DEKEL, LUCETTE MATALON LAGNADO SHEILA COHN

by CHILDREN OF THE FLAMES

  ZYL THE SAILOR: My twin brother and I were marching toward the gas chambers when we heard people yelling,

  “Twins! twins!” We were yanked out of the lines and brought over to Dr. Mengele.

  I was not quite thirteen years old when my family was deported to Auschwitz-I hadn’t been bar mitzvahed yet. I came from a small village in Hungary where my father’s family had lived for generations.

  My mother came from Galicia, in Poland. There were eight children in our family.

  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. He used his finger. He motioned everyone in my family in the direction of the crematorium.

  As we marched to the crematorium, our mother told us,

  “You must not cry.” To this day, I do not know who told the Germans we were twins and had us removed from the line.

  MENASHE LORINCZI: 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.

  EVA MOZES: Once the SS guard knew we were twins, Miriam and I were taken away from our mother, without any warning or explanation.

  Our screams fell on deaf ears. I remember looking back and seeing my mother’s arms stretched out in despair as we were led away by a soldier.

  That was the last time I ever saw her.

  The twins who passed through the gates of Auschwitz were of all ages, but often they were very young children who fought and cried at being separated from their loved ones. If Mengele was on the scene, he tried to soothe the terrified parents. He would smile as he comforted an anguished mother, insisting her twins would be in good hands.

  And if the twins were just infants, Mengele might sometimes pull their mother out of the line as well, permitting her to accompany and look after them. Most often, however, the children were taken away alone.

  Once separated from their parents, the twins were marched through the camp, where they witnessed scenes of unparalleled horror. Piles of corpses were everywhere. Lying next to them, and virtually indistinguishable, were men and women thin as skeletons. These were the

  “Mussulmans”-the halfdead, with no strength or will to live, who were simply awaiting being carted to the gas chamber. A foul odor permeated the camp, which, combined with the heat, made it difficult to breathe. It was an absolute assault on the senses. Children clung to their twin, their last remaining links with the families they had lost.

  The twins’ initiation into Auschwitz formally began when they, like all new inmates, were showered and branded. They cried out in pain as numbers were etched into their flesh with searing metal rods.

  But unlike the other prisoners, who were given camp uniforms and whose heads were shaved, the twins were allowed to keep both their clothes and their long hair. These differences made them immediately recognizable as

  “Mengele’s children.”

  Despite these small privileges, the twins sank into despair within hours of arrival as they began to understand what had happened to their families. Once in their own compound, where at any given time there could be scores of twins, boys and girls separately lodged, they were briefed by the other children about the realities of life and death at AuschwitzBirkenau. Those newcomers who had not understood what they had seen were told about the gas chambers and crematoriums, and the probable fate of the family members they had left behind. In the case of male twins, whose wooden barracks stood only yards away from the crematorium, virtually facing it, Twins’ Father took it upon himself to break the news gently, and at times delayed it for days or weeks. The little girls, who had no such parental figure to ease the transition, were less fortunate. Even though many of the children chose not to accept, or were too young to fully comprehend, what they were told about their own parents, it was a devastating moment.

  MOsHE OFFER: I felt so tired, that first day at Auschwitz. There was a terrible smell -it was impossible to escape the smell.

  I was very worried about my mother, my father, and my four brothers. I talked with [my twin brother] Tibi about them.

  But he was sure our mother was going to be safe.

  HEDVAH AND LEAN STERN: We kept crying and looking for our mother. She had promised she would meet us at the gate.

  We would search among the women for her dress. When we were separated, she’d been wearing a striking black dress with pink strawberries.

  We couldn’t eat. We were constantly crying and looking toward the gate for our mother.

  Finally, the head of our barracks said,

  “Come here” and pointed to the crematorium.

  “I can now tell you that your mother and the rest of your family went to the gas chambers.”

  EVA MOZ S: In the early evening, we were finally taken to our barracks.

  There, we met other twins, some of whom had been at Auschwitz a long time.

  There were only girls in the barracks, I can’t remember exactly how many. Maybe hundreds of little girls. The barracks themselves were filthy. They had these red brick ovens [for heating] running across them, and wooden bunk beds, without pillows. [We] slept two, three, four girls to a bunk bed.

  That first night, we went to the latrines. They were just holes in the ground, with waste in them. There was no running water. Everything stank.

  I remember seeing three dead children on the ground. Later, we would always be finding dead children on the floor of the latrines.

  From our barracks, we could see huge smoking chimneys towering high above the camp. There were glowing flames rising from above them.

  “What are they burning so late in the evening?” I asked the other children.

  “The Germans are burning people,” they answered.

  But the new twins also learned that, as proteges of the powerful Dr. Mengele, their own lives in this kingdom of death were guaranteed.

  Mengele made sure that his twins would be generally well-treated, at least by Auschwitz standards. They were spared the beatings and punishments inflicted on other inmates. Because they “belonged” to Mengele, no one, not even the most brutal camp guards, would dare lay a hand on them. In addition to keeping their clothes and hair, some of the twins, especially the boys, recall receiving somewhat better food rations than the other prisoners. Although all the twins say they were ravenously hungry throughout their stay, several remember having access to potatoes and slices of bread, which enabled them to survive.

  If caught stealing food-as many did, on a regular basis-they were not severely punished because of their protected status. Most important, the twins were not subjected to the terrifying random selections that adult prisoners faced. As long as they stayed healthy and useful to Dr. Mengele, they would be kept alive.

  The work habits Mengele had developed over the years in Munich and Frankfurt stood him in good stead at Auschwitz. Since his arrival in May 1943, Mengele had distinguished himself in the eyes of the Nazi hierarchy. A superior’s evaluation praised him for being “an excellent officer,” who had shown “maturity and strength.” The report stressed how Mengele had not displayed “any weakness in character or inhibition,” in the resolute way he selected people to die. And one doctor who served with Mengele at Auschwitz, Dr. Munch, remembers him as much more diligent than other SS physicians, many of whom had been dragooned into service at the death camp. This perception of Mengele as more hardworking than his Nazi colleagues is echoed by numerous adult survivors who had the chance to observe him at close range, and who would go on to write about it in their memoirs and testimonies.

  Mengele’s experimental barracks were a showcase of the concentration camp, talked about and admired by the Nazi hierarchy.

  In many ways, the twins’ compound at Auschwitz was a realization
of Mengele’s-and Verschuer’s-greatest scientific dream. Verschuer, from his position as director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, was closely involved in his protege’s research, and the two men corresponded regularly. Mengele periodically dispatched to his mentor not only reports about his research, but also laboratory samples from his experiments.

  TWINS’ FATH R: 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 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 when they were completed.

  After the form was filled out, I would take the twins to Mengele, who asked them additional questions. Mengele had an office and a beautitul blond secretary. Because many of the children only knew Hungarian-and Mengele spoke only German-I would serve as the translator. His gorgeous secretary would write it all down.

  Much of the information Mengele was seeking had to do with demographics-where the family was from, what the parents had done fora living.

  His secretary would measure the children, while Mengele examined them.

  He was especially interested in their hair. I recall he would look closely at the roots, to see how it was growing.

  The questions were connected to the experiments Mengele would later make on the twins.

  One day, I was filling out forms for a new pair of twins and I noticed the date of birth one child had given me was different from the birth date of his sibling. It was obvious they were not really twins. But I knew that if anyone learned of this, the boys would immediately be put to death.

  And so I decided to take a chance, and put down false information.

  I “made” them twins. I knew if Mengele learned of what I had done, he would kill both me and the children on the spot.

  And throughout my stay at the camp, I was always afraid-but also secretly delighted-at what I had done in slipping through these false twins. I felt I had tricked the great Dr. Mengele.

  The detailed questionnaires were designed to ensure the validity of Mengele’s work. If the experiments were to have any relevance, they had to be precise and carefully controlled. While Nazi racial scientists considered identical twins, whose gene pool was exactly alike, as most desirable for study, fraternal twins were also useful.

  Whatever the case, the more information gathered about a twin’s genetic background, the greater the chances of conducting meaningful experiments.

  Mengele’s overall aim-and that of Verschuer-was to test various genetic theories in support of Hitler’s racial dogmas. Like other Nazi scientists, Mengele hoped to prove that most human characteristics, from the shape of the nose to the color of the eye to obesity and left handedness were inherited. In addition, it is believed Mengele was searching for ways to induce multiple births, so as to repopulate the depleted German Army. The ultimate goal was to produce an ideal race of Aryan men and women endowed with only the finest genetic traits, who would rapidly multiply and rule the world.

  For the sake of his experiments, Mengele tried to create an atmosphere that was, in sharp contrast to everything else taking place in Auschwitz, as close to normal as possible. He installed a small furnished office at one end of the twins’ compound to help him monitor his child guinea pigs. He decreed that guards were to be held accountable if any of the twins fell ill or died, hoping this would motivate them to look after the children. If a twin died during the night, Mengele would storm through the compound in the morning, screaming at the guards, demanding an explanation. He also implemented a strict routine to regulate the twins’ lives. Every morning at six o’clock, they were to be up for roll call in front of their barracks.

  Then came breakfast, a mug of tepid, muddied water the Germans called coffee, and perhaps a slice of moldy bread. Then Mengele would appear at the compound shortly thereafter for an inspection tour.

  EVA MOZES: My first meeting with Dr. Mengele was the morning after I had arrived.

  The twins had to stand on roll call, no matter how young they were, no matter how cold it was. The procedure could last anywhere from fifteen minutes to over an hour.

  The Germans had to account for everyone. Once that was finished, Mengele came. He was very much like a general reviewing his troops -except we were his guinea pigs.

  I remember Mengele came almost every day, and he always wore his SS uniform and tall black boots. They were very shiny boots.

  I was terrified of him.

  As an SS doctor, Mengele had many concerns and responsibilities in addition to the twins. He performed selections among the new arrivals on the Birkenau ramp and also inside the women’s compound, daily dispatching hundreds to be killed. He oversaw a kind of sham hospital for the sick, where, alas, little care was provided. But he seemed to spend most of his time with the children. Typically, Mengele gave daily orders to have several of the twins “prepared” for experiments.

  He would ask Twins’ Father or other adult supervisors to get the children ready by taking them to be bathed and cleaned. Special trucks emblazoned with fake Red Cross insignia arrived to pick up the youngsters and deliver them to Mengele’s laboratories. Depending on the type of tests, the twins were driven to any one of several locations either within Birkenau or at Auschwitz proper. The children learned what to expect, depending on their destination. In one laboratory, they knew it was a matter only of routine X rays and blood tests. Other clinics were reserved for more complicated-and painful-experiments. One Mengele lab the twins never saw was his pathology unit, located convenienlly on the site of a crematorium.

  There, an assistant to Mengele toiled quietly, performing autopsies on the bodies of the twins who had died, or been killed, in the course of experiments.

  The blood tests were the most basic component of Mengele’s program.

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

  These tests may have been connected to the grant he received from the prestigious German Research Association to study “specific proteins,” a project funded at Verschuer’s express request. Blood, often in large quantities, was drawn from twins’ fingers and arms, and sometimes both their arms simultaneously. The youngest children, whose arms and hands were very small, suffered the most: Blood was drawn from their necks, a painful and frightening procedure. The blood was then analyzed in a special laboratory located near Birkenau.

  Although Mengele was invariably present during the experiments, the tests themselves were often administered by his assistants. Typically, these were Jewish inmates who had been doctors and nurses before the war, and had been spared the gas chamber because of their skills.

  Most had profound misgivings about their work. But they knew that to betray any hesitation in administering an injection or test, even a very gruesome one, would result in their immediate execution. In spite of their anguishing position, a few managed also to alleviate suffering and helped save some lives.

  ALex DeKEL: I never saw a doctor smiling. They were very depressed, all of them.

  I lived in the same place as these doctors. I saw them going through their duties like robots, like machines. They would come back at night to sleep, and wake up early in the morning to report back to the laboratory.

  If I ever approached any of them and tried to ask them a question, they would not answer me.

  MAGDA SPIEGEL: There were many Jewish doctors living in our section of the camp women doctors, men doctors, anthropologists, eye doctors, ear doctors.

  Mengele came every day to speak with them and give them orders on what to do with each twin.

  There was a beautiful female doctor named Anna. She was originally from Czechoslovakia, and she had been a very famous physici
an before the war. She was one of the few Jewish doctors who was able to get close to Mengele.

  He liked beautiful women, and Dr. Anna was lovely. Dr. Anna was always walking around with Mengele, accompanying him on his rounds.

  She was very kind-very compassionate toward the twins. She knew, for example, that I was upset about my son. She tried to comfort me. She would never admit to me he had been gassed.

  Finally, she said to me,

  “Ask Mengele.”

  I went over to Mengele and asked him as calmly as I could,

  “Where is my little boy?”

  “He is in kindergarten,” he replied, smiling. Then, he walked away.

  I wanted to die. There was a fence near our barracks-a barbed wire fence-where inmates would commit suicide. I threw myself on the barbed wire, but some women prisoners ran and pulled me off of it.

  Although Mengele’s assistants were responsible for administering the tests, Mengele occasionally liked to step in and lend a hand. He looked the twins over carefully, searching for genetic abnormalities or any other unusual conditions. Then, he would demonstrate the “proper” way to insert a syringe or draw blood. He would lecture the Jewish doctors on how to avoid hurting the children. As if he were their old family physician, he brought candy or chocolates along to pacify the youngsters. Mengele knew how to treat children and calm them down so the experiments could proceed. He intuitively understood how much he needed the children’s trust for his research to succeed; good results would be obtained only if they were cooperative.

  But he also knew that the twins, especially the very young ones, were terrified of the procedures, especially the injections.

  EVA KUPAS: Once, I wanted to go see my twin brother. So Dr. Mengele took me by the hand and walked with me over to where he was staying.