DEKEL, LUCETTE MATALON LAGNADO SHEILA COHN

by CHILDREN OF THE FLAMES

  Perhaps Mengele hoped that his old mentor, who had placed many of his former colleagues in prestigious positions, could do the same for him.

  There is indeed evidence that even while Mengele was at the Fischer farm in the years immediately following the war, Verschuer tried to get him a university job but was unable to do so because of the furor surrounding his pupil’s name.

  If, in fact, Mengele and Verschuer renewed their ties with one another, they did so with utmost secrecy. Verschuer’s son, Helmut, claimed that his father never once mentioned the notorious young man who had been his protege for so many years. Mengele also saw a need to protect his old professor: Among the hundreds of letters Mengele left behind at his death that were later released by his son, not one mentions Verschuer.

  Aside from the occasional pang of homesickness, Mengele could not complain of his life in Argentina. Although he never penetrated the scientific establishment or practiced medicine again-legally-he did well as a businessman. (There are hints and suggestions he performed illegal abortions while in Argentina, but few details are available.) The sales of Mengele farm equipment, his carpentry workshop, and a generous allowance from his father helped him to lead an increasingly comfortable life. The Nuremberg prosecutors had long since returned home to New York and Washington; several used their prestigious Nazihunting credentials to establish lucrative private law practices.

  The Israelis, involved as they were in building their new country and fighting wars with the Arabs, had yet to send teams of agents to scour South America for those war criminals who had escaped justice. Mengele could live more or less openly: Several people knew of his real identity. His homes became ever more elegant as he moved to more exclusive neighborhoods. By moving, he markedly improved his social status in a city where one’s address was a prime indicator of one’s station in life. In 1954, the Auschwitz doctor bought a house in the luxurious suburb of Olivos, where many affluent Germans lived.

  Shortly thereafter, he purchased another, even more splendid villa in the same elegant neighborhood. It was right near Peron’s old estate.

  JUDITH YAGUDAH: After three months in the refugee camp, Mother and I were invited to join a kibbutz. But my mother put her foot down. She didn’t want a collective life. She wanted to be on her own.

  Together, we moved to Netanya. The government helped find us a small apartment. But we had to face the problem of supporting ourselves.

  Mother had never worked before, and I was still in school.

  She began earning money doing the one thing she knew how to do: knitting. She would knit small dresses for babies and little girls. I helped her out. After school, every afternoon, I came home and helped Mother knit the dresses. This was our livelihood.

  TWINS’ FATHER: I did so well handling the theater’s account that one day its executives asked me to come and work for them as their personal accountant. It was a wonderful opportunity-more money, and the chance to work for a very prestigious outfit.

  The theater had three divisions-creative, technical, and financial.

  I was put in charge of their financial section, handling all their accounting.

  I got to see all the new plays-that was a great perquisite of the job.

  I tried to forget the Holocaust. I kept telling myself how lucky I was.

  As Mengele eased into middle age, he seemed to return to the bon vivant inclinations of his privileged youth. His clothes were stylishly tailored, his friends were at the top of Argentine society, and his income was enough to permit trips throughout the continent and beyond.

  He was overjoyed when he got a driver’s license, and bought himself a sporty new Borgward

  Isabel Ia

  The pictures Mengele sent home to Gunzburg and to Rolf showed a dapper gentleman, no longer young, to be sure, but still handsome.

  He was quite fit and trim. There was a jauntiness about him that neither time nor the ravages of the war and postwar years had quite managed to erase. The old sprezzatura was there, too, evident in the easy, relaxed way in which he posed alongside his shiny new car.

  In 1954, Mengele’s father came to Buenos Aires to visit his son. The reunion was warm, and the elder Mengele gave Josef money to maIntain his lifestyle. Karl Sr. would eventually give his son a million marks to purchase half the shares of Fadro Farm, a pharmaceutical company.

  The only bad news Karl brought was that Irene was insisting on a divorce; the couple had never obtained a legal separation, and now she wanted to marry Alfons Hackenjos, the staid but kindly Freiburg businessman she had met years earlier. Since the time for manhunts in Germany had long since ended, Mengele could no longer argue that the family needed to maintain the illusion that he was “dead.”

  He had no choice but to agree to have the family lawyers back home prepare the divorce papers. The couple was divorced that year.

  LEA LORINCZI: Even while I worked as a nurse, my family kept talking about shiddochim -matches-for me. They were always asking me if I wanted to get married. But I did not want to go out with the men they proposed for me.

  I was looking for someone grownup, whom I could talk to, who would understand me. I needed a husband who would be a friend, a father, a mother. I did not like the boys my own age.

  That’s how I became interested in my stepmother’s brother. He was much older than I was, but I felt I could talk to him. He asked my father for my hand, and I accepted.

  Although he was still an exile, banished from his home and unable to resume his profession, his family’s concern and generosity helped make the 19 SOs decidedly good years for Dr. Mengele. But when Juan Peron was ousted in 1955, Nazis as well as Jews panicked: He had protected both. The military coup that threw the dictator out of office after more than twenty years of rule created havoc in the country. Sure enough, after Peron was gone, some of the Nazi publications, including Der Weg, were banned. Some war criminals felt concerned enough to flee to other countries. Egypt, where dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser had consolidated his hold, was the favorite refuge.

  Despite the coup, Mengele felt secure enough to stay on in his adopted homeland. Even without the protection Peron had extended to Nazi fugitives, Mengele believed no one would come after him in Argentina; he had nothing to fear now.

  His belief that he was safe at last was in many ways warranted. A decade had passed since the Nuremberg trials, and the hunt for Nazi war criminals had effectively ended, in Germany as in the rest of the world. In fact, many former Nazis were now flourishing in West German society. Some of the worst offenders of the Third Reich were leading comfortable lives, and, indeed, had achieved positions of prominence in the “new” Germany. Others, like Mengele, had made new lives for themselves and their children in South America.

  EVA MOZES: For years, Miriam and I struggled and had very little money.

  We had to work a whole month simply to buy one outfit. We shared clothes to stretch our wardrobes.

  Finally, I was able to save up enough money from my job as a secretary to buy an apartment. Miriam moved out of the dormitory to live with me.

  It was a good period. We bought little pieces of furniture. We entertained men. We felt very grownup, very independent.

  I told her whoever gets married first gets to keep the apartment.

  A number of lesser “stars” of the Nazi era who had fled Europe to other Latin American countries such as Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, and Brazil were now considerably more at ease than they had been at the start of their exile. And those who, like Mengele, had remained in Argentina in spite of the uncertainties were relieved to find the new government was also willing to provide them with protection. Throughout Latin America, war criminals enjoyed the tacit protection of the local tyrants, who liked to model themselves after the leaders of the Third Reich. The more prominent Nazis hobnobbed with the dictators and made themselves useful by serving as consultants to the military and the secret police. The Latin strongmen were delighted to have such specialists in the arts of repression and brute
force available to them.

  One of the most popular Nazi refuges was Paraguay. Its leader, General Alfredo Stroessner, structured his army along German lines, infusing his Guarani Indian soldiers with Teutonic values of discipline and ruthlessness. The Paraguayan soldiers were trained in Nazi techniques by men who were unquestionably experts.

  MoSKE OFFER: When I was drafted into the army, I was forced to remember all I had tried to forget-Auschwitz, the war, the death of Tibi. All my past caught up with me.

  They tried to teach me how to fight, but I was terrified of bullets.

  I was constantly anxious. I developed severe emotional problems.

  I didn’t get along with other soldiers. I was always by myself and the more time I spent alone, the more I thought about the war.

  Finally, I suffered a nervous breakdown.

  In many ways, 1956 was a watershed for Mengele, the year he “came out.”

  He was tired of posing as Helmut Gregor; he wanted to be Dr. Mengele again. Sometime that year, he had his name legally changed from Helmut Gregor to Josef Mengele. The name change required him to admit that he had been living under a false alias. He marched into the German embassy and requested a new passport, to be made out under his own name. Years later, when the hunt for Mengele would begin in earnest, his 1956 passport photograph would be the only authentic clue the world had as to how the Angel of Death of Auschwitz really looked.

  In Germany, Rolf received pictures of his “uncle” looking more handsome and distinguished than ever. The young boy was filled with admiration for his faraway relative, and longed to meet him.

  OLGA GROSSMAN: Our mother suffered very much during the years we were away in England-she missed us terribly. We lived apart for nearly six years.

  Dr. Shoenfeld would send messengers to Israel, who gave her news about how we were doing and assured her we were fine. But that obviously wasn’t enough.

  We stayed on, and kept hoping that next year we would be in Israel with our mother. Year after year passed, and we waited and we hoped.

  VERA GROSSMAN: One day, we heard our mother was very sick. She thought she was going to die and was asking for us.

  Ourstepfather’s business had collapsed, and Mother was very afraid she couldn’t feed the children. She had four babies-two born in Czechoslovakia and two in Israel.

  She wanted to see us-she said her last wish before she died was to have her twins by her side.

  OLGA GROSSMAN: We were told we were to be sent home to Israel. We were so excited.

  Israel meant love, caring-it meant being reunited with our mother again.

  His identity and sense of respectability regained, Mengele also longed for a reunion with his son in Germany. Rolf was now a handsome boy of twelve or thirteen, still unaware of the fact that he had a living father. The Mengele family, which had stood by Josef through these difficult years, decided to help bring them together. It was the trusted Sedlmeier who played the key role in working out the logistics.

  He personally went to Freiburg to escort the excited little boy to Switzerland for what was to be a special winter holiday.

  In Engelberg, a small, exquisite ski resort high in the Swiss Alps, Rolf met his cousin Karl Heinz and his beautiful aunt Martha, the widow of Josef’s brother, Karl. Standing next to the two was

  “Uncle Fritz,”

  looking even more dashing in person than in his photographs.

  The hotel that was selected for this momentous occasion was the best the Mengele family could afford-an elegant Old World establishment where Queen Victoria herself had once stayed. For the first time ever, Rolf received pocket money-compliments of Uncle Fritz.

  As lavish meals topped off with spectacular desserts were brought to his uncle’s room by deferential servants, Mengele’s child was absolutely beside himself with joy, a grownup Rolf would later admit.

  VERA GROSSMAN: When we got home, we were shocked to find there was nothing to eat -our family was extremely poor.

  I remember the Friday night dinner after we arrived. Mother opened a can of sardines-each of us got one ha If of a sardine. And then there was some sort of thin bean soup. This was our first Sabbath meal at home.

  It was a magical holiday. The best times were early in the morning and late at night, when Rolf got to crawl into bed with his “uncle” and was regaled with war stories about the Russian front and more tales of gauchos in South America. For the brief period they were together, Mengele showed himself to be a wonderful companion.

  Indoors, Mengele was a spellbinding storyteller. And outside, he showed himself in excellent form on the slopes. Rolf, who had not been told the truth and had no idea the wonderful visitor from South America was his father, was bursting with pride. As might be expected of a young, fatherless boy, he was utterly beguiled by his handsome uncle Fritz.

  Those few days at Engelberg bought the old Nazi his fiercest, most devoted ally. Like the twins, Rolf never forgot Mengele. But Rolf’s memories were of laughter on the ski runs, of chilly mornings when he padded over to Mengele’s room and snuggled next to him under the great eiderdown quilt. Mengele was warm, playful, and loving toward him throughout the brief holiday.

  Even as an adult, after he was made aware of charges that

  “Uncle Fritz,” his father, had been a cold-blooded killer, Rolf Mengele could never get over that admiration bordering on hero worship. In interviews with the press, he sought to conceal such feelings. He suggested he accepted the veracity of the stories about Dr. Mengele.

  But it was clear he could not help loving the man who had haunted his childhood.

  Rolf always saw his father through the prism of his old letters, the brightly colored stamps, and the photographs that had enlivened his Black Forest childhood.

  Years later, as a lawyer with his own private practice, Rolf would cling to legal principles that would help his father’s “case.” In law school, he was taught that a man was innocent until proven guilty.

  And guilt could not be determined until a trial was held. This circular thinking provided a convenient rationale for him to defend his father.

  For, of course, there had never been a trial of Josef Mengele-witnesses had never been able to submit their painful testimony before a court of law. When asked whether he felt his father should have been punished for his deeds, Rolf Mengele always answered with perfect equanimity, “If he was guilty.” What lay underneath the impeccable legal stance had nothing to do with the law: It was the love a son felt for a father, even a father accused of heinous war crimes.

  Rolf later found himself yearning for that brief childhood holiday.

  “It was my best vacation ever,” he said nearly twenty years later. “I had … other uncles, but none of them were as nice as this one,”

  he told journalists. When it was revealed in 1985 that Josef Mengele was dead, it was Rolf, alone among the Mengeles, who told the world the “true story” of his father’s life.

  That story was not about sadism and bestiality. It was not a portrait of a pathological killer. Rather, Rolf released old family pictures that showed Mengele appearing kindly and benevolent, his arms around his son, on the slopes with Karl Heinz, and embracing Aunt Martha.

  In other, older photographs, young Beppo cycled merrily about the Bavarian countryside in knickers and an overcoat. There was nothing in the mountain of innocuous letters, sentimental notes, pictures, and poems that Rolf released that shed any light on his father’s crimes, nothing that mentioned the death camp. Indeed, the son paid little attention to his father’s crimes at Auschwitz, acknowledging only reports that they had occurred. Rolf did say his father had sworn to him he had never killed anyone “personally.”

  If SS doctor Josef Mengele had needed a lawyer to defend him after he died, he could not have retained anyone more quietly eloquent, more gently persuasive than his own son. For no amount of Mengele money could buy the motivation his love for

  “Uncle Fritz” had given Rolf.

  The Switzerla
nd vacation over, father and son went their own separate ways, the father to his life in Buenos Aires, the child to school in Freiburg. After Mengele’s return to Argentina, many more letters flowed back and forth between him and Rolf. The young boy continued to believe he was corresponding with a beloved uncle.

  In the next few years, Mengele traveled to neighboring countries such as Paraguay for his business. He spent a lot of time in Asuncion, where his good friend Rudel lived. He met other German expatriates through the Nazi pilot, including Werner Jung, who claimed to be head of the Nazi party in Paraguay, and Alejandro von Eckstein, a captain in the Paraguayan Army and a close friend of Stroessner.

  Once again, Mengele displayed the confident air of his youth. At the offices of Fadro Farm, he was pleasant and charming to the employees and exceedingly well dressed. Colleagues recall that he liked to whistle opera tunes as he worked.

  M0SHE OFFER: One day, I started screaming,

  “Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!”

  I was immediately placed in a psychiatric hospital in Haifa called Blumenthal.

  The Blumenthal Hospital was very special-it specialized in treating Holocaust survivors.

  I spent nearly two years at Blumenthal. I was in a terrible condition.

  They gave me shock treatments. I was forced to take a lot of medications

  At one point, I was taking fifteen pills a day.

  But everyone was very kind to me over there. They helped me as much as they could.

  When I left Blumenthal, I felt very much alone. I would walk around the streets by myself I was like a bum.

  And no one in Germany seemed interested in arresting Dr. Mengele-or any other Nazi war criminal. Other countries like the United States were allowing former Nazis to settle and blend into mainstream culture.

  Some of the Germans the United States recruited for its budding space program, such as Walter Rudolf, had run factories during the war maimed by slave laborers. But their pasts were swept aside as they built American rockets that could compete against the Russian-designed space technology, and they became honored, valued citizens of this country.