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.The fact that Mengele could behave so nicely even as he inflicted pain, torture, and death made him the most feared man at Auschwitz.However, in performing his diabolical experiments on twins, Mengele believed he was pursuing high-minded scientific goals.Personal ambition also played its role in propelling Mengele to exceed even Nazi standards of cruelty, so that he stood out from other death-camp doctors.Driven by a need to reach the peak of his profession, he no doubt believed that if he only worked hard enough, performed enough experimental studies, tested a sufficient number of twins, then he would be recognized as the great scientist he thought he was.But despite his dedication and fanaticism, the mediocre student of Gunzburg never possessed any real brilliance.The tests, questionnaires, and many of the experiments themselves appear to have been the brainchild of Verschuer.At his best, Josef Mengele was earnest and efficient, an excellent “assistant,” but even at his most fiendish, he was not a man of ideas.In Munich, in Frankfurt, and even now at Auschwitz, he was merely methodical and perverse.If there was ever a “great” racial scientist, it was Otmar von Verschuer.Mengele’s fundamental narcissism, however, led him to try to make himself into a first-rate scientist, as he had made himself elegant and stylish.Mengele never saw his personal limitations and the gap between his real and imagined abilities, of course.He donned genetic theories and questionable racial dogma the way he put on white gloves and a hat.Obsessed with his own appearance, the vain young Beppo of Gunzburg was devoting his life to a science whose aims-fostering a race of “beautiful” people-mirrored his own personal obsession.ALEX D KEL: I have never accepted the fact that Mengele himself believed he was doing serious medical work-not from the slipshod way he went about it.He was only exercising his power.Mengele ran a butcher shop-major surgeries were performed without anesthesia.Once, I witnessed a stomach operation-Mengele was removing pieces from the stomach, but without any anesthesia.Another time, it was a heart that was removed, again, without anesthesia.It was horrifying.Mengele was a doctor who became mad because of the power he was given.Nobody ever questioned him-why did this one die? why did that one perish? The patients did not count.He professed to do what he did in the name of science, but it was a madness on his part.In this sham universe of scientific truths, half-truths, and outright lies, the experiments administered on the children represented a catalog of criminality and cruelty.Blood would be transfused from one twin to the other, and the results duly noted and compared.Bizarre psychological tests, designed to measure endurance, were continually made.For instance, a small child would be placed in isolation, in a small, cage like room, with or without his twin.The children would be exposed to various stimuli and their reactions recorded.There are twins who recall they were targets of an insidious psychological barrage, but years later were still too traumatized to conjure up the details.And finally, there were the surgeries, the horrible, murderous operations.Mengele would plunder a twin’s body, sometimes removing organs and limbs.He injected the children with lethal germs, including typhus and tuberculosis, to see how quickly they succumbed to the diseases.Many became infected and died.He also attempted to change the sex of some twins.Female twins were sterilized; males were castrated.What was the point of these ghoulish experiments? No one, neither the child-victims nor the adult witnesses, ever really knew.Mengele constantly probed the children, trying to wrest from them secrets they did not possess.VERA BLAU: Mengele performed some very painful experiments on my sister, Rachel.She was very ill during her entire stay at the camp.They would wheel her in and out of the operating room.But she does not remember what they did.She remembers only the lights-the big red lights flashing down on her as they were about to operate…Several twins believe that Mengele had pairs of twins mate.There are hushed testimonies to that effect.Although all the twins deny firsthand knowledge, and many insist it never happened, there were rumors around the barracks that such perverse experiments were indeed taking place [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]