Yale Symposium on Holocaust and Genocide: Marwell

Transcript

• 00:07Our final speaker this afternoon, no,
• 00:08our final speaker before the break,
• 00:10excuse me, before the panel this
• 00:12afternoon will be David Marwell, PhD,
• 00:15who is going to be speaking to us
• 00:17this afternoon on Mangala unmasking
• 00:19the in quotes Angel of Death.
• 00:23David is a is a.
• 00:25Now, I guess I would say old friend of mine.
• 00:27We've worked together for many years
• 00:30through the fast Food organization.
• 00:32He is the author of course,
• 00:33of of the book Mangalore
• 00:35unmasking the Angel of Death,
• 00:36as well as the former director of the
• 00:38Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York,
• 00:39the former director of the
• 00:41Berlin Document Center,
• 00:42and a former chief of Investigative
• 00:44Research for the Office of and
• 00:46Special Investigations at the United
• 00:48States Department of Justice.
• 00:49David has had a a fascinating career,
• 00:52some of which I'll highlight here.
• 00:55He spent nine years in the
• 00:57Department of Justice,
• 00:58where he conducted research and support
• 01:00of the investigation and prosecution of
• 01:02Nazi war criminals in the United States.
• 01:04And as part of that effort,
• 01:05he played major roles in the
• 01:07Klaus Barbie and Joseph Mangala
• 01:09investigations and helped to author
• 01:11the two major reports that resulted.
• 01:13In 1988,
• 01:14he went to Berlin to become the last
• 01:16director of the Berlin Document Center
• 01:18repository for captured personnel
• 01:20related files of the Nazi Party.
• 01:23When he returned to the US to become
• 01:25the executive director of the JFK
• 01:27Assassination Records Review Board,
• 01:29an independent federal agency,
• 01:32that they reviewed the records relating
• 01:34to the assassination of President
• 01:36Kennedy and making them public.
• 01:38I'm following this service.
• 01:39He became the associate the museum director
• 01:41of the United States Holocaust Museum.
• 01:44And he was later appointed the Director
• 01:46and CEO of the Museum of Jewish Heritage
• 01:48in New York in New York and has had
• 01:50a marvelous career including fasting,
• 01:52including his authorship of this
• 01:53book we're going to talk about today.
• 01:55Doctor Marla received the BA from
• 01:57Brandeis of PhD in modern European
• 01:59history from Binghamton University and
• 02:01he is here to speak about Doctor Mangala.
• 02:04Thank you very much for joining us today.
• 02:06David Romano.
• 02:08First, I want to thank my my buddy mark for
• 02:11the invitation and the kind introduction.
• 02:13I was alarmed. For a moment.
• 02:15I thought I had brought the wrong talk.
• 02:17I thought I brought the talk about
• 02:19who killed President Kennedy,
• 02:20but but I didn't. Yeah.
• 02:26I'd also like to just to say that
• 02:28when you give these talks you,
• 02:30you're pretty sure that you'll.
• 02:32Give people information and provide
• 02:34information for individuals,
• 02:35but you're not always sure you're going
• 02:37to learn something from your experience.
• 02:39And I have to say the.
• 02:41Presenters who preceded me,
• 02:42Torsten and Ruth and Andrew
• 02:44all presented really marvelous
• 02:46talks that made me think deeply,
• 02:48and I'm looking forward to our dinner
• 02:51tonight so that we can discuss them further.
• 02:54And finally,
• 02:54I'd like to thank the Lindenthal family for
• 02:57supporting this really worthwhile event.
• 03:03I'm gonna take my phone out so
• 03:04that I keep track of the time.
• 03:06I've asked Mark to give me
• 03:08a heads up because.
• 03:12I can. Occasionally lose track of the time.
• 03:17I have a script here, but I go off
• 03:20the script for very very quickly.
• 03:22Umm. Next Tuesday, February 7th.
• 03:26Will Mark the 44th anniversary of Joseph
• 03:31Mengele's death at the age of 67.
• 03:35German investigators executing a
• 03:37search warrant of the home of a close
• 03:40friend of Mangalores in Bavaria.
• 03:42Discovered correspondence that
• 03:44although not explicit.
• 03:46Led them to believe that Mangala was dead.
• 03:51A letter clumsily concealed in
• 03:53the wardrobe of the wife. Of the.
• 03:57A man who was the friend of Joseph Mangala.
• 04:00The letter,
• 04:02using coded names and providing no
• 04:06details or places of place or identity,
• 04:10provided sufficient evidence to launch
• 04:12the beginning of the end of what until
• 04:16then had been a long and fruitless search.
• 04:20I want to quote from the letter
• 04:22that was discovered that day.
• 04:26Here's the quote.
• 04:27As every year this is from a a
• 04:31German expatriate. In Brazil.
• 04:33As every year, I spent a three-week
• 04:37vacation at the sea with my family.
• 04:40And the uncle? As he, as Mengla,
• 04:44was called in our house,
• 04:46and which he was to our children,
• 04:48spent the last days of
• 04:51his life there with us.
• 04:53During the evening swim in the sea,
• 04:56he suffered a stroke.
• 04:57While swimming and was only able
• 05:00to make awkward swimming movements
• 05:02with one arm due to an obvious
• 05:05paralysis on one side of his body.
• 05:08He was a little away from me,
• 05:10but closer to my family members who
• 05:12were rushing to the beach because
• 05:15they had observed a strong undertow.
• 05:17Our 12 year old boy who noticed the odd
• 05:21behavior of the otherwise strong swimmer.
• 05:24Shouted uncle.
• 05:25Keep coming out.
• 05:27The sea is going to pull you in.
• 05:29He alerted my wife and she shouted to me,
• 05:33take care of Uncle.
• 05:34He doesn't seem to be able to come out.
• 05:37And she tried to bring the children
• 05:40to safety.
• 05:41I hurriedly swam to him.
• 05:44He was making awkward swimming
• 05:47moment movements with only one arm.
• 05:50I grabbed him under the armpit
• 05:53and tried to swim him in.
• 05:55Working hard with my legs and my own.
• 05:57My one free arm.
• 05:59Since the water was too deep to stand and
• 06:02the current was strongly working against us,
• 06:05it required an extraordinary effort.
• 06:08My wife and our 14 year
• 06:10old daughter meanwhile,
• 06:11ran for help.
• 06:12But I had already dragged the
• 06:15unconscious man to the waist deep
• 06:17water when my son and a boy.
• 06:19Alerted by our daughter,
• 06:21came and pulled them all the
• 06:23way into the sandy beach.
• 06:25My daughter had hardly asked for
• 06:27a surfboard from a group of.
• 06:29Guys sitting in the in the distance.
• 06:32By chance, the man was a doctor there,
• 06:35and when he heard that there was a
• 06:38drowning man in need of resuscitation,
• 06:40he began to work on him.
• 06:42In the meantime,
• 06:43my wife and daughter ran to the nearby
• 06:46beach restaurant and called the Rescue Squad.
• 06:49Which arrived in very short notice.
• 06:52But it was all in vain.
• 06:54And too late.
• 06:57Fighting heroically.
• 06:58Until his last breath.
• 07:01As he had done throughout a
• 07:03long life full of turmoil,
• 07:05this is menglin, our friend.
• 07:08Passed away forever on a
• 07:11subtropical sea beach.
• 07:13So ended the life of the Angel of death.
• 07:17The man who was the agent of
• 07:20death for so many innocents.
• 07:22Died in an old man's death
• 07:25on a sunny beach in Brazil.
• 07:28The writer of this letter.
• 07:30Informed his correspondent.
• 07:31That he thought it would be best not.
• 07:35To make public the death of Joseph Mangala,
• 07:38in part to protect those who
• 07:40had shielded him in Brazil,
• 07:43but also,
• 07:44and he said this explicitly to
• 07:46frustrate those who were in
• 07:48pursuit of him for so long.
• 07:51I was one of those who was in
• 07:52pursuit of for so long,
• 07:54and this delay in allowing us
• 07:56to know about the
• 07:58death of Mengla lasted at least six years,
• 08:01so that most of our efforts,
• 08:02which I'll describe soon,
• 08:04were carried out after the man had died.
• 08:06But. The fact that he had died was.
• 08:10Knowingly kept secret by.
• 08:12By his. By his family.
• 08:16The letter was not discovered by the
• 08:18Germans until the last day of May in 1985.
• 08:23Beginning in 1980,
• 08:25I served as a historian for the
• 08:28US Department of Justice Office
• 08:30of Special Investigations,
• 08:32where I conducted research in support
• 08:34of US prosecutions of Nazi war
• 08:36criminals living in the United States.
• 08:39I noticed when they were setting this
• 08:41up that I gave them the wrong deck,
• 08:43but I think it'll be OK.
• 08:46Just going to.
• 08:48This is what I wanted to show you.
• 08:51I also, Andrew was once one who
• 08:54didn't speak for the US government,
• 08:56but I did carry a badge.
• 08:59For those of you who can't see it very well,
• 09:01it's quite serious,
• 09:02it says.
• 09:05U.S. Department of Justice.
• 09:07Office of Special Investigations is
• 09:10a very ominous criminal division,
• 09:12and then down here it says historian.
• 09:18#3.
• 09:21And although I swear I will not
• 09:23ever repeat again this story I'm
• 09:25about to tell you, I'm going to do
• 09:27it now because I can't help myself.
• 09:31This badge, which we really
• 09:33weren't supposed to carry,
• 09:34but which we legally were permitted to have,
• 09:40fueled a number of different fantasies
• 09:42of mine. One of which was that.
• 09:44I was standing on line at the movies.
• 09:48And the guy behind me and I,
• 09:50I credit Woody Allen for some of the
• 09:52inspiration for this, says. You know,
• 09:56when Hitler marched into Russia in 1942,
• 09:59he made the biggest tactical error.
• 10:01And I turn.
• 10:04Face him, and I said, excuse me.
• 10:06Did you say 1942?
• 10:10He said, yeah, what's it to you?
• 10:11And I take out my badge and
• 10:13say government historian.
• 10:19You know when, when my.
• 10:22When my father-in-law first saw
• 10:24the badge. He said well. Uh.
• 10:27I knew you were the wrong kind of doctor,
• 10:30but I didn't know you were a cop and.
• 10:34And then he said why are you #3 which is?
• 10:40At the beginning of 1985,
• 10:43I was assigned to the investigation of Joseph
• 10:46Mengele with the goal of discovering if.
• 10:48And how he might have been used and
• 10:51assisted by the United States government,
• 10:53and finally to bring him to justice.
• 10:57This investigation was soon joined by two
• 11:01and then three international partners,
• 11:04with the Israelis and the Germans
• 11:07coming on board in early 1985 and the
• 11:10Brazilians in the summer of 1985.
• 11:12After the body's thought to be that
• 11:15of Joseph Mangala and heralded by that
• 11:18letter which I quoted from earlier.
• 11:20Was discovered in Sao Paulo.
• 11:23In the course of the investigation,
• 11:25I visited Mengele's hometown.
• 11:31His hideouts.
• 11:33I read his private correspondence.
• 11:37And intimate musings.
• 11:39I interviewed his family.
• 11:42His friends.
• 11:43His colleagues and victims,
• 11:46those who survived him.
• 11:49And in the end.
• 11:51I held his bones in my hand.
• 11:57The book I wrote about Mangala is
• 11:59in part about his life and career,
• 12:02and it is also about the figure
• 12:05that he became that he came to
• 12:07represent for so many people.
• 12:09By the time Mangala went bathing in the ocean
• 12:13on what was to be his last day on Earth.
• 12:17One month before his 68th birthday.
• 12:20He had emerged as a larger than life symbol.
• 12:24A process of what one might
• 12:27call iconic Fication began after
• 12:30megalist service at Auschwitz.
• 12:33Propelled by the accounts of those
• 12:35who encountered him and by his
• 12:37representations in popular culture,
• 12:39and I had a slide.
• 12:42See if I can find it here.
• 12:45Sorry about this, I. There.
• 12:49Who will forget Gregory Peck as the Joseph
• 12:52Mangala character in boys from Brazil?
• 12:54Well, some people may not have ever
• 12:56seen the movie, but for me it was a
• 12:59kind of staple of my young adulthood.
• 13:02That process of a kind of
• 13:04vacation continues even today,
• 13:06long after his death.
• 13:07Indeed, he has become for many an
• 13:10outsized character who represents
• 13:12not only the Holocaust itself,
• 13:14but also the failure of justice
• 13:16at the end of World War Two.
• 13:19Which saw so many Nazi criminals
• 13:21escape any kind of reckoning.
• 13:24He is also regarded as the
• 13:28exemplar for science gone mad.
• 13:31When I started work on the book about
• 13:34Mangala just about seven years ago,
• 13:37I set up a Google Alert to notify
• 13:40me each time mangle his name was
• 13:43mentioned anywhere on the Internet.
• 13:46And since then.
• 13:48I have received messages every single
• 13:51day and sometimes multiple messages.
• 13:55Sometimes these references were
• 13:57of Mengla as a historical figure.
• 13:59Very often. Wrong or inaccurate?
• 14:04But more often as a benchmark for evil.
• 14:08As the malign metaphor.
• 14:10Since the COVID pandemic,
• 14:12those mentions of Mangala have multiplied.
• 14:16Significantly,
• 14:17as issues of medical ethics have emerged,
• 14:21and as people have thought,
• 14:22the sought the right means to express anger,
• 14:26fear, or describe evil behavior.
• 14:31Famously Anthony.
• 14:32Fauci has been compared to
• 14:35mingle not only on Fox News,
• 14:37but in the Daily News,
• 14:39and more times than you can actually count.
• 14:45Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer.
• 14:49Pictured here on the front page of
• 14:51a right wing newspaper from Greece,
• 14:53next to a picture of Mangala,
• 14:55and the comparison is obvious.
• 15:00The more mengoli has become a symbol,
• 15:02however, the more obscure has
• 15:04become as a human being, as a man.
• 15:09My book attempts to strip away at the
• 15:11myths that have attached themselves
• 15:14to Mangala and that have served to
• 15:17elevate him to this iconic role.
• 15:19And at the same time,
• 15:21I hope that it replaces that
• 15:24frightening caricature of a monster.
• 15:27With an even more unsettling picture.
• 15:30Of the human being.
• 15:32That he was.
• 15:34I originally set out to write a book about
• 15:37my experiences in the investigation.
• 15:39It was to be a.
• 15:41Kind of memoir that told what
• 15:43I consider to be a very,
• 15:45very interesting detective
• 15:47story about how we were able.
• 15:501st to how we sought first to find
• 15:53Mangala and bring him to justice,
• 15:55but then after the discovery
• 15:57the body a very long and very
• 15:59complicated forensic investigation
• 16:01into whether the body this is pre
• 16:04DNA fingerprint technology that
• 16:05attempt to try to identify whether
• 16:08the body was mangled or not.
• 16:11It was a interesting fascinating
• 16:12investigation and I thought it
• 16:14would make a wonderful book so
• 16:16I began to write it but before
• 16:18I started writing up that.
• 16:20Look, I decided I would.
• 16:23Umm.
• 16:23Should know a little bit more
• 16:25about the man himself as a means
• 16:29of introducing the investigation.
• 16:31So I began to read deeply and
• 16:33widely things I hadn't done at
• 16:35the time of the investigation and.
• 16:38So instead of restricting myself
• 16:39solely to the investigation,
• 16:41I expanded my effort to a biography
• 16:44of Joseph Mangala.
• 16:46I had discovered a rich body of new,
• 16:49newly released records and
• 16:51brilliant scholarship,
• 16:52both of which shed lights on,
• 16:54shed light on Bengali areas of
• 16:57Mangala's life and career that had
• 16:59been unknown to me and which became
• 17:01available only after I had started writing.
• 17:04The book is based on records that
• 17:05I found in archives in Germany,
• 17:07Israel, the United States and Brazil.
• 17:11I used the once top secret CIA
• 17:14file on Mangala which was released
• 17:17and declassified in 2000.
• 17:19And the secret Mossad report?
• 17:22Declassified and released only
• 17:24in 2017 after damn it,
• 17:26after I had finished nearly the
• 17:28entire first draft of the book.
• 17:31The book is based on interviews
• 17:33with participants.
• 17:34And on my own recollection of
• 17:35events in which I participated,
• 17:38it is also based on Mengoli's own writings.
• 17:42And here I'm going to have to
• 17:43skip over a little bit.
• 17:46When the body was discovered in.
• 17:48Brazil, thanks to that
• 17:50letter I quoted from earlier.
• 17:53The Brazilian police and
• 17:55the German authorities and.
• 17:57With us observing.
• 17:58Searched the home where
• 17:59Mandela had been hiding out,
• 18:01and a tremendous amount had
• 18:03been discovered there.
• 18:05Diaries. Date books.
• 18:09Musings. Lots of correspondence,
• 18:12mostly dating from the.
• 18:15Post 1960 period when he had gone to Brazil.
• 18:19And also notably.
• 18:21And autobiographical project that
• 18:24Mengla had embarked upon in the
• 18:28early 1970s when he decided to write.
• 18:31The history of his life,
• 18:33not for publication,
• 18:34not for distribution,
• 18:36but for his family to to let them know about.
• 18:42The experiences of,
• 18:43as he said, someone marked,
• 18:45distinctly marked by his time.
• 18:49He decided to write this memoir,
• 18:51not in the form of memoir or autobiography,
• 18:54but in what I think is
• 18:56now called Autofiction,
• 18:57that he used his life story but employed the.
• 19:01Techniques of literature.
• 19:03To allow him more flexibility, don't we all,
• 19:07when we're writing nonfiction,
• 19:08wish we could just dispense with the
• 19:11facts and write what we wanted to?
• 19:13Mengla didn't dispense with the facts,
• 19:15but he, using the structure of his
• 19:17life where he was when he was there,
• 19:20he would he was able in his writings
• 19:22to displace his motives onto
• 19:24other characters so that he could
• 19:26examine them in different ways.
• 19:28He was able to typify certain events and.
• 19:33He thought it was a better way of
• 19:35using his life story to make the
• 19:37points that he wanted to a kind of his
• 19:40life as a kind of allegory, in a way.
• 19:44Umm.
• 19:44The autobiography that was discovered there
• 19:47consists of lots of handwritten notebooks,
• 19:50many of which.
• 19:52Are difficult to decipher.
• 19:53I waited my way through them.
• 19:55Thankfully,
• 19:56the Germans had them.
• 19:59Transferred to TypeScript and I was
• 20:01able to find the entire collection
• 20:03in the archives in in Vismod.
• 20:06To give you some idea of how what
• 20:08a slog this was to go through,
• 20:10he spends about 100 pages writing
• 20:12about his birth,
• 20:13putting it into context of European
• 20:16history and of other things.
• 20:27I begin by describing Mengoli's childhood.
• 20:31And admit to finding no hint there.
• 20:34Of the man he was later to become.
• 20:37He was born as the first of three sons.
• 20:41Into a prosperous and prominent family
• 20:43in the town of Gunsberg in Bavaria,
• 20:46where his father owned a farm.
• 20:48Machinery manufacturing company.
• 20:49Which became a major employer of the town.
• 20:53Gunsberg was a company town and
• 20:55the Mengla firm was the company.
• 21:00There are no stories of mengla having
• 21:02exhibited any kinds of extreme behavior.
• 21:05There's no stories of him torturing
• 21:08the family cat in the backyard.
• 21:12Or even any stories of him
• 21:15following any extreme politics.
• 21:17Those who knew the family well described
• 21:20it concisely as Catholic and conservative.
• 21:26I describe mengle as university education.
• 21:30A middling student,
• 21:32this is the university card which was
• 21:36begun to be filled out in this the summer
• 21:39semester beginning in April of 1930.
• 21:42And lasted a number of years and
• 21:45followed his progress as a student
• 21:48in German universities from Munich
• 21:51to Bonn back to Munich to Vienna
• 21:54to Leipzig to Frankfurt.
• 22:01Mangala was not a good
• 22:03student in the gymnasium,
• 22:04although he went on the academic track.
• 22:07His intellectual life was
• 22:08really born at the university,
• 22:11where he was exposed to gifted
• 22:13and inspirational teachers,
• 22:14several of whom were or would
• 22:17become Nobel Prize laureates.
• 22:19To give an example of the impact of one
• 22:21of these teachers on Mangala and how he
• 22:23reflected upon it in his later life,
• 22:25I'm just going to give a
• 22:27quote from his autobiography.
• 22:29Mengler recalled quote with reverence.
• 22:32The director of the Anatomical
• 22:34Institute at the University of Munich,
• 22:36Siegfried Molier.
• 22:39For a young medical student
• 22:41to have such a teacher,
• 22:43Mandela wrote with his beautiful,
• 22:46sonorous voice and brilliant
• 22:48appearance was a quote blessing.
• 22:51In a few words,
• 22:53this this is manglis writing.
• 22:54In a few words this godly professor
• 22:56of anatomy had touched me,
• 22:58and probably all the others,
• 23:00to the depths of my soul,
• 23:02and created in me an enthusiastic
• 23:05readiness for my studies.
• 23:07Moliere counseled his students
• 23:09that a good physician must,
• 23:11quote conceive of body and soul as a unity.
• 23:16He spoke of the quote majesty of death,
• 23:18which they would encounter in their work.
• 23:21Later, when Mollier instructed
• 23:22them in the anatomy lab,
• 23:24Mengla wrote that the great
• 23:26teacher wanted them to have a deep,
• 23:28even intuitive understanding of
• 23:31anatomy and not just memorize terms,
• 23:34and he deftly demonstrated what was visible.
• 23:38Through the through this,
• 23:40through dissection.
• 23:41The the quote functional relationship
• 23:43and the structural efficiency of
• 23:45the components of the human body.
• 23:47Mengler was particularly moved
• 23:50by Moliere's introduction to
• 23:52the dissection labs.
• 23:54My entire life,
• 23:56even in the most difficult situations,
• 23:59I can hear his solemn words from time,
• 24:02from that time when he spoke
• 24:04of the rights of the dead.
• 24:07That we should always approach
• 24:09the dead with dignity and gravity.
• 24:12Mengele's choice of subjects at the
• 24:15university Medicine and anthropology.
• 24:17He was to earn a PhD in both
• 24:20of these disciplines.
• 24:21Medicine.
• 24:22He studied medicine and became a
• 24:24licensed physician.
• 24:25But he went further and got an
• 24:27academic degree in medicine,
• 24:28which would permit him to eventually
• 24:30have a career as a head of an
• 24:34institute at the university,
• 24:36or to be a professor and a
• 24:38degree in in anthropology.
• 24:41This choice of subjects was dictated by a
• 24:44discovered passion for these disciplines,
• 24:46which he had not known about before
• 24:48he got to the university and to
• 24:51the influence of his teachers.
• 24:53I think I have.
• 24:54I don't have them,
• 24:55but I and the other deck I have the
• 24:58the cover of both his anthropology
• 25:00dissertation which was about the
• 25:03how to determine the the race of
• 25:05of the lower through an examination
• 25:07of the lower jaw of.
• 25:11Taken from samples at the anthropology
• 25:14collection at Munich University and
• 25:16his medical dissertation was about
• 25:18the heritability of cleft palate.
• 25:21Where he used a combined and very,
• 25:24according to the people at the time,
• 25:26insightful analysis of both
• 25:29family history and and.
• 25:34And genetic research.
• 25:37And give you some.
• 25:39Pictures of mangala.
• 25:40As a student, he is pictured
• 25:43a second from the right. Here.
• 25:52This is him in in Frankfurt.
• 25:58With a colleague.
• 26:01Kind of joking around with some of his
• 26:03colleagues and the Professor of nursing.
• 26:11Here's the cover of his. This is
• 26:14his anthropological dissertation.
• 26:18And his medical dissertation.
• 26:23Mengel has genuine passion
• 26:24for his subject of study,
• 26:26offered him distinct advantages for his
• 26:29career and elevated his status nearly
• 26:32coincident with his university career.
• 26:34Political developments within Germany
• 26:36placed particular focus and advantage
• 26:39on the fields of Mangala study.
• 26:41Megan had become an expert
• 26:43in the very science.
• 26:44That provided the underpinnings
• 26:47for Nazi ideology.
• 26:48And he was no slouch.
• 26:50He published in respected journals.
• 26:53His medical dissertation on cleft palates
• 26:55was cited as late as the early 1970s.
• 26:57In a medical journal that I was able to find.
• 27:02He was a. Had a position in a leading
• 27:08university institute in Frankfurt.
• 27:09This is a picture of Mangala in
• 27:111937 at a meeting in to begin.
• 27:14Which was a meeting of what had
• 27:16been the professional organization
• 27:18for physical anthropology.
• 27:20And at this meeting they changed
• 27:22their name to the Institute or the
• 27:25Organization for Racial Hygiene.
• 27:27And you see in this picture.
• 27:30The. Major figures in.
• 27:35German anthropology and medicine.
• 27:39Oregon Fisher. Umm.
• 27:45This is a Teodor Mullison. Who was his.
• 27:50Um, mentor in anthropology?
• 27:53Add more fun for sure who was the
• 27:56director of the Institute in Frankfurt
• 27:58where he where Mangala was employed.
• 28:01On the margin right here was Joseph Mengele,
• 28:05a young student.
• 28:07Who actually published a note in an
• 28:09important journal about this meeting.
• 28:11He's on the fringe,
• 28:12but he knows where he wants to be.
• 28:14And he has every prospect,
• 28:16given his bright beginning in
• 28:19the field that he chose to study,
• 28:22of moving his way to the
• 28:24center of this photograph,
• 28:25or the photograph that would
• 28:26be taken 10 or 20 years hence.
• 28:34In my book I summarized mangala's.
• 28:37University days in the following way.
• 28:40The years of Mengele's University
• 28:42study changed him just as profoundly
• 28:45as they had changed both his country
• 28:48and the status of the science that
• 28:51had become his consuming passion.
• 28:53He entered university in 1930 at
• 28:55a time of political uncertainty,
• 28:58the impact of the Great Depression and
• 29:00not yet been fully felt in Germany.
• 29:02He emerged 8 years later in the
• 29:05vanguard of a new science committed
• 29:08to a new political vision,
• 29:10both of which promised to change.
• 29:12Germany and the world. The.
• 29:16Thank you. OK, I'm sorry, no problem.
• 29:26So, with apologies to everyone
• 29:28who's watching this remotely,
• 29:30I won't go back through the slides,
• 29:31but if you write me, I'll send you copies.
• 29:35And that's let me catch my place where I was.
• 29:39He emerged 8 years later in the
• 29:41vanguard of a new science and
• 29:43committed to a new political vision.
• 29:45Both of which promised to
• 29:47change Germany and the world.
• 29:48The combination of his studies in
• 29:51medicine and anthropology provided
• 29:53mengla with a perfect scientific
• 29:55compliment to Nazi politics.
• 29:57Indeed, it was Rudolf Hess,
• 29:59Hitler's deputy,
• 30:00who said that Nazism was
• 30:02simply applied biology.
• 30:04Through medicine with its focus on the human
• 30:07body and emphasis on genetic pathology,
• 30:10and through anthropology,
• 30:11with its focus on the racial so-called
• 30:13racial body and emphasis on the
• 30:16qualitative differences between races.
• 30:18Mengla had equipped himself to be a
• 30:20frontline soldier in the struggle that
• 30:23was at the heart of Nazi ideology
• 30:26and that defined its politics.
• 30:28I explained that Hitler once.
• 30:31Argue that while he could do without lawyers.
• 30:35Sorry everyone,
• 30:37engineers and builders.
• 30:39He needed national socialist doctors.
• 30:43This is a quote I cannot do without
• 30:45you for a single day or a single
• 30:48hour if not for you if you fail me.
• 30:51Then all is lost.
• 30:52For what good are our struggles if
• 30:56the health of our people is in danger?
• 31:00When he says our people,
• 31:01he means our racial community.
• 31:04I explained how the role of the physician
• 31:06underwent a transformation under the Nazis,
• 31:09where the so-called racial
• 31:11community was substituted for the
• 31:14individual as the focus of care.
• 31:17Nazi physicians could,
• 31:18in an intellectual and moral sleight of hand.
• 31:22Remain faithful in their own minds,
• 31:24perhaps to their Hippocratic oaths,
• 31:27and engage in Nazi racial and eugenic
• 31:29activities simply by substituting the
• 31:32perceived welfare of the folk of this
• 31:35collective racial body of the people.
• 31:38For that of the individual patient.
• 31:41Some French scholars have
• 31:43summarized it this way.
• 31:45The physician must abandon his
• 31:48old humanitarian conceptions.
• 31:50He has one patient,
• 31:52the German people or the German folk.
• 31:54The individual is no more than a
• 31:57single cell of the whole people.
• 31:59The people are transcendent.
• 32:01They are the only body.
• 32:03It is this popular body which must be
• 32:06preserved and treated to maintain it intact.
• 32:09No sacrifice is too great.
• 32:11Just as a doctor will not hesitate
• 32:14to amputate a finger to save a
• 32:16limb or a limb to save a life,
• 32:19so the Nazi physician is prepared to
• 32:22undertake all measures against the
• 32:25individual who menaces the people,
• 32:27the folk, against individual Germans,
• 32:30and with even greater reason
• 32:33against strangers.
• 32:41I supply, I believe, an important
• 32:44corrective to pass biographies of Joseph
• 32:48Mengele by explaining his wartime.
• 32:50Experience as a frontline soldier
• 32:53with the s s Viking division,
• 32:56the 5th s s. Division,
• 32:58which saw him exposed to combat and extreme.
• 33:04Violence from the very beginning of the
• 33:07invasion of the Soviet Union until the
• 33:10retreat from Stalingrad 18 months later.
• 33:12If you read any book about Mangala.
• 33:15You will see and read that he left
• 33:19this unit sometime early in 1942,
• 33:22when in fact he remained with it
• 33:24throughout the invasion of the
• 33:26Soviet Union in the summer of 1941,
• 33:29through the long winter,
• 33:32another summer and then.
• 33:36In the area around Stalingrad,
• 33:38he's evacuated. In January of 1943.
• 33:44This is a photograph when Mengla
• 33:46was supposed to be elsewhere.
• 33:47This is proof that he was actually
• 33:50in Ukraine. Umm. In October of 1940.
• 33:5641.
• 33:58I love this photograph because I
• 33:59don't know if you can see it, but.
• 34:02This is how photographs enlighten us.
• 34:04There's a guy. Urinating behind
• 34:07this structure here is accidentally
• 34:09captured in this photograph that.
• 34:12Mangala had taken to sent home to his wife.
• 34:18Mangala is evacuated from
• 34:21the area around. Stalingrad.
• 34:23His unit was moved from the caucuses up
• 34:27to support the retreat in Stalingrad,
• 34:30and for reasons that we don't clearly know,
• 34:33some people claim that he was wounded.
• 34:35It's not clear that he was,
• 34:37but Mangala is evacuated by air in
• 34:40January 1943 and arrives back in Berlin,
• 34:43where he's placed in a replacement unit
• 34:46available to be assigned somewhere else.
• 34:49In Berlin, Mangala is able to reconnect.
• 34:53With his mentor Atmar Fanfair Schur,
• 34:57who had been the institute
• 34:59director in Frankfurt,
• 35:00where Mandela was active in his.
• 35:05Both as first PhD in his
• 35:08early postdoc existence.
• 35:10For sure becomes the director of the
• 35:13Primary Prime Institute for for research
• 35:16in in his field that is the Kaiser
• 35:20Villam Institute for Anthropology.
• 35:22For sure is becomes a director in November
• 35:25of 1942, Mengla is back in Berlin.
• 35:28He writes almost immediately to
• 35:30his former boss and says I'm here,
• 35:32I'd like to be associated with the Institute.
• 35:35And although he never was a part of
• 35:37the Institute, he goes there often.
• 35:39He's even on their birthday lists that
• 35:41circulated so that he gets congratulations.
• 35:46Mengla there meets the staff of
• 35:48physicians at the Institute.
• 35:50He gets to know their research.
• 35:53He understands what their
• 35:55research interests are.
• 35:57And then in May of 1943.
• 36:00He is assigned to Auschwitz.
• 36:02We don't know exactly why some
• 36:04people claim that he that for
• 36:07sure placed him at Auschwitz.
• 36:08Or that he wanted to go to Auschwitz.
• 36:11But in any event,
• 36:12whether he went through willingly or
• 36:14whether it was simply an assignment,
• 36:16mengla really came to life
• 36:18in many ways at Auschwitz.
• 36:20Auschwitz was,
• 36:21for him,
• 36:22a way of unlocking much about his
• 36:26ambition and about his own sense of
• 36:30his prospects for a scientific life.
• 36:35I devoted an entire part of my
• 36:36book to his time at Auschwitz.
• 36:38Not enough time, some people think,
• 36:39but what I do in the book is try to explain.
• 36:43Not only what Mengla did, but what he
• 36:46didn't do because there's so much.
• 36:48Myth about Mangala at Auschwitz
• 36:50that I thought important to try to
• 36:53parse what we can absolutely prove
• 36:55about what he did there and try to
• 36:58figure out what he was doing there.
• 37:01It's a very difficult task because
• 37:04there are virtually no documents that
• 37:07have survived that describe mengla,
• 37:10so-called scientific work at Auschwitz.
• 37:12We're forced to rely on the testimony
• 37:15of people who had some connection
• 37:17with that work. Very often.
• 37:21It's the testimony of.
• 37:24Young people who are children at the time
• 37:27who are subjected to his experiments.
• 37:32I always say that when you.
• 37:36You can take the testimony of individuals.
• 37:39And understand and learn
• 37:40a great deal from it,
• 37:41but only when they're talking about things.
• 37:43That they know something about themselves
• 37:46that they witnessed themselves.
• 37:48But if you read most of the testimony about.
• 37:52Mangala people are talking
• 37:53about what he was trying to do,
• 37:55what his experiments were all about,
• 37:57what was his,
• 37:58what were the protocols he was following,
• 38:00what what did he want to do there,
• 38:02and the people who make those statements.
• 38:05Have no position, no context in which
• 38:08to be able to make the statements.
• 38:10They do so it's a very difficult and
• 38:13also for me a rather troubling and.
• 38:20I don't know how to put this.
• 38:21It was I I thought it was.
• 38:24I spent a great deal of time making sure
• 38:27that I had the right nuance and presented.
• 38:30This testimony and how I
• 38:32treated it with great care,
• 38:34because having spent my life in
• 38:36Holocaust education and working
• 38:38with this survivor community,
• 38:40I understand how invested individuals are
• 38:43in the stories that they tell and how much,
• 38:47how important it is for all of us to
• 38:50learn about what happened from the
• 38:53mouths of people who experienced it.
• 38:55But in the case of in certain cases,
• 38:58it's it's not reliable.
• 39:00Testimony and there's another
• 39:02level of testimony about what
• 39:04Mangala did at Auschwitz,
• 39:05and that comes from people who assisted him,
• 39:08from physicians who were.
• 39:14Basically forced to assist him
• 39:16in his in his, in his research.
• 39:19They're in a much better position to
• 39:21understand and make comments about
• 39:23what Mangala was trying to do and and
• 39:27how his experiments were carried out.
• 39:29But they too. There was a a distance
• 39:32between them and Mengele himself,
• 39:34and a distance in the kind of
• 39:37perspective that they they had so
• 39:40once left with fragmentary evidence.
• 39:43With. Lots of myth.
• 39:47And with a weighty responsibility to be as.
• 39:53As careful as one can be in
• 39:54terms of trying to present this.
• 39:56So in the book I talk about the
• 39:58areas of Mengele's research,
• 40:01but before I talk about them,
• 40:02which I'll get to in a second,
• 40:03I just want to say that in terms of.
• 40:06Absolute scale.
• 40:09Mangle is major crime.
• 40:13At Auschwitz was his participation
• 40:15in the so-called selections
• 40:17on the receiving ramp.
• 40:21This photograph was taken in, I believe,
• 40:23June of 1944 and the height of the
• 40:26so-called Hungarian action, you see.
• 40:30Streams of people and you. All know.
• 40:34What I'm about to describe,
• 40:36I think that a member of the medical staff
• 40:40and whereas before 1943 it may be that
• 40:43other people were involved in selections,
• 40:45but Edward Vertz at at Auschwitz,
• 40:48the the chief physician there.
• 40:51Reserved that role on the on the
• 40:54ramp for medical personnel because
• 40:56he believed in his own mind that
• 40:59physicians who were making these
• 41:01selections were performing a kind of.
• 41:04Public health. Action. And.
• 41:07So he so physicians were assigned to do this,
• 41:12this duty on the ramp and what
• 41:14they did essentially was.
• 41:15To meet all of the incoming transports.
• 41:19In preparation for the Hungarian action.
• 41:23The Nazis built a rail spur that
• 41:25went into the heart of the camp.
• 41:27Before April of 1944,
• 41:29the trains arrived at a receiving
• 41:31ramp that was located about one or
• 41:34two kilometers away from the camp.
• 41:36Between Auschwitz one and and Birkenau
• 41:39was a much more complicated procedure.
• 41:42Required trucks to transport people,
• 41:45and it required a guard company just
• 41:47around the ramp so that no one would escape.
• 41:49And once they got the ramp inside the camp,
• 41:53the trains run unloaded.
• 41:56The physician would stand.
• 41:57At the head of a column of people
• 42:00that would come toward him,
• 42:01and he would kind of divide
• 42:04that river of humanity into 2.
• 42:07Groups this kind of binary
• 42:09decision between who would be
• 42:11sent immediately to their deaths.
• 42:14And who would be spared for a while
• 42:16to be exploited first for their labor
• 42:18and for other services they might
• 42:21provide before they're being killed?
• 42:25Mangala performed this duty along with
• 42:28all the other physicians at the camp.
• 42:31Everyone was required to do it.
• 42:32Some wanted to opt out, but eventually
• 42:37succumb to the pressure to do it.
• 42:39There's potentially one person
• 42:41who claims never to have done it,
• 42:43but his testimony is is somewhat suspect.
• 42:48Mengla. Took advantage of his time
• 42:52on the ramp meeting this vast.
• 42:56Sea of humanity that was coming toward
• 42:59him to carry out another function,
• 43:02another kind of selection.
• 43:03He not only selected those who would be
• 43:05killed immediately and those who would
• 43:07be registered in the camp and exploited,
• 43:09but he also decided that he could find
• 43:12people who could assist him in his work.
• 43:15Imagine in the time that Mangala
• 43:18was at Auschwitz,
• 43:19I've calculated roughly perhaps
• 43:21as many as 750,000 people arrived
• 43:24during the 18 months that he.
• 43:26Was there?
• 43:29You can imagine,
• 43:30especially with the entire community
• 43:33of from the countryside of Hungary
• 43:35arriving within several months,
• 43:38the number of medical specialists who were.
• 43:41Within that group of people,
• 43:43the anthropologists, the psychiatrists,
• 43:47the pediatricians, the medical illustrators.
• 43:51The medical technicians, the nurses.
• 43:56Umm.
• 43:57Mangala would not only make this
• 44:00binary choice of death or death later,
• 44:03but also would ask, are there any physicians?
• 44:06Are there any pharmacists?
• 44:08Are there any anthropologists among you?
• 44:10And people would raise their hand and
• 44:13he'd shunt them aside and they would become.
• 44:16And very important element in what mengla?
• 44:19Ended up doing it.
• 44:20I was which was which was to create
• 44:22a kind of Research Institute.
• 44:23There pattern on his own experience
• 44:26at in Frankfurt,
• 44:27at the University Institute and
• 44:29at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.
• 44:37Yeah.
• 44:40His other duties included supervision of
• 44:44nominal supervision of the execution process,
• 44:47that he would be a doctor,
• 44:48would be on call to observe executions
• 44:53in block Block 11 where people were shot,
• 44:57and would have a nominal supervision over the
• 45:00gassing of individuals in the gas chambers.
• 45:03Medical corpsmen would be the ones who
• 45:05delivered the Sycon B gas to the gas chambers
• 45:09Mengler was nominally responsible for.
• 45:11Reviewing the menus of the
• 45:14nutrition of of prisoners,
• 45:16he was also responsible along with
• 45:19his colleagues for carrying out.
• 45:21Other kinds of select,
• 45:22I'd call them culling selections.
• 45:24He would carry out selections of the
• 45:26those people who survived the first
• 45:28selection and were registered in the camp.
• 45:31He would go to to the camp and and
• 45:34find those who were still available
• 45:36available for additional exploitation
• 45:38and those who were too sick to continue.
• 45:40So those series of ongoing selections
• 45:43were part of his responsibilities.
• 45:45Umm. He was not alone.
• 45:48He was one of between 20 and 30 physicians
• 45:52who were current assigned when he was there.
• 45:57He was different in the sense that
• 45:59he and several others had decided
• 46:02to use Auschwitz as a means of
• 46:04furthering their own careers.
• 46:07He got permission to carry out a
• 46:11series of scientific. Investigations.
• 46:15Other people did it at camp.
• 46:17There were experiments on electroshock
• 46:19therapy that was done in Auschwitz 3,
• 46:22experiments on perfecting the
• 46:24best way of mass sterilization.
• 46:27There were other kinds of more
• 46:29practical kinds of experiments,
• 46:31the efficacy of certain drugs,
• 46:33what the right dose was,
• 46:35how to treat certain diseases.
• 46:38Mangala was, if one can put it this way,
• 46:40was interested in more basic science.
• 46:45And we I'll talk about.
• 46:492. Three things that he did
• 46:53there among the the six that I
• 46:55described more fully in the book.
• 46:57The first thing that one thinks
• 46:59about when one thinks about
• 47:00Mengele at Auschwitz is twins.
• 47:02And what was Mangala doing
• 47:04with twins at Auschwitz?
• 47:06Most books, and even very
• 47:07good books will say, well,
• 47:09he was trying to discover
• 47:11the secret of twin births.
• 47:13He was trying to unlock that
• 47:15secret so that he could apply it
• 47:17on the German population and speed
• 47:19a more a quicker Arian future
• 47:21for Germany by multiplying the
• 47:23number of births that a single
• 47:26person could reliably contemplate.
• 47:30This is not true.
• 47:31There are reasons why people believe this.
• 47:33It became something that people with
• 47:37authority started positing very early
• 47:39on in the right after the end of of the war.
• 47:43But it did ignores,
• 47:44ignores a few things.
• 47:44First of all, it's not very logical.
• 47:46If Mengla was interested in
• 47:48the secret of twin births,
• 47:50would he be interested in the
• 47:51people who gave birth to twins and
• 47:53be interested in the parents of
• 47:54twins and not the twins themselves?
• 47:56Wouldn't that be a more reasonable
• 47:59subject of investigation?
• 48:00He showed very little interest in in that.
• 48:04It also ignores the long tradition
• 48:06of twin research as the kind of
• 48:08gold standard for genetic research,
• 48:10not just in Germany.
• 48:11The Rockefeller Foundation funded
• 48:13in the United States,
• 48:14even funded some in Germany.
• 48:16Twin research was considered
• 48:18the most reliable and still is
• 48:21used today for determining the
• 48:24heritability of diseases.
• 48:27It's a pretty basic,
• 48:29straightforward strategy you take.
• 48:32Identical twins who have the same
• 48:35genetic makeup and you.
• 48:39To determine whether there is within.
• 48:43A twin pair of identical twins,
• 48:45a concordance between the incidence of
• 48:48particular pathology and if there is.
• 48:51Then you can suggest that.
• 48:53Genetics is the reason for A cause
• 48:57of that particular pathology,
• 48:59if you find, on the other hand,
• 49:00that in fraternal twins.
• 49:03That there is.
• 49:07The same level of concordance
• 49:09between for particular.
• 49:12Pathology then you could suggest
• 49:13that it was environments.
• 49:14It's a whole notion of nature
• 49:16versus nurture was the basis for
• 49:18the strategy of twin research.
• 49:20Twin research was carried out
• 49:21in Germany before the war.
• 49:23There are 200 dissertations based on
• 49:26twin research during the Nazi period.
• 49:30The problem with twin research
• 49:32is that it requires twins.
• 49:34And twins, you have to have intact twin
• 49:38pairs for it to be a reasonable experiment.
• 49:42So it means you really need to have children.
• 49:44Because twins get older,
• 49:45they develop their own lives
• 49:47and their own families.
• 49:48So if you really want to have both twins
• 49:51together, you usually have children.
• 49:53With the war in Germany,
• 49:55children evacuated to the to the Countryside,
• 49:58twin research essentially stopped.
• 50:02Many what were considered to be
• 50:04important twin research experiments
• 50:06were halted because of the lack of
• 50:09twins when Mengla gets to Auschwitz.
• 50:11He's got it.
• 50:12Not an unlimited number,
• 50:13but if the incidence of twins is between
• 50:15one and 2% and you've got 700 thousand,
• 50:19750,000 people arriving,
• 50:20there are a lot of a lot of twins there.
• 50:23So Mengal is able to.
• 50:26Recruit.
• 50:28A large number of twins that would satisfy.
• 50:33The requirements for carrying
• 50:34out the experiments.
• 50:35We don't know exactly what he
• 50:36was doing in these experiments.
• 50:38We know from testimony that twins,
• 50:40and these are only twins who
• 50:42survived who can testify after.
• 50:44Most of them are really relating.
• 50:46What happened to them in the first stage
• 50:49of a of the protocol for Twin research,
• 50:51which is to determine whether twins
• 50:54are actually identical or fraternal?
• 50:56It's not as easy as you think,
• 50:58especially before DNA,
• 50:59there were lots of theories about how
• 51:02you did it, but beginning in 1920?
• 51:05The systematic. Comparison tests.
• 51:08I forget who developed it.
• 51:11With subject each side of the twin
• 51:15pair to rigorous examination,
• 51:19there would be lots of anthropometric values.
• 51:23Lots of values about eye color,
• 51:26eye shape, shape of the nose.
• 51:29They took a plastic plaster cast of
• 51:33the teeth. What type? Blood factors?
• 51:35They did this very systematic
• 51:37and very careful analysis.
• 51:39I think the form they used had
• 51:41something like 96 different
• 51:42fields that had to be filled out.
• 51:44In order to even get to the point
• 51:46where you could begin to conduct a
• 51:49reasonable professional twin experiment,
• 51:51you had to determine whether they
• 51:54were fraternal or. Or identical.
• 51:57So a lot of the testimony you
• 51:59you read is really about that,
• 52:01that examination he took tons of blood from.
• 52:03He kept coming to take more blood from me.
• 52:05He filled my mouth with this
• 52:07horrible plaster that happened.
• 52:08And it was frightening and it was
• 52:10done without their permission.
• 52:11And it was wrong,
• 52:13but it was part of what was a
• 52:17much more conventional.
• 52:19Program that Mengele was following in.
• 52:24In his twin research,
• 52:25as I say, we don't know,
• 52:27we don't know the exact experiments
• 52:29that he was performing.
• 52:31We only have certain hints about them.
• 52:35If you read anything else
• 52:37about Bangladesh Fitz,
• 52:38you'll read that he wanted to
• 52:40change the eye color. Of people.
• 52:44That he would inject blue dye into
• 52:47their eyes in order to make brown eyes blue.
• 52:51Umm, it's not true.
• 52:52And it doesn't make a lot of sense either,
• 52:55because Mengla was geneticist,
• 52:57why would a cosmetic change have
• 53:00any scientific value for him?
• 53:03It turns out that there was a
• 53:05colleague at the Kaiser Vilhelm
• 53:06Institute in Berlin named Karen
• 53:08Magnussen was not a very nice person
• 53:11and maybe not a very good scientist,
• 53:13but she was very interested
• 53:14in eye color at that time.
• 53:16Eye color was a a Riddle for
• 53:18geneticists because there were so
• 53:20many different factors that led to
• 53:21the to ICO and I color changes also.
• 53:24Kids are born with one color
• 53:25eye and they develop.
• 53:27There are different structures
• 53:28which create eye color,
• 53:29the the pigment producing cells and
• 53:32the structures of the eye itself.
• 53:34So this Karen Magnussen
• 53:36was very interested in.
• 53:37One of the ways that she experimented
• 53:39with with eyes was to look at
• 53:42people with heterochromia,
• 53:43people with two different color eyes.
• 53:45And she discovered a family of.
• 53:47I'll use the term Gypsy which
• 53:49is not an appropriate term,
• 53:50but it's the one they use in.
• 53:51I feel OK in this circle using it.
• 53:55Of Gypsy family that would have been in turn,
• 53:58as were other gypsies in Berlin in
• 54:01as an author of the Nazis, 1942.
• 54:04She was able to visit this family in
• 54:08the Marzan concentration camp in in
• 54:11the outskirts of Berlin and she was
• 54:14keeping track of this family with,
• 54:16which had it high incidence of
• 54:18twins and of heterochromia.
• 54:19That family was deported along with.
• 54:22The emptying out of Martson to
• 54:25Auschwitz in early 1943, I believe.
• 54:28Mangala,
• 54:28her buddy from the birthday list
• 54:31at the Kaiser Element Institute,
• 54:33ends up at Auschwitz.
• 54:34She writes to him and says this family is at.
• 54:38Auschwitz,
• 54:38can you help me continue to get data on them?
• 54:43So Mengla was involved in taking
• 54:46very careful family histories
• 54:47of the family and eventually was
• 54:50responsible for having the eyes
• 54:52of several of these children
• 54:54transported back to Berlin after
• 54:56these children were were killed for.
• 55:00Or histological examination by Karen
• 55:03Magnussen at the Kaiser Villam Institute.
• 55:05So he wasn't.
• 55:07So one of.
• 55:10Magnusen's notions was that
• 55:12there were certain hormones that
• 55:14had an impact on eye color.
• 55:16So one of the experiments that
• 55:17Mangala was doing was to take,
• 55:19we believe,
• 55:20adrenaline and dropping it into the eyes
• 55:23of individuals to see what impact it had.
• 55:26Now that's just not a benign experience
• 55:29for the person receiving the eye drops.
• 55:31Is it terribly painful?
• 55:33Heart will race,
• 55:35very confusing.
• 55:36And the response was was.
• 55:40Was relatively dramatic.
• 55:42So Mengler was carrying out
• 55:44that experiment at Auschwitz,
• 55:46and they had other other reasons
• 55:47for why he was interested in eyes.
• 55:49So that's that's Mengele's interest in eyes.
• 55:52The third thing is,
• 55:53and I often get a question.
• 55:55About was there anything that Mengla
• 55:57did at Auschwitz which was useful?
• 56:00Well, there was a incident.
• 56:03Of a disease that had basically
• 56:06disappeared in the developed
• 56:07world by the mid 20th century.
• 56:10A disease. A kind of oral cancer.
• 56:13It was known as Noma.
• 56:16A kind of flesh eating.
• 56:17I don't know mark,
• 56:18whether you know about this disease, but.
• 56:21You still find it in areas with
• 56:24immune deficient people and in the
• 56:26areas of the developing world.
• 56:28I read some articles about it in in
• 56:30from a by public health physician
• 56:33and in Nigeria it's a it's a
• 56:35horrible disease disfiguring.
• 56:37There was an incidence of Noma at.
• 56:42Auschwitz.
• 56:44The irony of course,
• 56:45is that the camp itself was
• 56:46the cause of the disease.
• 56:47Poor hygiene,
• 56:48poor nutrition and in the so-called
• 56:51Gypsy Camp where Mengele at that
• 56:53time was the chief physician.
• 56:55There was an outbreak, Mengla decides.
• 56:57He's going to find a cure or a treatment.
• 57:00For Noma. So he finds.
• 57:03A inmate physician,
• 57:04a man named Berthold Epstein
• 57:07who had been deported from he.
• 57:09He was very famous Czech pediatrician
• 57:12who had gone believing he was safe
• 57:14to Norway and then was deported
• 57:16to Auschwitz and was working at
• 57:18a camp hospital in in in the
• 57:21Auschwitz 3 Mangala finds him.
• 57:23He brings him into the gypsy camp.
• 57:25They set up a ward for
• 57:27the children with Noma.
• 57:28He's given special special access
• 57:31to certain medications and.
• 57:33It does in fact find an effective
• 57:35treatment and cure for for Noma.
• 57:37We know about this because one
• 57:39of the inmate physicians who
• 57:41worked with him was a woman named
• 57:43Lucy Adelsberger from Berlin,
• 57:44who wrote an article that
• 57:46appeared in Lancet in 1946.
• 57:48She wrote it as a resident in a displaced
• 57:52persons camp in the Netherlands,
• 57:54and she goes through the protocol,
• 57:57what the what drugs he used and
• 58:00how they were able to do it.
• 58:02There are so many ironies in this, of course.
• 58:05The most grotesque one is that
• 58:07none of the people whom.
• 58:08Who was cured of Noma survived
• 58:11because they were all gassed with
• 58:13the destruction of the gypsy camp
• 58:16in the summer of the summer of 19.
• 58:19Umm.
• 58:2144.
• 58:24I think since. Out of time,
• 58:28I will just summarize now how I.
• 58:32Summarize Mengele at Auschwitz in
• 58:34the book and then if we have time,
• 58:36I'll be happy to answer questions.
• 58:38The notion of Mangala as unhinged,
• 58:42driven by demons, indulging grotesque
• 58:44and sadistic impulses should be replaced
• 58:47by something perhaps more unsettling.
• 58:50Mangala was in fact in
• 58:52the scientific vanguard,
• 58:53enjoying the confidence and mentorship
• 58:55of the leaders in his field.
• 58:58The science he pursued in Auschwitz,
• 59:00to the extent that we can reconstruct it,
• 59:02was not anomalous but rather
• 59:04consistent with research carried out
• 59:06by others in what was considered to
• 59:08be the scientific establishment.
• 59:10It was criminal and monstrous because
• 59:12of the absence of all barriers
• 59:15that ordinarily serve to contain
• 59:17and regulate the temptations and
• 59:20ambitions that can push scientific
• 59:22research across ethical boundaries.
• 59:25To relegate Manggala and his research to
• 59:28the ranks of the anomalous and bizarre.
• 59:31Is perhaps more palatable than
• 59:33understanding that he was the product
• 59:36and the promise of a much larger
• 59:39system of thought and practice.
• 59:41It is easier to dismiss an individual
• 59:44monster than to recognize the monstrous
• 59:47that can emerge from other wise,
• 59:49respected, and enshrined institutions.
• 59:51And I should say one final note.
• 59:55Talking about ambition,
• 59:56it's pretty clear to me and to others
• 59:59that Mengler was using his time at
• 01:00:02Auschwitz to work on his habilitation shrift.
• 01:00:05This is the post doctoral dissertation
• 01:00:07that German academics need in order to
• 01:00:10become a head of an institute or professor.
• 01:00:12And it's pretty clear that he was likely
• 01:00:15doing this in anthropology using the
• 01:00:17number of gypsies who were at Auschwitz,
• 01:00:20which would have taken him.
• 01:00:2210s of thousands of kilometers of
• 01:00:24field work to locate and interview
• 01:00:26and evaluate all these individuals.
• 01:00:29He could do it by strolling through
• 01:00:31the gypsy camp at Auschwitz.
• 01:00:33Very efficient and and.
• 01:00:39Difficult thing to consider,
• 01:00:40thank you very much.
• 01:00:44Thank you very much David for
• 01:00:46a really insightful talk.
• 01:00:50That was that's kind of a special
• 01:00:52treat for us to to kind of get the
• 01:00:54insight into these investigations
• 01:00:56and to a scholar who has that level
• 01:00:58of understanding about his subject.