DEKEL, LUCETTE MATALON LAGNADO SHEILA COHN

by CHILDREN OF THE FLAMES

  After the childbirth, when they told me I had a beautiful, healthy baby, I collapsed.

  It was too good to be really true. I had a nervous breakdown and had to be institutionalized.

  MIRIAM MOZES: I was very depressed after the birth of my first child.

  I saw other women in the hospital being visited by their mothers, and that was very painful to me. For even though I was very happy, very excited over the birth of my daughter, I felt badly [that] my mother wasn’t there.

  Only my husband came to see me. And Eva. My twin became like my mother. She went to buy everything for the child. She would come all the time. But I still found myself staring at the other young women, and envying the fact that their mothers would come and fuss over them.

  The Eichmann case also had serious side effects that threatened the safety of Jewish communities the world over. If the capture had forced old Nazis to lay low, it also prompted their supporters to emerge.

  There were rabid antiSemitic outbursts throughout Latin America, and a renewed interest in Nazi causes and ideals. The rise in pro-Nazi sentiment was an offshoot of the resentment many South American nations felt toward Israel. These countries viewed the kidnapping of Eichmann as a violation of their sovereignty-a lawless affront to Argentina’s honor. There were also angry formal protests at the United Nations.

  In June 1960, Argentina made a formal complaint to the UN Security Council, protesting what Israel had done.

  Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, who had given the Mossad, the Jewish intelligence service, the go-ahead to nab Eichmann, began to see the negative consequences of the operation. Although the trial had certainly raised the world’s consciousness, he worried that there would be a backlash. In addition, Israel had been rebuked by some of its staunchest friends, including General Telford Taylor, for violating international law.

  With the May 1962 execution of Eichmann, Ben-Gurion’s worst fears were realized. There were antiSemitic episodes around the world.

  On June 24, 1962, a young Argentine Jewish girl, Graciella Sirota, was kidnapped on her way to school. Her assailants carved a swastika on her breast and inflicted severe burns all over her body. She was told, “This is revenge. You Jews are responsible for Eichmann’s death.”

  Four days later, a male student, son of a Catholic father and a Jewish mother, was attacked by four youths who slashed swastikas in his cheeks and forehead and beat him savagely.

  Secret memoranda sent by Argentine Jewry to major American Jewish organizations reflected the panic roused by the antiSemitic incidents.

  There was a sense that the Nazis were capable of regrouping in South America to “recreate” the Third Reich. It was believed the Nazis were involved in a plot to install a fascist regime in Argentina, and that once in power, its first goal would be to exterminate the Jews.

  Since the fall of Peron, the instability of the Argentine government had indeed helped stir up antiSemitism in a population already predisposed against Jews. There were dozens of nationalist and reactionary groups fomenting hatred and advocating violence and other forms of retribution, an extremism that recalled some of the blackest days of Hitler’s Germany. For the vulnerable Jewish community, with its many war refugees, all the ingredients were there for a terrible repeat of history. As one 1962 memorandum from a local Jewish organization noted,

  “Events have crystallized, particularly after the conclusion of the Eichmann trial. It has been proven to us that the Nazi minority have entrenched themselves. While today, they represent no Immediate danger, they can under disturbed general conditions come to the fore. . The major question was what the Nazis would do to avenge the execution of Eichmann.

  As Israel had to decide whether to pursue more Nazis, Ben-Gurion began to have doubts about continuing. The Mossad, however, was buoyant over the success of the Eichmann capture. Isser Harel, then head of Israeli intelligence, was especially proud. From an operational point of view, it had gone practically without a hitch. His handpicked team had entered Argentina undetected and left the country with no one guessing whom they had in tow. Although they had been prepared to kill anyone who stood in their way, there was no loss of life. With the Eichmann operation completed, the Mossad team was eager to return and mount a full-scale attempt to apprehend the elusive doctor Josef Mengele.

  Harel was especially anxious to capture Mengele, whom he personally considered much more despicable than the bureaucrat Eichmann. But Ben-Gurion, increasingly fearful of the repercussions against Jews and against Israel, is believed to have counseled Harel against undertaking any more missions. Nevertheless, the feisty Mossad chief had his men discreetly continue the hunt for Mengele.

  Tales of the Mossad’s search for Mengele belong more to the realm of mythology than history. Details about the secret operations have been considerably embellished by the exagents who took part in them.

  There are stories of searches launched across Europe and South America and stakeouts deep in the heart of the Paraguayan jungle. Various agents who have “gone public,” including Harel, Rafael Eitan, and Peter Malkin, all three of whom were on the original Eichmann kidnapping team, have given confused, exaggerated, and usually contradictory accounts of the Mossad’s attempts to find Mengele. Harel himself has said that although his men did finally locate Mengele, it would have taken a small army to nab him, with only limited chances of success and the possibility of great bloodshed. Other agents have insisted the Mossad never came close to finding the Auschwitz doctor of death. One fact is undisputable: The Mossad ultimately failed in its attempts to capture Mengele.

  By 1962, any impetus for continuing the hunt for Mengele was lost because of Harel’s involvement in other matters. His disputes with Ben-Gurion, and resignation the following year, halted any real or imaginary plans the Mossad may have had. Relations between Harel and Ben-Gurion had been poor for years. In 1962, the final confrontation between them came over Nazis in Egypt, not South America.

  The Israelis learned that Egypt was starting up a rocket program with the help of Nazi scientists. Much to the embarrassment of the Mossad, information about the program surfaced only when Egyptian strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser paraded the rockets through the streets of Cairo.

  It was charged that Harel had focused his agency’s resources on the wrong enemy.

  In a show of passion, Harel offered his resignation in 1963-some say with the certainty it would be refused. Harel had built the Israeli secret service and had turned it into one of the world’s leading intelligence agencies. But Ben-Gurion had apparently had enough of Harel, and resented his insubordination. The resignation was accepted.

  Once again, fate had intervened to help the Angel of Death elude punishment. Isser Harel had been the person most fervently committed to the idea of pursuing ex-Nazis. He had kept a secret notebook on Mengele, recording whatever information he collected on his character traits and proclivities. When he resigned, the main threat to Mengele’s survival was gone. The men who would follow Harel as head of the Mossad were also talented superspies, but none showed the same unswerving concern in hunting down Nazi war criminals. A young PLO thug was seen as a far greater threat than the aging Nazi doctor who had condemned hundreds of thousands to die with a wave of the hand.

  But long after the Israelis had abandoned the chase, Mengele continued to be haunted by the fear that the Mossad was after him.

  Years after the execution of Eichmann, he still harbored the notion that the Israelis were plotting to kidnap him. A strange mixture of fear and arrogance persisted in Mengele even into his old age, so that he continued to believe he was the target of a manhunt. In one retreat, a remote Brazilian farm where he moved sometime in 1962, he ordered a watchtower to be built so he could observe the roads in search of the secret agents who never arrived. Farmhands would later recall how the Auschwitz doctor anxiously stalked the grounds, surrounded by packs of fierce dogs.

  Mengele was determined to outwit all his enemies. If the Nazihunters were searchin
g for a wealthy, dashing businessman, he would fool them by posing as a humble farm manager. They would scour the cities and jungles of Paraguay-and he would retire to an obscure Brazilian village. His pursuers would seek a mansion, protected by legions of uniformed guards, and he would be safely tucked away in an unpretentious little farm.

  In the early 1960s, in his new Brazilian hideaway, Mengele was once again alone. His father was dead; his wife and stepson had left him.

  His beautiful Argentine villa now belonged to someone else.

  Gone also was his beloved Borgward

  Isabel Ia All the efforts he had expended in the last decade to build a new life had come to nothing.

  HEDvAH AND LEAK STERN: Our lives really began when we built our Moshav, our communal settlement. We and a group of young people decided we needed a place we could call home. There were twenty of us, boys and girls, and we had come from all over Europe. We were all Holocaust survivors, and many of us had been at Auschwitz.

  We picked a site in Ashdod, near the sea. We thought we could combine agriculture and fishing. We called our commune

  “Nir Galim,” which means the air and the waves.

  At first, we lived in tents-then in huts. Finally, we built houses for ourselves. We worked very hard. We tilled the soil. We cooked meals in the kitchen, and washed the pots and pans. If we found a piece of wood, we were overjoyed, because we could use it to build a table. We used whatever we could find to build the Moshav.

  Yet Auschwitz remained with us-everything around us reminded us of it.

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

  Dr. Mengele was getting on in years. His once-fine features were turning flaccid. At fifty-one, he suffered from a variety of small aches and pains that foreshadowed the infirmities of old age. The man who had condemned so many to die began to confront the notion of his own impending death. Alone and sickly on an isolated little farm, he awaited the empty days that stretched ahead, filled only with an unrelenting loneliness. Mengele was in a state of despair, anxious to leave a record of some sort behind. There was little left to hope for: with his father now dead, it was unclear how sympathetic the rest of the family would be to him.

  It was in his new hideout, on a remote farm hundreds of kilometers away from Sao Paulo, that Mengele began to work on his memoirs.

  Facing a dreary and uncertain future, he found it more comforting to look to the past instead, back to the halcyon days of his privileged youth, when it seemed certain the world was to one day be his for the taking.

  ZYL THE SAILOR: I went all over the world, and I always wanted to go elsewhere-to yet another foreign city or country I hadn’t seen.

  Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit. Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New York, Philadelphia.

  I sailed without a break. I would go from one ship to another, from one voyage to the next. I was married-and yes, it was hard on my marriage-but still, I sailed.

  My wife and I bought an apartment in Ashdod, near the sea. From the window, I could see the chimneys of the factories. They made me think of the crematoriums. And so I would leave her for weeks and months at a stretch.

  I sailed wherever there was water. I worked as a fisherman in the North Sea. When they opened up the Great Lakes, I was on the first ship to travel there. “What are these Great Lakes?” I wondered. I had to know.

  But eventually, I found myself back at Auschwitz. I was at Auschwitz, no matter where I went.

  nine.

  BRAZILIAN HIDEAWAY.

  For years after the war, the popular line was that we, the survivors, had allowed the Germans to lead us “like sheep” to the slaughter.

  When I joined the Israeli Army, for example, I was surrounded by many so-called heroes. They were all tough guys. They constantly boasted about all the Arabs they had killed. And they really looked down on me for having been a camp victim.

  When I tried to tell them what I had gone through, my army buddies would ask,

  “How could you have let the Germans do this to you?”

  It’s taken me years to come up with the answer.

  When we were liberated from Auschwitz, I remember the Russians captured some five thousand Nazi SS men. I saw these two

  “Mussulmans”-Jewish inmates, thin as skeletons, who had been left to die-take the guns away from these SS men and start shooting. And you know what? Not a single one of the Nazis even tried to run away.

  I watched as the Germans sat, awaiting their turn to be killed. There were only these two frail little Mussulmans. Yet the Germans sat there-like sheep.

  As we, the Holocaust survivors, became stronger, we began speaking up.

  “What are you talking about when you say we went ‘like sheep’?

  Wasn’t there an uprising in Treblinka? Didn’t we fight in the Warsaw Ghetto? And what about the Partisans?”

  And today, when I am asked that question, I tell people it doesn’t matter whether you’re Hungarian, Polish, Jewish, or German: If you don’t have a gun, you have nothing.

  The Jews who were brought by cattle car to Auschwitz weren’t told they were going to a death camp: they believed they were going to be working They had not worked in years. They were hungry, and they wanted to eat. They thought that by working for the Germans, they would have food and money, and they’d be able to survive until the war ended.

  That’s why they went quietly-that’s why they didn’t cry, or shout.

  And then Dr. Mengele would tell them,

  “Please take off your clothes because you need to take a shower.” And off they went into the gas chambers, very quietly. Everything was done very quietly. When was there even time for an uprising?

  There were people inside the camps who found ways to smuggle out letters to relatives and friends describing what the Germans were doing.

  But absolutely no one believed them.

  ZYL THE SAILOR: One day, the Israeli government selected me to join a group sailing to Germany to collect goods for Holocaust victims. The German government had decided to make some special reparations, and we were to pick up their gifts and bring them back to Israel.

  We were very excited; everyone on the ship was a concentration camp survivor.

  When we sailed into the port of Bremen we were greeted by German Coast Guard officers. We noticed immediately they were wearing the same uniform as the SS. It was exactly the same-the jacket, the trousers, even the cap.

  They were very nice to us, these Germans-but we hated them anyway. Our government should have known better than to send a bunch of Holocaust victims back to Germany.

  They would greet us every day by saying,

  “Good morning,” but what we heard was,

  “Dirty Jew.”

  One night, we went to a bar in the port. We got roaring drunk and started a brawl. The police arrived, arrested us, and dragged us to the police station. We were enraged. We shouted,

  “Fine: We’ll take over the police station.” Then, we started fighting with the cops, too.

  We were ready to go to war with the German police, using the same tactics we had been taught in the Israeli Army.

  The Germans were totally dismayed. They didn’t know what to do.

  And to their credit, they acted like perfect gentlemen. They did their best to behave themselves. It was clear they didn’t want any trouble with Jews.

  None of us were thrown in jail, even though we had done a lot of damage, both to the bar and to the police station. We were booked, placed on trial, and we had to pay a large fine.

  Nearly twenty years after the war, West Germany was at last ready to showcase its repentance for the Holocaust: It would hold its own war-crimes trials. Preparations for the Frankfurt trials were encouraged by Fritz Bauer, a German Jew who was powerful in Germany’s judicial system. Bauer, prosecutor general for the state of Hesse (a position equivalent to state attorney general in the Uni
ted States), was the man who had secretly tipped off the Israelis on where to find Eichmann.

  He had done so only after concluding his own country would never launch a serious pursuit. Courageous and energetic, Bauer was attached to his native Germany, but also cynical about the Germans’ willingness to atone for their terrible past.

  But now, with Bauer’s help, German atonement was actually taking place.

  He gathered some of the best lawyers in the country to take part in the trial. Their official mission was to ferret out and prosecute any remaining Nazi war criminals.

  Mengele, now living on a small farm in Brazil, followed the proceedings with contempt. In a diary entry dated May 2, 1962, he complained about the “beginning of a new witch hunt in Germany.”

  He was referring to efforts by prosecutors to locate defendants for the trials, which would not take place for nearly two years.

  His writings suggest he was appalled that his beloved Deutschland could turn against its own. He had never stopped loving and missing Germany, but he was enraged at the way it was treating men like himself-loyal soldiers of the Third Reich. Mengele still longed for what he called in a letter to his old school friend Hans Sedlmeier “the incredible zest for life of the German nation under Adolf Hitler.”

  In the same letter, he delivered a stinging indictment of postwar Germany. He noted that “ninety percent [of the German population] were made to suffer and feel guilty.” Any people with Nazi ties had been classified by the government into different categories of culprits: There were the “followers” and the “profit-seekers,” the “guilty” and the “extremely guilty,” and, finally, the war criminals. Depending on one’s classification, “one paid one’s dues and became a rehabilitated citizen.” Mengele resented a system that parceled out guilt and innocence with such apparent precision and ease. He also perceived its fundamental hypocrisy. “Later, those who had formerly occupied high positions got their retirement income again (slightly lowered) or jobs in private industry,” he wrote Sedlmeier.

  PETER SOMOGYL: I left England for Canada, and there I was able to get a good job very quickly-with a German firm. It was called Bosch, and although it had been one of the largest industrial companies before the war, it had not used any slave labor.