Read Online DEKEL, LUCETTE MATALON LAGNADO SHEILA COHN by CHILDREN OF THE FLAMES - Free Book Online Page A

perished.
    Just one year after arriving at the death camp, Mengele was thoroughly absorbed in his research, the first step of which was selecting his subjects. Every morning, at the crack of dawn, he could be seen in the area where the transports disembarked, scanning the new arrivals.
    Standing there in his perfectly tailored SS uniform, white gloves, and officer’s cap, Mengele looked impeccable-a host greeting guests arriving at his home. He sometimes stood for hours without flinching, a hint of a smile on his face, his elegantly gloved hand beckoning the prisoners to the right or to the left. Often, he whistled softly as he worked, the Blue Danube waltz, or an aria from his favorite Puccini opera.
    Mengele even engaged some of the new arrivals in friendly conversation, asking them how the journey had been, and how they were feeling. If they complained of being sick, he listened with a sympathetic ear-and then sent them straightaway to die in the gas chambers. He actually seemed interested in hearing all the gruesome details: how uncomfortable the trip had been, how cramped and stifling the cattle cars were, how many Jews had died along the way.
    Occasionally, Mengele pulled aside inmates and asked them to write “postcards” to their relatives back home. He seemed to take a special pleasure in dictating these notes, describing how lovely Auschwitz was, and urging everyone to visit. But once the postcards were prepared, their authors were summarily dispatched to the gas chambers.
    Only when an interesting “specimen” came along did Mengele really spring to life. He urgently motioned to a nearby guard to yank the new arrival out of the line. SS guards were ordered to watch for any unusual or striking genetic material-the dwarfs, the giants, the hunchbacks-and to bring them immediately to Mengele. But most important of all to him were the twins.
    ZYL THE SAILOR: My twin brother and I were marching toward the gas chambers when we heard people yelling,
    “Twins! twins!” We were yanked out of the lines and brought over to Dr. Mengele.
    I was not quite thirteen years old when my family was deported to Auschwitz-I hadn’t been bar mitzvahed yet. I came from a small village in Hungary where my father’s family had lived for generations.
    My mother came from Galicia, in Poland. There were eight children in our family.
    When we stepped off the cattle car, there was Dr. Mengele.
    He was making the selections, deciding who would go to work and who would go to the gas chambers. He used his finger. He motioned everyone in my family in the direction of the crematorium.
    As we marched to the crematorium, our mother told us,
    “You must not cry.” To this day, I do not know who told the Germans we were twins and had us removed from the line.
    MENASHE LORINCZI: Nobody knew whether it was good or bad to be a twin.
    Although the SS guards were going around asking for twins, families were afraid to volunteer their children.
    Many twins died because their parents didn’t want to be separated from them. Mothers walked with their twins straight into the gas chambers.
    EVA MOZES: Once the SS guard knew we were twins, Miriam and I were taken away from our mother, without any warning or explanation.
    Our screams fell on deaf ears. I remember looking back and seeing my mother’s arms stretched out in despair as we were led away by a soldier.
    That was the last time I ever saw her.
    The twins who passed through the gates of Auschwitz were of all ages, but often they were very young children who fought and cried at being separated from their loved ones. If Mengele was on the scene, he tried to soothe the terrified parents. He would smile as he comforted an anguished mother, insisting her twins would be in good hands.
    And if the twins were just infants, Mengele might sometimes pull their mother out of the line as well, permitting her to accompany and look after them. Most often, however, the children were taken away alone.
    Once separated