Yale Symposium on Holocaust and Genocide: Marwell

February 24, 2023

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February 2, 2023

Supported by the Lindenthal Family

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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.