the eugenic potential of the information, since each individual carried his own deformity. “These bodies must not be cremated,” Mengele ordered. “They must be prepared and their skeletons sent to the Anthropological Museum in Berlin.” After some discussion, Nyiszli began the gruesome chore of creating two lab-quality skeletons. This involved cooking the corpses to detach all flesh. During the long cooking process in the courtyard, four starving Polish slave workers mistook the contents of the vats and began eating. Nyiszli ran out to stop them. The cooled and treated skeletons were then wrapped in large sacks, labeled “Urgent: National Defense,” and mailed to the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics.92
In the depths of his misery, Nyiszli wondered if he had witnessed too much. “Was it conceivable,” he wrote, “that Dr. Mengele, or the Berlin-Dahlem Institute, would ever allow me to leave this place alive?”93
Like many eugenic research organizations, the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics valued twins’ eyes. For decades, American eugenicists had stressed the research importance of twins’ eyes, and the German movement naturally adopted the precept. Indeed, typical enthusiasm for the topic was evident in the March-April 1933 edition of Eugenical News in an article headlined “Hereditary Eye Defects,” which reviewed a newly released book that included a chapter on “eyes of twins.” Eugenical News closed its review with the comment, “We have nothing but praise for the assiduity in the gathering of the data…. We are happy to have this long needed work done and so well done.” Similarly enthusiastic reviews and articles on the subject of twins’ eyes and vision were published in Eugenical News during the latter 1930s.94
In 1936, a colleague had sent Laughlin a request to expand the eye color question of the ERO’s Twin Schedule. The new instructions would read: “Look at the colored part of the eye carefully in a good light with the help of a mirror. Is there any difference that you can see in the color or pattern of marks in the right and left eyes? Blue and gray eyes have brownish streaks, sometimes a few, which can be easily counted and usually more in one eye than in the other. Please describe any such difference between your eyes.”95
Like his American colleagues, Verschuer was long interested in twin eye color. He wanted eye color studies included in his Auschwitz experiments, and the German Research Society funded one such project in September of 1943. Mengele was careful to gather all the eyes Verschuer needed.96
Inmate doctor Jancu Vekler never forgot what he saw when he entered one room at the Gypsy camp. “There I saw a wooden table with eyeballs laying on it. All of them were tagged with numbers and little notes. They were pale yellow, pale blue, green and violet.” Vera Kriegel, another slave doctor, recalled that she walked into one laboratory and was horrified to see a collection of eyeballs decorating an entire wall, “pinned up like butterflies…. I thought I was dead,” she said, “and was already living in hell. “97
One day a prisoner transcriptionist was frantic because while a family of eight had been murdered, only seven pairs of eyes were found in the pathology lab. “You’ve given me only seven pairs of eyes,” the assistant exclaimed. “We are missing two eyes!” He then scavenged similar eyes from other nearby corpses to complete the package for Verschuer’s institute-without Mengele being the wiser.98
Chief recipient of the eyes was Karin Magnussen, another Verschuer researcher at the institute who was investigating eye anomalies, such as individuals with irises of different colors. In a March 1944 update sub-headed “Work on the Human Eye” and submitted to the German Research Society, Magnussen reported, “The first histological work, which was concluded in the fall, ‘On the Relationship Between Iris Color, Histological Distribution of Pigment and Pigmentation of the Bulb of the Human Eye,’ to be published in the Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie [Journal for Morphology and Anthropology], is currently in press. Material for a second series of experiments is currently being prepared for histological examination. The article on the determination of iris color, which was intended for publication in Erbarzt in December 1943, was printed but destroyed by enemy attacks and is now being reprinted. Observations continue on links among certain anomalies in humans. Other observations of humans had to be temporarily suspended for war-related reasons, but are to resume in summer if possible. Material is constantly being collected and evaluated for the expert opinions.”99
Among the several scholarly articles on eyes from Auschwitz that Magnussen was authoring was one intended for the journal Zeitschrift for Induktive Abstammungslehre und Vererbungsforschung (Journal for Inductive Genealogical Science and Hereditary Research). Editorial board member Professor George Melchers, who reviewed the submission draft, remembered, “I was struck by the fact that the whole family-grandparents, parents and children-had died at the same time. I could only assume they had [all] been killed in a concentration camp.” The war was coming to an end, so Melchers never submitted Magnussen’s article to the full board.100
Magnussen later told her denazification tribunal, “I became acquainted with Dr. Mengele, who had been inducted as a medical officer, in [Berlin-] Dahlem during the war, when he visited the institute while on leave. I spoke with him a few times during such visits to the institute about scientific projects and scientific problems.… I completed my research, although after [a Gypsy] clan with heterochromatic eyes was imprisoned in Auschwitz, I was refused all access to these family members. Completion of my research was only p
ossible through the help given me by Dr. Mengele, who coincidentally had been transferred to the camp. At that time, he helped me trace the hereditary path by determining eye color and family relationships. Through him I also learned that one of the most important families in the clan was contaminated with tuberculosis. I then asked him if he could send me the autopsy and pathological tissue from the eyes if someone from this family should die.” She added, “The impression I received from the cases of illness and from the very responsible and very humane and very decent behavior exhibited by Dr. Mengele toward his imprisoned patients and subordinates… was such that I would never have thought that anything could have happened in Auschwitz that violated laws of the state, medicine or of humanity.”101
In addition to eyes, Verschuer wanted blood. Liters of it. For decades, eugenicists had sought the genetic markers for “carriers,” or people who appeared normal but were likely to transmit a Mendelian predisposition for a range of defective traits from pauperism to epilepsy. This effort was at first bogged down in early attempts to assemble race-based family trees and to create pseudoscientific ethnic and class countermeasures. But by the twenties, the most talented eugenicists and geneticists were working hard to analyze blood serum to solve the question of defective germ plasm. They weren’t sure whether they were seeking a specific hormone, an enzyme, a protein, genetic material or other blood molecule. They only knew that mankind’s eugenic destiny was lurking in the blood and waiting to be discovered.102
In 1924, Davenport had told the Second International Congress of Eugenics, “The hormones that determine our personality, constitute the bridge that connects this personality on the one hand, with the specific enzymes packed away in the chromosomes of the germ cells, on the other.” Davenport went on to explain, “You and I differ by virtue of the… atomic activity of the enzymes and hormones which make up that part of the stream of life-yeast which has got into and is activating our protoplasm and will activate that of the fertilized egg that results from us and our consorts.” He stressed that a human being was dictated “by virtue of the peculiar properties of those extraordinary activating substances, which are specific for him and other members of his family and race or biotype. The future of human genetics lies largely in a study of these activities…. Of these [studies], one of the most significant is that of twin-production.”103
