Transcripts For CSPAN2 David Marwell Mengele 20240713 : vima

CSPAN2 David Marwell Mengele July 13, 2024

For you. So a warm hello to all of you. I am so happy to see that there are so many of you. I am one of the owners of labyrinth books. I do want to start by thanking David Marwell to be able to switch for this event. And to go to live stream. We are presenting that tonight. And that partnership with the public library. We are all gripped by the frightening reality of the moment but theres many book second and deserve attention. And certainly this one of those antidotes. And i think we are sharing the next 45 minutes or one hour or so tonight. And briefly, before i introduce our speakers, then i will step aside and whatever it is that we do these days. I just want to say, that David Marwell, his book mengele. An masking angel. Its available here. Or you can get it at your bookstore. We are trying to find the weight through to the other side of this crisis. If you do want to buy out this book, it will be 10 percent off rated and will ship for free. If you order over the phone. We will cost the phone numbers to the chat box and also on the website. That will be the easiest way for us to get to that book for you. I want to make sure that you can ask a question. You can do that the best ways to go to the ask the question buttoned at the bottom middle of your screen. And then if you seen it question thats interesting, a little arrow next to the question, and that you can upload them and i will see but there is an accumulative interest in in a question. Then we can focus on those. So now lets turn to what critics are considering this account of the north the nazi war criminal. David marwell is both the biography and he is prepared to tell the story. He is an american historian rated and a former director of the Jewish Museum in new york city. And director of the center. He also will be at the Justice Department office of special investigations where together with israel and germany the u. S. Identified in the 80s. Dorothea and, on the audio, we interviewed David Marwell about many parts of the story. So hello to you david on audio. The two davids our friends. Inevitably shared interest in helping us learn from the past in order to hopefully not repeat those atrocities. David is a distinguished lawyer in the number and chairman of the fellowship for the study of professional ethics. This a very special nonprofit organization. And through it, graduate students are brought together to examine moral and ethical issues that arise from the profession. Some of the work there, the reality the moral codes governing can write down and be distorted with devastating consequences. I think that with this principle and inside, we are squarely inside of the story. And i will let david and david take it from here read. David thank you. Im hoping that people can hear me. I am disappointed that my netflix makes it impossible to see me. Although i did have it and i am disappointed. David i thought you had a radio david. David thank you. I should say the david and i have known each other for many years. The problem with that is we often finish each others sentences. So one octave morning. David answers a question that i did not get asked, that can happen or i might skip a question that i have in mind that ive already heard david answered. So the q a session will you be imported i interpreted i do want to say again by way of preface that i am fascinated by the perpetrators. The organization that i work with south is the program that we begin to study the perpetrators and nothing germany. In asking what we can learn from them. So again preference and to david, that my focus will be on mengele as the perpetrator and who he was. So david, i would like to go to a different place in many would. I would like to start with just asking who he was who was Josef Mengele. I understand that we can merely say that he was born with horns on his head. He was evil incarnate but we know that is not what your book is saying. So i would to learn a little bit more about him. What kind of child was he david. What was he like as a kid. David i dont really know what he was like as a kid. And theyre not tremendously good sources on that. The best source of his childhood is actually his own writings about himself read mengele running autobiography with his family rated David Marwell read and begin in the 60s and then was finished in the 1970s. He wrote today as a novel, as a fiction. Believing that if he would have the rigorous telling of facts, he could make up his life something more important. As of means of teaching an important lesson. So when he talks about his childhood, he spends about a hundred pages which says something about important he thought he was ice in the book, there is nothing in his childhood that gives any hint of the man or the murder that he was to become read theres nothing about his childhood the fulfills our notion that what an incubator for that kind of future would have been rude theres no stories of him murdering pets in the backyard or being a bully or in kind. He grew up in a prosperous family. Loving family with household help. Parents who cared for him. With three younger brothers. Theres nothing in his childhood the points you even the politics that he talks and went into. David what did he study, kind of student was he. David came with written germany. I have this report card, it was thought outstanding in the classroom. Part of that was he had serious illness as a child. Template rule later on and able to identify his body. When he became a passionate student and his passion was devoted to science and medicine an anthology. He had an elite education. He studied at vaughn in vienna and prefer to not only the medical degree but also a phd in anthropology. He studied with noble prizewinners either already lawyers of those who become prizewinners in the future he was considered an extremely able student and had extremely, he writes in his autobiography about the effectiveness teachers on him. His quest passionate about how he was moved by nunnally their skill with the devotion to science. Med medicine in anthropology. David anything political, anything that is a hint as to what his politics while he was in university. David so his university career, coincides almost decisively precisely with the lives of the nasi party. He became his studies in the summer of 1930. He came from a home that was conservative, catholic, probably an element of anti semitism but not anything that would set him on the course that he eventually took. David tell us more about his study. What was the medicine that he was focused on. David so is important to understand that Josef Mengele was interested in the anthropology at a time when he these disciplines to bonnie now an important meaning for the state. His lawyer believed that physicians were extremely important in terms of carrying out his worldview and hitlers and the National Socialism was simply biology enacted. And the fact that he began to study when they took on their study status, was extremely important. It means that these scientists had a part of what one called in a relationship with the state that the science provided a fundamental support for that worldview. And it also benefited from kinds of things that science benefits from the funding, from an elevation of his status. So thats extremely important. In fact that Josef Mengele went into a position. David was a roby science, was it rogue medicine. David know, to was mainstreamed at the time. Not rogue in any way. Not unconventional but he certainly was by describing the spoke of the product and the promise of adjournment science. He did two dissertations, when medicine which studied the inherent ability, which led to support for the sterilization laws which but the people, somewhere subject to forced sterilization. In essence mentors in anthropology, an extremely famous anthropologist and his medical dissertation advisor was the head of the Hygiene Institute and labor ahead of that in berlin. He was a promising young scientist on the cutting edge of german science. And had probably wonderful academic career in front of him. David i want to get to the war in a minute. But still about him. Was he married or have children. David yes, he married a woman and right before the beginning of the war. And really know real married life together. Since the war came. He had other things to do. They had one son was born on his own birthdate. March 16th. In 1943. David do you know anything about is faith. How religious he was rated. David his mother was a very devout catholic. He talks about that in his memoir. He chose to have a Church Wedding which was unusual for an officer. So he had some respect for his mother, or some nostalgic sense of belonging to the Catholic Church but he was not regularly observant. Although i did have an impact on him. When his mother died, reflects on the catholic reference. David image of around a little bit pretty thanks for that background. So when did he become part of your life. I want to talk about you now. How do you become involved or how did become involved with him. He. David i was with the department of justice in washington. As a historian the special investigations. I was involved in the normal work which was investigating and identifying and investigating the prosecuting workers who were living in the united states. I was also responsible for what we call special projects. In order to the house party in 1983 when it was alleged that house party and work for the u. S. Intelligence and we found that impact was true and reporting the summer of 1983. 1985, probably too complicated to go into this conversation, he became a subject of intense public interest. Josef mengele pretty and the attorney general asked me to and had been turned by the americans annoyingly and actually used by the americans sort of like so we were asked to investigate those investigations. In those became an International Manhunt when we are joined by another office of the Justice Department and the u. S. Justice department and the israeli government. In both justicdavid so, how die get out of germany. How did that happen. David so Josef Mengele, he left in january of 1945. He was assigned to another camp. And by may, when that camp had been liberated by the soviets, he found himself making his way back towards germany and he came upon a Field Hospital that was in the area just around rosebud. In czechoslovakia. And so happens that one of the people in the Field Hospital was a former economist and he asked if he could join the Field Hospital. It took off his uniform which marked him immediately as someone who wouldve been of intense interest for anyone who captured him. And he found a different uniform. In this unit, ended up being in an area between the advancing red army in the area in eastern and southeastern germany and czechoslovakia read and it was in their and. That was unoccupied for about six weeks from the beginning of may in the middle of june. Because the front lines of the red army in the starry niece the west had risen. So he had a chance to join this unit. At least at the end there are three reasons why he was released by the americans he was on a lot of list created by them but they were very inefficiently distributed but most importantly the reason is that he did not have the ss tattoo on his left arm. The blood type of their soldiers so that medics would know what kind of blood to use for transfusion. He did not have that which removes the most common telltale mark of someone in the ss and he passed through that way is the extremely overlap in terms of takeoff the shirts and wave their arms and he was able to be released without any further interrogation. And then under another mans name and then lived for years on a farm doing manual labor. In bavaria and then made his way with the help of his family overland through the past into italy to genoa and then shipped to argentina he arrived in the summer of 1949. Any evidence of complicity there is no evidence of any contact with American Force forces, and the reason for that the family had choreographed a ruse that mangalore had died. Women there was a card file that Josef Mengele had died. And then to help Josef Mengele out of germany without any official hell. And those surfaces of experience guides were very practice getting people over the border and were able to purchase false identities. The book tells a detective story on others and what the life was like do we have time to come back to that quick. And went to makes talk one make sure we spent time in auschwitz. You and i talked and at one point said you were quite anxious about how it might be received and concerned tell us why you felt that how you feel about his work at auschwitz. I worked in the case back in the eighties, i believe the common picture of Mad Scientist of a grotesque and sadistic interest and coming across the document of the head he sent to the lab after being put into formaldehyde. What exactly what the science was all about i accepted this caricature which came along with tremendous support from popular culture. And i said and those of the books that portrayed him as this as a prototype of evil. But we didnt know all that much there are no records of his or the very few with the exact nature and the goals of the experiments and the procedures that he used. All we have is the testimony of his victims who by a large were traumatized children at the time that would encounter Josef Mengele and also the testimony of physicians who were recruited by Josef Mengele meeting they were forced to help him with his scientific work. So those that he was associated with with great medical talent from all over europe and make sure he kept an eye out for talented physicians and pathologist and pediatricians and then photographers and nurses so he could assemble a team so we have the testimony of these physicians assisting him because essentially they were forced to do it. Their testimony by and large some of the things that Josef Mengele did does not describe the intent of his experiments. The only records we have filing with the German Research foundation that founded some of these and we have the very careful work of would be the last ten or 15 years so i sat down and read all of this stuff and the picture emerged that was at odds of the testimony that was trope about Josef Mengele. It wasnt clear that testimony that alleged a particular goal, they simply didnt match up with his career or his training and his own personal ambition and goals to impress the Academic Work so with this tragic and dramatic encounter that i could be apologizing to make less horrific and to come up with a different answer that it is somehow easier to describe Josef Mengele as a monster than to recognize the monstrous things of those of those enshrined institutions more than a renegade monster from working on its own and with those primitive motives. We dont want to paint too pretty of a picture. The other thing about his work at auschwitz is when it comes to criminality in terms of the scale and the extent and these are crimes that he admitted to in his own discussions with his family was his role in selection at auschwitz. Those logging at the camp or those that were called where he made a binary decision if they should die immediately your be exploited first for their labor. I understand crime of the selection he was choosing to murder people. So we go back to that experiment that he is known, what was motivating him . Why was he doing the experiments . What excited him and got him up every day . He found himself in a situation with no moral or ethical boundaries or limitations imposed on him. One of the positions on positions the people who claims to know the purpose of his experiment said he was involved working with twins because he wanted to discover the secret of twin births so he could use that knowledge to apply it to the german population insecurity area and future to increase germany. This is not true and ignores the proposition that he was interested in the secret to when birth and you would also be interested in the twins themselves and he showed no interest in the appearance of twins they were often sent to the barracks for they were used as unwilling subjects for experiments also a long tradition of twin experiments within germany 200 dissertations written based on twin research during the not see. That was considered the Gold Standard of Genetic Research the theory has to do with comparing the incidence of disease between fraternal twin ten medical twins. As a result of nature and nurture and environment. Josef mengele work at auschwitz was the extension of work from germany before the war. Of course at that time he didnt have the same socalled supply of research material. When that ended in german germany, Young Children you needed a pair of twins and then they diverge. That most children were moved to the countryside with the whole cost of the war in terms of human infrastructure made it difficult to continue to when research until he got to auschwitz then it was the extreme number of twin subjects. For him Josef Mengele thought auschwitz was a cornucopia of possibilities because it offered the opportunity to continue his twin Research Conducted by the institute without any of the safeguards present in germany for research on human beings. So for him it was a fantasy that it would have been a crime against science to carry on the experiments. I know you cant answer this but if he would have been aske asked, whether he was complying with the admonition to do no harm, what do you think he would have said . I talk in the book about how the medical profession was able with morally ethical intellectual sleightofhand be consistent with their own view of the hippocratic oath and also carry on the racial hygienic work required of those physicians in nazi germany. They simply substituted the patient wh

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