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ROMA VICTIMS OF JOSEF MENGELE’S MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

THE ROMA IN AUSCHWITZ

ROMA VICTIMS OF JOSEF MENGELE’S MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

SS-Hauptsturmführer, Dr Josef Mengele was the chief physician of the ‘Gypsy family camp’ from the end of May 1943 to August 1944. At the same time, as camp physician he also served in hospitals and outpatient clinics in other parts of the Auschwitz camp.

Photographic portrait of a smiling Dr Mengele. Dressed in a suit, a white shirt, a tie. Hair and eyes dark. Gaze directed towards the lens.

Source: A-BSMA

Josef Mengele – SS-Hauptsturmführer, camp physician. Assigned to the Zigeunerlager in the spring of 1943. Conducted criminal medical experiments on, among others, twins as well as the causes and methods of treating noma faciei (Cancrum Oris, gangrenous stomatitis). Held this position until the Roma camp was liquidated.

At the request of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem, he began anthropological research of various racial groups, mostly Roma and twins, especially identical twins. His surgery room was in the bathhouse barracks (Sauna) behind block 32. There he carried out anthropometric, serological and morphological studies (among other things, conducting blood transfusions between twins), he deliberately infected children with typhus to find out whether they reacted to the diseases identically or differently. Some experiments had absolutely no medical purpose, such as connecting the veins and other body parts of two boys as if they were Siamese twins.

The final phase of his experiments included killing of the twins and conducting a thorough comparative analysis of organs during the autopsies carried out and scientifically recorded by the prisoner pathologist Miklós Nyszli.

The selected children (48 twins, i.e. 24 pairs) and 72 individuals with physical anomalies (also mostly children), were kept in block 31, in the so-called Kindergarten, where they were looked after by female doctors. These children were well-fed and clean. Doctor Mengele often visited the twins personally. He was gentle and kind towards them, handing out sweets and toys. He won the children’s trust and at every visit they would run to meet him, calling him ‘Onkel Mengele’ (Uncle Mengele). As noma appeared in the camp, Mengele started researching its causes and possible methods of treatment. In one of the rooms of block 22 the prisoners were quartered, the paediatrician Professor Berthold Epstein and the dermatologist Dr Rudolf Weisskopf-Vitek carried out his various tests.

Mengele’s other areas of research were biological abnormalities, such as people with heterochromia iridis, i.e. a pair of eyes with a diverse colouration. Mengele murdered many Roma prisoners with this condition. Samples acquired this way were gathered and chemically preserved in the Sauna barracks, and next sent to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem or the SS Medical Academy in Graz.

Josef Mengele was the chief physician of the ‘Gypsy family camp’ right up to its liquidation. Later on, he became the chief medical officer (Lagerartz) responsible for all Birkenau sectors. He left Auschwitz before its liquidation, and after the war left Europe to hide in South America, where he avoided justice until his death.

Faithful depiction of a Roma camp prisoner in watercolour technique. The man has dark hair, eyebrows and eyes.

Source: A-BSM Collections

Portrait of a prisoner from the Roma camp painted by the Jewish prisoner Dinah Gottliebova. The portrait was commissioned by the chief physician of the Roma family camp Josef Mengele.

Faithful depiction of a female Roma camp prisoner in watercolour technique. Woman wearing a colourful patterned headscarf, with dark fringe. Dark eyebrows and eyes.

Source: A-BSM Collections

Portrait of female prisoner from the Roma camp painted by the Jewish prisoner Dinah Gottliebova. The portrait was commissioned by the chief physician of the Roma family camp Josef Mengele.

Source: A-BSMA

Letter from the camp’s chief dentist, directing Roma twins for dental examinations. The twins were of various ages, the youngest pair were seven, whereas the oldest ones were 67. They were brought to the camp from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Germany and Vienna. The registration in the camp of Karl and Hermann Ernst was peculiar. Karl was brought to Birkenau on 31 March 1943 from Vienna and registered as Roma camp inmate no. Z-5645. Hermann arrived on 9 April 1943 in a prisoner group transport and was registered as an inmate of the men’s camp with a number, 113336, from the general series. They probably met each other in the camp and were directed together for dental examinations.

Excerpt from the memoirs of Josef Reinhard:

… My family arrived in Auschwitz as late as 1944. I was to be sterilised. … We were summoned to the police station by Lieutenant Regelin, who told my father: ‘Mr Reinhardt, either you sign this and report with your son for sterilisation treatment on Thursday or we will send you to a concentration camp.’ I was only sixteen at the time, so my father signed in my name that I ‘voluntarily’ consented to undergo treatment that would make me infertile. But I was spared this sterilisation treatment, because next we were all, also ‘voluntarily’, sent to Auschwitz. According to police records, no Gypsies were forced to travel to a concentration camp. I remember exactly how Regelin asked: ‘Do you want to go to Lackenbach or to Auschwitz?’ Want? In Lackenbach concentration camp was my uncle, and in Auschwitz my brother, a former soldier. That is why my father answered: ‘To Auschwitz, to my son, perhaps he’s still alive.’ This decision was for him a death sentence. … After 14 days in Auschwitz, my father died. He was unable to understand it all. He fought in the First World War and was proud of it. After all, it was also his fatherland, he was willing to shed blood for. My oldest brother, Anton, was sent to Auschwitz already in 1943. … He and his entire family, three children and his wife, in advanced pregnancy, were deported to Auschwitz and there they ‘died’ because of maltreatment. Yet my father still hoped that he would see them again, and that is why he chose Auschwitz. … No one would believe how much a person can endure. … I was 16 when Mengele conducted the last selection in the Zigeunerlager. … The selection was performed as follows: ‘To the left! To the right! To the left! To the right!’ We were sent in a transport to Buchenwald because we were still able to work. This was the last transport to leave. The remaining were murdered in the gas chambers…

Source: Memorial Book: The Gypsies at Auschwitz-Birkenau, vol. 2, Munich/London/New York/Paris, 1993, p. 1524.

Excerpt from the memoirs of Miklós Nyiszli:

… A ‘curiosity’ of the Gypsy family camp were experimental barracks. In charge of the laboratory was Dr Berthold Epstein, a paediatrician of world fame and professor at the University of Prague. He was in the concentration camp for already four years. His assistant was Dr Bendel, a docent of medicine from Paris.

The research was carried out in three directions. The first was the study of twins, as it became fashionable following the birth of quintuplets in Canada. The second field of the study was the physiology and pathology of dwarfism. The third was the study of the causes and treatment of noma faciei, that is cancrum oris or simply gangrene of the cheek.

This terrible disease is normally exceedingly rare and usually occurs in individual cases. Despite this, in the Gypsy camp one could say there was an epidemic of noma among the children. The research was apparently producing e results.

Source: Miklós Nyiszli, I Was Doctor Mengele's Assistant, Oświęcim, 2001, pp. 21‒22.

Excerpt from the memoirs of Tadeusz Joachimowski:

… I had yet to see the Hauptsturmführer Dr Joseph Mengele. At some point I noticed an SS officer heading in our direction. He was walking on the side of the road, with his head bowed as if he was counting the stones beneath his feet. Roman Frankiewicz recognised him as Joseph Mengele. As he neared us, I was able to take a closer look. He was of medium height with a very elegant silhouette and an engaging look. He gave the impression of being very human and approachable. I cannot say how many times it proved to be true, but it must have been many; the nicer an SS functionary appeared, the greater sadist and murderer he turned out to be. In this case my premonition was not wrong. Mengele stopped in front of barrack no. 20, commanded the Lagerältester (camp elder) Brodniewicz to summon the SS personnel and then to lead out the Gypsies held in barracks 20 and 22. The Gypsies flushed out of these barracks assembled on the road, which was not achieved without beatings. Those beating and assembling the Gypsies were German inmate block elders and the Lagerältester Bruno Brodniewicz. After the Gypsies were assembled and counted, Dr Mengele ordered the SS functionaries, who in the meantime had arrived, to escort the entire group, some 1,700 individuals, towards the camp exit, the consequence of which was for Gypsies from other barracks to be chased into the barracks that had just been vacated. The former group included men, women and children of various ages. Escorted by the SS guards, the Gypsies passed the Roma camp gate, next down the road between crematoria IV and V, on to the road along the Sauna, then under construction, to disappear behind a small grove next to crematorium III. Observing the whole event, I could see them enter the undressing room and gas chamber of crematorium II, down the steps from the west. Rushing the Gypsies into the chambers was not so difficult, because many calmed down by the sight of water pipes on the ceiling and being equipped with soap and towels. Nonetheless, the instinctive Gypsy distrust alarmed others and even made them reluctant. This had to be overcome with the SS personnel and Jewish Sonderkommando exerting some violence. Half an hour had hardly passed from the moment the last Gypsy was pushed into the undressing room as smoke started to emerge from the crematorium II chimney. The westerly wind brought to us the sweetish smell of burnt bodies, the last hint of the 1,700 Gypsies selected by Dr Mengele for Sonderbehandlung [special treatment]. It was on his personal orders that the Białystok Gypsies were gassed. They were not registered and therefore also do not appear in the books of the Gypsy family camp.

Source: Tadeusz Joachimowski, A-BSMA, Memoirs Fonds, vol. 203, pp. 52‒62.