Transcripts For CSPAN2 David Marwell Mengele 20240713 : vima

CSPAN2 David Marwell Mengele July 13, 2024

Mengele. Hi, everybody. Welcome to this broadcast. Im sorry that weve had a little delay. One of our speakers, David Goldman, has had trouble with his computer, and is so we are doing a little improvisation and workaround, so we will have him just on audio, and well see how that goes. But we hope that you can hear well enough if we do it this way. And let us know in the chat box if thats working for you. Just a warm hello to all of you. Im so happy to see that there are so many of you. My name is dorothea, im one of the openers of lab precipitate books, and i want to thank our speakers for being game to speak speak to switch to this new medium, new for all of us, i think, of live stream. We are presenting that tonight in partnership with our very good friends at the princetop public library. I think princeton. I think were all gripped by the precarious and frightening reality of this moment, but or there are so many books that can serve as antidotes, and this is certainly one of those antidotes. And i think its in that spirit that we are sharing the next 45 minutes or hour or so tonight. And quickly before i introduce our speakers in more detail and then step aside or minimize or whatever it is that we do these days, i just want to say quickly that David Marwells book, fabulous book, mengele, here it is, unmasking the angel of death, is available here at labyrinth or your local bookstore. All of us in the independent book selling world are trying to find a way through to the other side of this crisis and really use your support. If you do want to buy this book at labyrinth, it will ship for free. If you place your order over the phone, and we have phone hours and numbers that well post to the chat box and that are also on our web site. So thatll be the easiest way for you to get you that book. The logistics, i want to make sure that you can ask a question and know how to do that. In this platform the best way is to go to ask a question button at the bottom of your screen. Thats better than putting questions in the chat box. And if you see a question that already or interests you too, theres a little arrow next to questions, you can click on the arrow and upload them, and i will see this is a qume cumulative interest in questions and can focus on them a little bit. But now lets turn to what critics are considering sort of the definitive account of the nazi doctor and war criminal, Josef Mengele. David marwells book is both a biography and a detective story, and hes uniquely prepared to tell this story. He is an american historian and former director of the Jewish Heritage Museum in new york city. David marwell also worked, and this will be crucial as youll see, at the Justice Department office of special investigations where together with israel and germany, the u. S. Identified in the 1980s, eventually identified mengeles remains. And not in view but on audio to interview David Marwell about the many threads of the story is David Goldman. So, one, hello to you, david, on audio. But, two, they are friends, and they have a deeply shared interest, i think, in helping us learn from the past in order, hopefully, not to repeat the kinds of atrocities. David goldman is a distinguished lawyer, andst hes the founder and chairman and hes the founder and chairman of the fellowship at auschwitz for the study of professional ethics. This is a special nonprofit organization, and through it students are brought together and brought to auschwitz to examine moral and ethical issues that a arise from their chosen profession. And a fundamental premise of their work there is, im going to quote from the materials, the morality of government oppression can break down with devastating consequences. I think that what this, with this principle and insight we are sort of squarely inside of the story of Josef Mengele, and i will let david and david take it from here. Thank you. Im hoping that people can hear me. Im disappointed that my ineptness makes it impossible to see me though i did have a suggestion see doe [laughter] and i tuxedo. [inaudible] david. Well, thank you. I should say that david and i have known each other for many years, and a problem with that is that we often finish each others sentences. So one note of warning and that is that if david answers a question ive not yet asked, that could happen. Or i might skip asking a question that i have in mind that ive already heard david answer. So so the q a session will be important, im sure. I do want to say again by way of preface that i am fascinated by the perpetrators. The organization that i work with is an Ethical Leadership program where we begin by studying the perpetrators in nazi germany. Asking what we can learn from them. So, again prefacing my questions to david, that my focus will be on, on mengele as perpetrator and who he, who he was. So, david, id like to start maybe in a different place than many would, and id like to start with just asking who he was. Who was Josef Mengele . I understand that we could merely say that he was born with horns on his head, that he was evil incarnate, but we know that thats not what your book is saying. So id like to learn a little bit more about him. What kind of child was he, david . What was he like as a kid . Well, i dont really know what he was like as a kid, and there are not tremendously good sources on that. The best source on his childhood is actually his writingings on himself. Mengele wrote an autobiography for his family that was written in the 60s and, to the extent that it was finished, in the 1970s. He wrote it as a novel, as a function believing that if he were free from the rigorous telling the of facts, he could make of his life something else, more illustrative or more important as a means of teaching an important lesson. And when he talks about his childhood, he spends about a hundred pages about his birth. Which says something about how important he thought he was. I say in the book that theres nothing in his childhood that gives any hint of the manning of the murder that mengele was to become. Theres nothing about his childhood that fulfills our notion of what an incubator for that kind of future would have been. Theres no stories of him, you know, murdering pets in the backyard or being a bully or unkind. He grew up in a prosperous family, a loving family with household help, with parents who cared for him and with two younger brothers. But theres nothing in his childhood that suggests, that points to even the politics he was later to adopt. What kind of student can what did he study . What kind of student was he this. He went the academic route in germany. Of he was a midling student. I is have his report cards i have his record cards. He did he was not outstanding in the classroom. Part of that was because he had a serious illness as a child which played a role later on in our ability to identify his body. But it wasnt until he got to the university when he became a passionate student, and his passion was devoted to science, to medicine, to anthropology. He had an elite education. He studied at munich on vienna and frankfurt. He had not only a medical degree, but also a ph. D. In anthropology. He studied with nobel Prize Winners either already laureates or those who would become Prize Winners in the future. He was considered a extremely able student and had extremely he writes in his autobiography about the impact of his teachers on hip. On him. And hes quite passionate about how he was moved by not only their skill, but also their devotion to the science of medicine and anthropology. Anything of political anything that gives a hint as to his politics while he was in university . So he, his University Career coincides almost precisely with the rise of the nazi party and its assumption to power. He began his studies in april of 1930, in the summer semester of 1930, and he came from a home that was conservative, catholic, probably an element of antisemitism but not anything that would set him on the course that he eventually took. Is so tell us more about his studying. What was he studying . What was the medicine that he was focused on . So its important to understand that mengeles interest in medicine, in racial hygiene and in anthropology came at a time when these disciplines took on a new and important meaning for the state. Hitler believed that, that physicians were extremely important in terms of car ilying out his carrying out his world view. And, youre, hitler said that National Socialism was simply biology enacted. And the fact that mengele began to study these sciences when they took on a new status is extremely important. What does a new status mean . It means that these scientists had a kind of one one fellow called a symbiotic relationship with the state, that nazi science provided a fundamental support for the nazi world view, and it also benefited from the kinds of things that scientists benefited from; funding from an elevation of its status. So thats extremely important. And the fact that mengele david go ahead. Rogue signs . Was it rogue medicine . No. No, the science was mainstream for germany at the time. A havent guard avantgarde but not unconventional. I describe him as both the product and the promise of german science. And he did two dissertations, one in medicine which studied the meter about of the cleft palate which led to support for the sterilization laws which meant that people who had cleft palates were subject to forced sterilization. And he had as his mentors in anthropology an extremely famous anthrothe position, and his medical dissertation adviser was otto [inaudible] who was the head of the racial Hygiene Institute at the university of frankfurt and later the head of the kaiser government in berlin. He was a promising young scientist on the cutting edge of german science and had probably a wonderful academic career in front of him. Had the war not started and had things happened differently. I want to get to the war in a minute, but till still about him, married . Children . Yeah. He married a woman that he met right before the beginning of the war. They had really no real married life together since the war came, and he had other things to do. They had one son who was born on mentioning las to own birthday, march 16th, in 1943. Do we know anything about his, his faith . How religious he was . Yeah. His mother was a very devout catholic, and he writes about that in his memoir. He chose to have a church wedding, which was unusual for an ss officer. So he had some that was out of respect for his mother or out of some nostalgic sense of belonging to the catholic church. But he didnt he was not regularly observant. Although it had an impact on him, and he writes about it when his mother dies, he reflects on his catholic upbringing. Let me jump around a little bit. Thanks for that background. So when did, when did mengele become part of your life . I want to talk about you now. How did you become involved with him . Well, i worked, as dorothea mentioned, i was with the department of justice this washington as a historian for the office of special investigations and was involved in the normal work of the office which was investigating or identifying and investigating and prosecuting nazi war criminals who were loving in the united states. Living in the united states. But i was also responsible for what we called special projects in the office, and i worked on a case in 1983 when it was alleged that Krause Barbie had worked for u. S. Intelligence and we found that, in fact, was true and published a report in the summer of 1983. And in 1985, for reasons that are probably too complicated to go into in this conversation, mengele became the subject of intense public if interest. And the attorney general asked my office to investigate certain allegations that mengele had been used as had been interned by the americans and knowingly released and then eventually used by the americans sort of like barbie had. So we were asked to investigate those allegations. And that investigation then became an International Manhunt when we were joined by another office in the Justice Department, the u. S. Marshal service, and the german prosecutor in frankfurt and the israeli government, both the Justice Administration and the mossad. Okay. Is so, david, how did he Josef Mengele, how did he, how did he get out of germany . How did that happen . So mengele left auschwitz in january of 1945 and was assigned to another camp. And by may when that camp had been liberated by the soviets, he found his he found himself making his way back toward germany. And he came upon a Field Hospital that was in the area just around check sho advantage ya d czechoslovakia. And it so happens one of the people in the Field Hospital was a former colleague of his at the institute in frankfurt. And he asked if he could join the Field Hospital. He took off his ss uniform which marked him immediately as someone who would have been of intense interest for anyone who captured him and donned one of the uniforms. And this unit ended up being in an rare between the advancing in an area between the advancing red army and the advancing western allies in the area around the socalled airstrip area in eastern southeastern germany and czechoslovakia. And it was an area that was unoccupied for about six weeks between the beginning of may and the middle of june, unoccupied because the front lines of the red army in the east and the western allies in the west had frozen. And so mengele had a chance to join this unit and build a convincing cover story no longer clad in an ss uniform. This Field Hospital decided wisely to, at some point that they needed to surrender, they decided not to surrender to the soviets which would have been unwise and took got in their trucks and drove to the american lines in bavaria and were taken into custody. And mengele spent two, was in two different u. S. P. O. W. Camps. Likely under his own name at least at the end, was probably released under his own name. There are three reasons why he was released by the americans even though he was on wanted lists that had been created by them. The first one was they were very inefficiently distributed in the camps were mengele had been interned, had not received the wanted lists. Second reason is that mengele had no longer the [inaudible] unit and was well integrated in the unit. But the most important reason is that mengele didnt have the ss tattoo under his left arm. The ss would a tattoo the blood type of their soldiers is so that if they were wounded, the medics would know what kind of blood to use for the transfusion. Mengele did not have thed blood type tattoo which was the most common, telltale mark of someone who was in the ss. And he passed through what was an extremely effective, although crude litmus test which was to have intern interred soldiers take off their shirts and reveal their arms. And mengele was released by the u. S. Without further interrogation. He then secured false identity papers under another mans name and lived for about four years on a farm doing manual labor in a small farm in baa varian a ya and then bavaria and then made his way, with the help of his prosperous financially, over land into italy, to general what and then by ship to argentina where he arrived in the summer of 1949. Is there, david, i any evidence of complicity with the americans, with any of the allies to get him out . No, theres no evidence of any, any contact with american forces. And the reason for that i explain in the book is that the family had color graphed a ruse chore graphed a ruse that mengele had died. If you look in the files of the nuremberg war crimes trials, theres a card file, and in there, theres an indication that mengele had died, and the family was able to maintain that ruse. And with their prosperous, with the means they had, they were able to help mengele out of germany without any official help. They were able to purchase the services of experienced guides who were very practiced in getting people over the border and were able to purchase effective false identities for him. Did the book, the book tells, as dorothea said, a bit of a background story of how you, with others, discovered what had happened to him, what his life was like inside america, how he died. Id like, if we have time, to come back to that. I want to make sure we spend time at auschwitz. What you spry into this. At one point you said you were quite anxious about how it might be received. You were concerned about how people might take the book. Tell us about why you felt that, and that might help us understand a bit about how you feel about his work at auschwitz. Yeah. I mean, i should say that when i worked on the case back in the 80s, i was, i believed the common picture of mengele as some kind of mad scientist, as someone who was motivated by grotesque interest in, sadistic interest in odd things. He was interested in twins, he was interested i came across a document on another case where he had sent the head of a 12yearold boy to the lab for fixing, you know, for having slides made and placed in formaldehyde. And i didnt have a great deal of curiosity about exactly what his science was all about, i simply accepted this kind of carrick ca cure which came along with tremendous support from popular culture. I had seen the boys from brazil and marathon man, and id read the deputy, and i had read times arrow by martin ennis, and i had seen a number of these films and read a number of books that portray him as this kind of prototype of evil. But i also knew that we didnt really know all that much about what he did at auschwitz. The science there are no records of his, very few, that really illustrate the exact nature of his experiments, the goals of the experiments, the procedures he used. All we had were the, what the testimony of his victims who, by and large, were young, traumatized children at the time of their encounter with mengele. We, and we also had the testimony of physicians who had been recruited by mengele. I say recruited meaning they had been forced to help him with his, with his scientific work. Mengele established an auschwitz a kind of Research Institute on the pattern of those that he had been associated with both in frankfurt and berlin. Great medical talent from all over europe spilled out of the trains at the ramp of auschwitz, and he made sure he kept an ey

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