"Promise me that you will say kaddish for me."
May 2, 2019 4:46 PM   Subscribe

On Yom Hashoah, Gabrielle Debinski writes about growing up with stories of Mengele, the sadistic Nazi 'doctor'. Yom Hashoah this year coincides with the 40th anniversary of the death of Josef Mengele, who is known for his gruesome experiments on twins at Auschwitz. He also targeted little persons and Roma. He was never brought to justice. The horrors his victims underwent are not forgotten. Previously: forgiveness, Dr. Gisella Perl, the Ovitz family.
posted by cosmic owl (10 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
As an identical twin and the granddaughter of survivors, Mengele was always the monster in my closet and under my bed. I feel torn between wishing for his name to be wiped off the earth and wishing to honor the memories of his victims, who told their stories at great personal cost.
posted by cosmic owl at 4:48 PM on May 2, 2019 [9 favorites]


My mother is a twin, which is probably why learning about Mengele had an added element of horror for me.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:19 PM on May 2, 2019


I'm watching the film Colonia - the Wikipedia article about that place mentions that Mengele visited there more than once.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 8:59 PM on May 2, 2019


I can't leave a dot or anything that comes close to the magnitude of importance of these stories. I guess all I can do is to try to remember.
posted by jb at 8:21 AM on May 3, 2019 [3 favorites]


There's a weird survivor's guilt that comes from being the product of two Jewish families that got out before this happened. It feeds into my fear about everything that's happening in North America right now, as Canada (specifically Ontario, but it's spreading) tries to be America's Mini-Me once again. There are new Mengeles out there who are happy to join the new Goebbelses etc. in this kind of evil.

Kids are being taken from their families already and we don't really know what's happening to them.
posted by wellred at 8:30 AM on May 3, 2019 [8 favorites]




. for Shmuel. Every story is so heartbreaking, and there are too many that went untold. Thanks for posting.

I'm always amazed at the videos of the two minute remembrance siren in Israel on Yom HaShoah. So many lives lost - and so many people so deeply affected -- and it still seems the world has learned nothing.
posted by Mchelly at 9:09 AM on May 3, 2019 [3 favorites]


Details of some other Nazi German medical research in this Deutsche Welle English documentary: "The Reich University of Strasbourg"
posted by XMLicious at 4:51 PM on May 3, 2019


Synchronistically, just this week it was reported that Holocaust survivor and educator Rabbi Menachem Mendel Taub, the Kaliver Rebbe, dies at 96

He was another one of Mengele's victims.

So many lives lost - and so many people so deeply affected -- and it still seems the world has learned nothing.

Mchelly, I've heard similar sentiments many times and I always think it's misses the point. People mostly knew what was happening to the Jews and they mostly didn't care - or approved of it. Antisemitism was (and remains) remarkably popular. Everybody knew about the deportations, and the robberies, and (before then, for decades) the increasing restrictions on Jewish social and commercial life. The Nazis attempted to conceal the existence of the death camps, but the rest of the persecutions were out in the open. I mean, they were renting out Jews as slave labour and the people purchasing their services knew they could do what they wanted with them. It wasn't just big companies, either. I was tracing my family history, and came across a letter from a an Austrian minister complaining that he wasn't being paid enough to put up with the inconvenience of his barn being used as slave barracks. What lesson ought he to have learned? He knew, they knew, they were all complicit.

As for the rest of the world, it seems pretty clear that the Allies knew about the extermination of the Jews, and rather than face internal pressure for (e.g.) accepting migrants they preferred to keep silent. If the world has learned anything it's that there are very few consequences for the guilty, and none for those who merely stand by.
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:42 AM on May 4, 2019 [11 favorites]


to add to Joe's comment: the refusal of other countries to accept refugees is why I don't see Germany as having sole guilt for the Shoah. Every country which turned people away - Canada, the UK, the US - we all bear our share of guilt. We knew things were bad, but we locked out doors.

And that's also why I don't believe in limiting refugees. We owe it to the world and to the memory of the Holocaust to keep our borders open for the persecuted.
posted by jb at 10:30 PM on May 4, 2019 [7 favorites]


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