CHAPTER 17: Auschwitz

After two or three days of terror in a sealed train, the Jews of Europe
arrived at their eugenic apocalypse: Auschwitz.

Suddenly the wooden boxcar doors would growl open. The stifling
stench inside from the sick and dying and the overflowing bucket of defecation
would be replaced by the throat-stinging pungency of burning flesh as
the victims glimpsed Hitler's sprawling extermination center. SS troops,
backed up by barking German shepherds, would begin shouting for the
eighty or ninety people in each boxcar to jump down from the train and
onto the ramp.

Quick! Schnell! Terrified, the helpless Jews massed into orderly groups,
unaware they were being assembled for eugenic selection. Teams of doctors
swarmed everywhere, organizing people into lines. Two groups would
be selected: those strong enough to be worked to death, and those to be
gassed immediately. Women and children under fourteen to one side. Men
to the other. 1

Then camp doctor Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, would review
the frantic lines: one by one, Jew by Jew. Then with the power of his
thumb, he pointed to the left, to the left, to the left, to the right, to the
right, to the left. As he condemned and spared, moment-to-moment, he
whistled, as though conducting a Devil's orchestra.2

Jews sent to the left were hustled to the showers for gassing, a procedure
completely administered and supervised by doctors from start to finish.
Once doctors gave the all-clear signal, groups of prisoners called
Sonderkommandos were compelled to scavenge piles of corpses for gold
teeth and rings. Only then were bodies carted off for cremation to destroy
the evidence.3

Those sent to the right could live another day and in the process endure
their own brutalities and degradation. The living were registered and tattooed.
The exterminated required no registration.4 Subject to this selec-
tion, many survived and perhaps 1.5 million at this camp complex alone
were murdered-some quickly, and some very slowly.5

Among those selected for death at Auschwitz, several hundred, mostly
children, were briefly exempted. Some even lived to tell their stories.
These lucky albeit misfortunate few were chosen for cruel medical experiments
conducted by Mengele. First these children were coddled and fed
well to keep them in pristine shape. Then they were subjected to painful
procedures. Often they were murdered as soon as the tests were completed,
so they could be fastidiously dissected.6

After the war Mengele's sadistic experiments were considered by many
to be the inexplicable actions of a scientist gone utterly mad. But in fact
Mengele was following a fascinating research topic that was continuously
discussed among eugenicists going back to Galton. This topic was as
important to the researchers at Cold Spring Harbor and the funders at the
Rockefeller Foundation as it was to Nazi medical murderers in Berlin,
Munich and Frankfurt.

No words will ever capture the inhumanity of Auschwitz. But one word
does explain why Auschwitz was the last fanatic stand of the eugenic crusade
to create a super race, a superior race-and finally a master race. As
the cattle cars emptied their human cargo onto the ramp, as the helpless
millions lined up for selection, they all heard one word, shouted twice. One
word shouted twice could help them live as those next to them were sent to
the gas chambers. One word shouted twice would link the crimes of
Mengele to the war against the weak waged by the eugenics movement.

***

Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer was crucial to the work at Auschwitz.

Verschuer lived the Nazi ideal long before Hitler emerged. A virulent
anti-Semite and a violent German nationalist, he was among the student
Freikorps militia that staged the Kapp Putsch in March of 1920. Two years
later, Verschuer articulated his eugenic nationalist stance in a student article
entitled "Genetics and Race Science as the basis for Vijlkische [People's
Nationalist] Politics." "The first and most important task of our internal
politics is the population problem .... This is a biological problem which
can only be solved by biological-political measures."7

In 1924, at about the time Hitler staged his Beer Hall Putsch in
Munich, Verschuer lectured that fighting the Jews was integral to
Germany's eugenic battle. He was speaking on race hygiene to a nationalist
student training camp when the question of Jewish inferiority came up.
"The German, Volkische struggle," he told the students, "is primarily
directed against the Jews, because alien Jewish penetration is a special
threat to the German race." The next year, he helped found the Ttibingen
branch of Ploetz's Society for Racial Hygiene and became its secretary. In
192 7, Verschuer distinguished himself among German race hygienists
when he was appointed one of three department heads at the Kaiser
Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics.
Verschuer chaired its Human Heredity department.s

In 1933, Verschuer published numerous tables setting forth the exact
ratios of environmental influences to human heredity. Later that year,
when the State Medical Academy in Berlin offered its initial course on
genetics and racial hygiene, Verschuer was one of the featured lecturers.
He joined other eminent Nazi eugenicists in the program, such as Eugen
Fischer and Leonardo Conti, who was a chief Nazi Party health officer and
would later become Hitler's main demographic consultant when the 1935
uremberg Laws were being formulated. Later, Conti was put in charge of
the 1939 euthanasia program.9

In June of 1934, Verschuer launched Der Erbarzt (The Genetic Doctor) as
a regular supplement to one of Germany's leading physicians' publications,
Deutsches A~'"Zteblatt,published by the German Medical Association. In it,
Verschuer asked all physicians to become genetic doctors, which is why his
eugenic publication was a supplement to the German Medical Association's
official organ. Sterilization of the unfit was of course a leading topic in Der
Erbarzt. Eugenic questions from German physicians were answered in a
regular "Genetic Advice and Expertise" feature. In the first issue,
Verschuer editorialized that Der Erbarzt would "forge a link between the
ministries of public health, the genetic health courts, and the German
medical community." Henceforth, he insisted, doctors must react to their
patients not as individuals, but as parts of a racial whole. A new era had
arrived, in Verschuer's view: medical treatment was no longer a matter of
doctor and patient, but of doctor and state. 10

After the Nazi sterilization law took effect in 1934, German eugenicists
were busy creating national card files, automated by IBM, to crossindex
people declared unfit. A plethora of eugenic research institutes were
established at various German universities to advance the effort. Their
researchers scoured the records of the National Health Service, hospitals
and hereditary courts, and then correlated health files on millions of
Germans. In this process, Verschuer considered himself nothing less than
a eugenic warrior. In 1935, he left the Institute for Anthropology, Human
Heredity and Eugenics to found Frankfurt University's impressive new
Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. Boasting more than
sixty rooms, including labs, lecture halls, libraries, photography sections,
ethnic archives and clinical rooms, the new institute was the largest of its
kind in Germany. The institute's mission, according to Verschuer, was to
be "responsible for ensuring that the care of genes and race, which
Germany is leading worldwide, has such a strong basis that it will withstand
any attacks from the outside." More than just a research institute,
Verschuer's institution held courses and lectures for the SS, Nazi Party
members, public health and welfare officials, as well as medical instructors
and doctors in general to indoctrinate them with scientific anti-Semitism
and eugenic theory. II

Soon the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene had surpassed
the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in race biology and race politics,
becoming the new model for German eugenic centers. Verschuer was
doing his part to ensure that racial eugenics, the fulcrum of which was rabid
Jew-hatred, became the standard for all medical training in Germany. He
would soon boast that eugenics had become completely integrated into
"the normal course of studies of medical students.'; In a report to the Nazi
Party, he advocated registering all Jews and half-Jews. Hitler, said
Verschuer, was "the first statesman to recognize hereditary biology and
race hygiene."12

By 1937, Verschuer had gained the trust of the highest Nazi authorities
and was beginning to eclipse his colleagues, and by 1939 he was describing
his personal role as pivotal to Nazi supremacy. "Our responsibility has
thereby become enormous," said Verschuer. "We continue quietly with our
research, confident that here also, battles will be fought which will be of
greatest consequence for the survival of our people." In an article for a
series called Research into the Jewish Question (Forschungen zur Judenfrage),
Verschuer wrote, "We therefore say no to another race mixing with Jews
just as we say no to mixing with Negroes and Gypsies, but also Mongolians
and people from the South Sea. Our vijlkisch attitude to the biological problem
of the Jewish Question ... is therefore completely independent of all
knowledge of advantages or disadvantages, positive or negative qualities of
the Jews .... Our position in the race question has its foundation in genetics."
In another article he insisted, "The complete racial separation
between Germans and Jews is therefore an absolute necessity."13

Quickly, Verschuer became a star in American eugenic circles as well.
His career and his writings fascinated the U.S. movement. When he
became secretary of the Tiibingen branch of the Society for Race Hygiene
in 1925, Eugenical News announced it. His 1926 article on environmental
influences for Archiv fUr Rassen- und Gesellschaftbiologie (Archives of Race
Science and Social Biology) was promptly summarized in Eugenical News. The
publication also noted Verschuer's 1927 appointment as one of three
department heads at the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and
Eugenics. In 1928, Verschuer's presence as a guest at an International
Federation of Eugenic Organizations meeting was mentioned in Eugenical
News. In the years leading up to the ascent of Hitler, his articles continued
to be cited in Eugenical News. 14

Even after the Nazis assumed power in 1933, the American eugenic and
medical media kept Verschuer in the spotlight. In January of 1934, the
Journal of the American Medical Association cited a paper he presented at the
German Congress of Gynecology. That same month, Journal of Heredity
reviewed his book on the relationship between eugenics and tuberculosis.
In the spring of that year, both Eugenical News and American Journal of
Obstetrics and Gynecology highlighted him as a leader for his work in developing
more than a thousand Nazi marriage screening centers. In
September of 1934, JAMA questioned Verschuer's estimate that the frequency
of hereditary blindness in vulnerable populations was a full third,
but this only confirmed his status as a major voice in genetic science. That
same month, Eugenical News published an article entitled "New German
Etymology for Eugenics" and cited two definitions for Rassenhygiene;
Verschuer's definition ran first, and Ploetz's second. In Eugenical News's
next issue, November-December, Verschuer was listed in a feature titled
"Names of Eminent Eugenicists in Germany."l;

By 1935, Verschuer was so admired by American eugenicists that
Eugenical News heralded the opening of his Institute for Hereditary Biology
and Racial Hygiene with the simple headline "Verschuer's Institute." The
publication's ecstatic article asserted that Verschuer's new facility was the
culmination of decades of preliminary research by Mendel, race theorist
Count Gobineau, Ploetz and even Galton himself. Suggesting the farreaching
nature of his enterprise, Eugenical News made clear that
Verschuer's mission was not merely the "individual man" but "mankind"
itself. Among the new institute's several dozen rooms, the paper reported,
were a number for "special investigators." Eugenical News was so enamored
that it departed from its usual text-only format and included two photographs:
a picture of the building's exterior plus one of an empty, nondescript
corridor. The article closed, "Eugenical News extends best wishes to
Dr. O. Freiherr von Verschuer for the success of his work in his new and
favorable environment."16

Goodwill among American eugenicists toward Verschuer was ceaseless.
On April 15, 1936, Stanford University anatomist C. H. Danforth wrote to
Verschuer offering to translate abstracts of one ofVerschuer's journals. On
July 7, 1936, Goddard, now located at Ohio State University, sent
Verschuer several of his publications hoping that they might be useful to
experiments at the new institute. On July 16, 1936, Popenoe wrote from
the Human Betterment Foundation asking for statistics to rebut negative
publicity about German sterilizations, saying, "We are always anxious to
see that the conditions in Germany are not misunderstood or misrepresented."
E. S. Gosney, Popenoe's partner at the Human Betterment
Foundation, sent Verschuer three letters and two pamphlets in two months
with the latest information on California's sterilization program. 17

Laughlin himself sent two letters, one in German offering reprints of
his own articles and a second in English conveying salutations from
America on Germany's accomplishment. Writing on Carnegie Institution
ERa letterhead, Laughlin stated, "The Eugenics Record Office and the
Eugenics Research Association congratulate the German people on the
establishment of their new Institute for the Biology of Heredity and Race
Hygiene .... We shall be glad indeed to keep in touch with you in the development
of eugenics in our respective countries."18

Verschuer sent back an effusive letter of appreciation. He congratulated
Laughlin on his recent honorary degree from the University of Heidelberg,
adding, "You have not only given me pleasure, but have also provided valuable
support and stimulus for our work here. I place the greatest value on
incorporating the results of all countries into the scientific research that
takes place here at my Institute, since this is the only way of furthering the
construction of the edifice of science. The friendly interest that you take in
our work gives me particular pleasure. May I also be allowed to express my
pleasure that you have been awarded an honorary doctorate from the
University of Heidelberg and congratulate you on this honor? You have
surely concluded from this that we German hereditarians and race hygienists
value the pioneering work done by our American colleagues and hope
that our joint project will continue to progress in friendly cooperation." 19

Verschuer and his institute remained prominent in the American medical
and eugenic press. When in mid-193 5, Verschuer's new institute began
deploying a force of young women as field workers to assemble family
trees, Eugenical News reported it. JAMA covered the new institute in-depth
in its September 1935 issue, specifying that cards on individuals arising
from the investigations were being sent to other Reich health bureaus.
JAMA reported on Verschuer's work again a few months later in 1936,
focusing on his desire to engage in mass research on heredity and illness.20

Verschuer's well-received book, Genetic Pathology (Erbpathologie),
claimed thatJews disproportionately suffered from conditions such as diabetes,
flat feet, deafness, nervous disorders and blood taint. In its
January-February 1936 edition, Eugenical News enthusiastically reviewed
Genetic Pathology and parroted Verschuer's view that a physician now owed
his first duty to the "nation," adding, "The word 'nation' no longer means a
number of citizens living within certain boundaries, but a biological entity."
Verschuer's language on citizenship was a clear precursor to the Reich's
soon-to-be-issued decree declaring that Jews could no longer be citizens of
Germany, even if they resided there. Stripping German Jews of their citizenship
was the next major step toward mass ghettoization, deportation and
incarceration. Eugenical News closed its review of Genetic Pathology with this
observation: "Dr. von Verschuer has successfully bridged the gap between
medical science and theoretical scientific research."2\

Verschuer's popularity with American eugenicists had soared by 1937.
Senior U.S. eugenicists were clamoring for his attention. Anti-Semite and
Nazi sympathizer Charles M. Goethe sent a letter introducing himself. "I
am National President of the Eugenics Research Association of the United
States," Goethe wrote. "I have heard much of your work at Frankfurt ....
May I ask whether I could visit your Institution? I feel, because of the violent
anti-German propaganda in the United States, our people know
almost nothing of what is happening in Germany."22

Later that year, Goethe sent an equally fawning correspondence, apologizing
for not visiting Germany but appealing to Verschuer's anti-Jewish
sentiment. "It was with deep regret that I was unable to come to Frankfurt
this year," he wrote. "Dr. Davenport and Dr. Laughlin of the Carnegie
Institute have told me so much about your marvelous work .... I feel passionately
that you are leading all mankind herein. One must exercise herein
the greatest tact. America is flooded with anti-German propaganda. It is
abundantly financed and originates from a quarter which you know only too
well [Jews] .... However, this ought to not blind us to the fact that Germany
is advancing more rapidly in Erbbiologie than all the rest of mankind."23

By 1938, the plight of the Jews in Germany and thousands of refugees
had become a world crisis, prompting the Evian Conference. Hitler's Reich
had become identified in the media with brutal concentration camps.
Germany was again menacing its neighbors' territory. Yet Goethe continued
his zealous propagandizing for Nazism. "Again and again," Goethe
wrote Verschuer in early 1938, "I am telling our people here, who are only
too often poisoned by anti-German propaganda, of the marvelous progress
you and your German associates are making." In November of 1938, less
than two weeks after the Kristallnacht riots, Goethe again wrote Verschuer,
this time to lament, "I regret that my fellow countrymen are so blinded by
propaganda just at present that they are not reasoning out regarding the
very fine work which the splendid eugenists of Germany are doing .... I am
a loyal American in every way. This does not, however, lessen my respect
for the great scientists of Germany."24

Clyde Keeler, a Harvard Medical School researcher at Lucien Howe's
laboratory, visited Verschuer's swastika-bedecked institute at the end of
1938. There he was able to see the center's anti-Jewish program and its
devotion to Aryan purity. Upon his return to the United States, Keeler
gave fellow eugenicists a glowing report. On February 28, 1939, Danforth
of Stanford wrote Verschuer to applaud him, adding that Keeler "thinks
that you have by all means the best equipped and most effective establishment
of the sort that he has seen anywhere. May I extend my congratulations
and express the hope that your group will long continue to put out the
same excellent work that has already lent it distinction."25

Davenport was equally inspired by Verschuer. On December 15, 1937,
he asked Verschuer to prepare a special summary of his institute's work for
Eugenical News, "to keep our readers informed." Davenport also asked
Verschuer to join three other prominent Nazi eugenicists on Eugenical
News's advisory committee. Falk Ruttke, Eugen Fischer and Ernst Rudin
were already members. With a letter of gratitude, Verschuer agreed to
become the fourth.26 Verschuer was now an essential link between
American eugenics and Nazi Germany.

Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer had an assistant. His name was Josef
Mengele.

***

Mengele began his career as a doctrinaire Nazi eugenicist. He attended
Rudin's early lectures and embraced eugenic principles as part of his fanatic
Nazism. Mengele became a member of the SA, also known as the Storm
Troopers, in 1934. His first academic mentor was the anti-Semitic eugenicist
Theodor Mollison, a professor at Munich University. Just as Goddard
claimed he could identify a feebleminded individual by a mere glance,
Mollison boasted that he could identify Jewish ancestry by simply examining
a person's photograph. Under Mollison, Mengele earned his Ph.D. in
1935. His dissertation on the facial biometrics of four racial groupsancient
Egyptians, Melanesians and two European types-asserted that
specific racial identification was possible through an anthropometric examination
of an individual's jawline. Medical certification in hand, Mengele
became a practicing doctor in the Leipzig University clinic. But this was
only temporary. Mengele's dream was research, not practice. In 1937, on
Mollison's recommendation, Mengele became Verschuer's research assistant
at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in
Frankfurt. Here Mengele's eugenic knowledge could be applied. Some of
Mengele's work involved tracing cranial features through family treesY

Verschuer and his new assistant quickly bonded. Mengele had applied
for Nazi Party membership as soon as the three-year ban was lifted in 1937.
He and Verschuer made a good professional team. Together the two wrote
opinions for the Eugenic Courts enforcing anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws. In
one case, a man suspected of having a Jewish father was prosecuted for
engaging in sexual relations with an Aryan woman. Under the Nuremberg
Laws, this was a serious criminal offense calling for prison time. As the prosecution's
eugenic consultants, Mengele and Verschuer undertook a detailed
examination of the suspect's family tree and carefully measured his facial features.
Their eugenic report declared the man to be fully ofJewish descent.28

However, the accused man provided convincing evidence that he was in
fact the illicit offspring of Christians. His father was indeed Jewish, but his
mother was not. The man claimed to be the product of his non-Jewish
mother's illicit affair with a Christian; hence he was no Jew. Illegitimacy
was a common refrain of Jews seeking safe harbor from the Nuremberg
statutes. The court believed the man's story and freed him. The decision
outraged Mengele and Verschuer, who wrote a letter to the Minister of
Justice complaining that their eugenic assessment had been overlooked.
Approximately 448 racial opinions were ultimately offered by Verschuer's
institute; these were so doctrinaire that Verschuer frequently appealed
when the opinions were not accepted.29

Mengele's relationship with Verschuer was more than collegial. Staff
doctors at the institute recalled that Mengele was Verschuer's "favorite."
Verschuer's secretaries enjoyed Mengele's constant visits to the office, and
nicknamed him "Papa Mengele." He would drop by the Verschuer home for
tea, sometimes bringing his family. Mengele even made an impression on
Verschuer's children, who years later remembered him in friendly terms.30

In 1938, Mengele joined the SS and received his medical degree, yet
continued his close association with Verschuer. In fact his SS personnel
file, number 317885, listed his employment in 1938 as an assistant doctor
at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. In the fall of
that year, preparing for field assignment with an SS unit, Mengele underwent
three months of rigorous basic training. Afterwards, he returned to
Verschuer's institute in Frankfurt to resume eugenic research. For example,
he examined the inheritance of ear fistulas and chin dimples, and then
published the results. In a summary of 1938 projects for the German
Research Society, Verschuer listed Mengele's work on inherited deformities
and cited two of Mengele's papers, including one he completed for
another doctor.31

In December of 1938, Mengele and Verschuer, as well as two other
Nazi doctors associated with the institute, requested a grant from the
Ministry of Science and Education to attend the International Congress of
Genetics in Edinburgh, scheduled for the last week of August 1939. All
four men secured initial authorization to attend as part of a large Nazi delegation,
approved by the Party. Train and ferry schedules were researched.
But after further review, the ministry lacked the funds to send them all.
Ministry officials decided Mengele could not go. Germany began World
War II on September 1, 1939. England and Germany were now enemies,
so Nazi conferees returned in the nick of time.32

Mengele wanted to get into the war, but a kidney condition prevented
him from joining a combat unit. He continued working with Verschuer and
in early 1940 was still listed on Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial
Hygiene rosters as being on Verschuer's staff. An internal list of publications
and papers, dated January 1939, listed two papers written by
Verschuer with the help of assistants including Mengele. One was entitled
"Determination of Paternity," recalling their days providing genealogical
testimony for the Eugenic Courts. Mengele authored a third paper on the
list with two ofVerschuer's other assistants. 33

Mengele also contributed several book reviews to Verschuer's publication,
Del· Erbarzt, in 1940. One review covered a book called Fundamentals
in Genetics and Race Care, in which Mengele criticized the author for failing
to adequately describe "the relationship between the principal races that
are to be found in Germany and the cultural achievements of the German
people." In another review critiquing a book about congenital heart
defects, Mengele complained, "Unfortunately the author did not use subjects
where the diagnosis could be verified by an autopsy."34

By June of 1940, when Germany was advancing on Western Europe,
Mengele could no longer wait to enter the battle. He joined the Waffen SS
and was assigned to the Genealogical Section of the SS Race and Settlement
Office in occupied Poland. He undoubtedly benefited from Verschuer's
March 1940 letter of recommendation averring that Mengele was accomplished,
reliable and trustworthy. At the SS Race and Settlement Office, his
mission was to seek out Polish candidates for Germanization. He would
perform the racial and eugenic examinations. Eventually, in 1941, he was
transferred to the Medical Corps of the Waffen SS, and then to the elite
Viking unit operating in the Ukraine, where he rendered medical assistance
under intense battlefield conditions. He was awarded two Iron Crosses and
two combat medic awards. The next year, 1942, as the Final Solution was
taking shape, Verschuer arranged for Mengele to transfer back to the SS
Race and Settlement Office, this time to its Main Office in Berlin.35

By 1942, an aging Fischer was preparing to retire from the Kaiser
Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in
Berlin. His replacement was a major source of debate within eugenic and
Nazi Party circles. By this time, Hitler's war against the Jews had escalated
from oppressive disenfranchisement to systematic slaughter.36

Fischer had emerged as a major advocate of "a total solution to the
Jewish question." His view was that "BolshevistJews" constituted a dangerous
and inferior subspecies. At a key March 1941 conference on the solution
to the Jewish problem held in Frankfurt, Fischer had been the
honored guest. It was at this meeting that Nazi science extremists set forth
ideas on eliminating Jews en masse. A leading idea that emerged was the
gradual extinction (Volkstod) of the Jewish people by systematically concentrating
them in large labor camps to be located in Poland. Later, Fischer
specified that such labor must be unpaid slave labor lest any "improvement
in living standards ... lead to an increase in the birth rate."3?

Given Fischer's high profile in Nazi Party extermination policies, his
successor would have to be selected carefully. Lenz was considered for the
job, but Fischer worked behind the scenes with the Nazi Party to have Lenz
passed over. Fischer thought Lenz was too tutorial, and not bold enough for
the challenges ahead. Instead, Fischer's hand-picked successor would be
Verschuer-something Fischer had actually planned on for years. 38

In 1942, Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt that Germany's war would
yield a "total solution to the Jewish problem." He wrote a friend, "Many
important events have occurred in my life. I received an invitation, which I
accepted, to succeed Eugen Fischer as director of the Dahlem Institute
[Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and
Eugenics at Berlin-Dahlem]. Great trust was shown toward me, and all my
requests were granted with respect to the importance and authority of the
institute .... I will take almost all my coworkers with me, first Schade and
Grebe, and later Mengele and Fromme." Even though Mengele was still
technically attached to the Race and Settlement Office, he was still
Verschuer's assistant. Mengele's name was even added to the special birthday
list for the institute's leading staff scientists.39

In January 25,1943, with Hitler's extermination campaign in full swing,
Verschuer wrote to Fischer, "My assistant Mengele ... has been transferred
to work in an office in Berlin [at the SS Race and Settlement Office] so that
he can do some work at the Institute on the side."40

On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz.

***

Eugenics craved one type of human being above all others to answer its
biological questions and to achieve its ultimate biological goal. The quest
to locate this type of human being arose at the dawn of eugenics, and continued
ceaselessly for four decades, throughout the voluminous discourse,
research and publishing of the worldwide eugenic mainstream. To the
eugenic scientist, no subject was of greater value. Young or old, healthy or
diseased, living or dead, they all wanted one form of human-twins.

Twins were the perfect control group for experimentation. How people
developed, how they resisted or succumbed to disease, how they reacted to
physical or environmental change-all these questions could be best
answered by twins precisely because they were simultaneous siblings.
While fraternal twins sprang from two separate eggs fertilized at the same
time, identical twins were, in fact, one egg split in two. Identical twins were
essentially Nature's clones.41

Twins were valued for a second eugenic reason: Nature itself could be
outmaneuvered if desirable individuals could be biologically enabled to
spawn twins-or even better, triplets, quadruplets and quintuplets. In other
words, a world of never-ending multiple births was the best assurance that
the planned super race would remain super.

About a decade before Galton coined the term eugenics, he was convinced
he could divine the secret of human breeding by studying twins. In
1874 and 1875, he published various versions of a scientific essay entitled
"The History of Twins as a Criterion of the Relative Powers of Nature and
urture." In analyzing whether environment or heredity was responsible
for an individual's success, Galton complained that his investigations were
always hampered by the unending variables-that is, until he located biological
comparables. "The life history of twins supplies what I wanted," he
wrote. Galton had closely studied some eighty sets of twin children by the
time he wrote that essay. These included twins of the same and different
gender as well as identical and non-identical twins.42

Cold Spring Harbor's handwritten outlines for key Mendelian traits
listed twinning as one of the ten salient physical characteristics to explore.
Davenport's 1911 textbook, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, included a section
on twins with the introduction, "It is well known that twin production
may be an hereditary quality." Three years later, Heinrich Poll, Rockefeller's
first fund administrator in Germany, published a major volume on
twin research; Poll's interest in the topic dovetailed with the Rockefeller
Foundation's years-long support of the subject.43

American eugenic publications constantly dotted their pages with the
latest twin theory and research. Identifying the mechanism governing the
creation and development of twins quickly became a major pursuit for
eugenics. In 1916, Eugenical News published three articles on the subject,
including one that examined a recent article in Biological Bulletin on
armadillo quadruplets, hoping to apply the principle to multiple births in
humans. One of the 1917 articles on twins in Eugenical News indicated that
in about a quarter of same sex twins, "there is some factor that definitely
forces the two children to be of the same sex." A second article in 1917
announced that a doctor in a Michigan institution for the feebleminded
was searching the nation for mongolism in twins, especially cases in which
only one of the siblings manifested the condition.44

The problem with studying twins was that in adulthood most twins
lived separate lives, often in separate cities and even in different countries.
It was hard to locate them, let alone bring them together for examination.
In 1918, the American Genetic Association, the renamed American
Breeders Association, announced that it desired to "communicate with
twins living in any part of the world." The AGA explained, "It has been discovered
that twins are in a peculiar position to help in the elucidation of
certain problems of heredity .... 'Duplicate' twins have a nearly (though
never an absolutely) identical germ plasm .... It is fortunate for our knowledge
... on account of the chance it gives [us] to study the relative importance
of heredity and of environment." Within a year of its announcement,
the AGA had identified some six hundred twins, and by soliciting photos it
had assembled a photo archive of several hundred.45

The ERO initiated its own twin study with a detailed four-page questionnaire.
Among its numerous questions: "What is your favorite fruit?"
and "Do you prefer eggs boiled soft or hard?" It also provided a place for
each twin's fingerprints and the names and addresses of family members.
ERO investigators located one especially fertile family in Cleveland that
had repeatedly produced multiple births. When Davenport wrote up the
case for Journal of Heredity in 1919, he explained that it had taken more
than six visits by field workers to determine the full scope of the original
couple's fecundity. Later, Eugenical News announced that Columbia,
Missouri, was home to more twins than any other city in the nation-one
pair for every 477 people.46

Hereditarians sought twins of all ages-not just children-for proper
study. The family tree of a New England family of twins, including one pair
ninety-one years of age, fascinated eugenicists. Geneticists excavated old
journals to discover even earlier examples, such as a seventeenth-century
Russian woman who gave birth twenty-seven times, each time producing
twins, triplets or quadruplets, yielding a total of sixty-nine childrenY

Race and twins quickly became an issue for American eugenicists. In a
1920 lecture series, Davenport raised the issue of "racial difference in twin
frequency" in the same geographic area. He pointed out that from 1896 to
1917, in Washington, D.C., the "negro rate [of twins] is 20 percent higher
than the white rate." For whites in the nation's capital, it was 1.82 pairs of
twins per hundred births, while blacks had 2.27 per hundred. At about the
same time, Eugenical News, analyzing recent census data, claimed that twin
births overall still occurred at a frequency of approximately 1 percent
nationwide; but the percentage of multiple births among Blacks was almost
one-fifth greater than among whites. Davenport followed up such observations
in his Jamaica race-crossing study, which featured in-depth studies of
three sets of twins.48

Diagnostic and physiological developments in twin studies from any
sector of the medical sciences were of constant interest to eugenic readers.
So Eugenical News regularly summarized articles from the general medical
literature to feed eugenicists' unending fascination with the topic. In 1922,
when a state medical journal reported using stethoscopes to monitor a twin
pregnancy, it was reported in Eugenical News. When a German clinical
journal published a study of tumors in twins, this too was reported in
Eugenical News.49

With each passing issue, Eugenical News dedicated more and more space
to the topic. The list of such reports became long. By the early 1920s, arti
cles on twins became increasingly instructive. One typical article explained
how to more precisely verify the presence of identical twins using a capillary
microscope. Journal of Heredity also made twins a frequent subject in its
pages. For example, it published Popenoe's article entitled "Twins Reared
Apart," and Hermann Muller's article "The Determination of Twin
Heredity," and regularly reviewed books about twins.5o

Every leading eugenic textbook included a section on twins. Popenoe's
Applied Eugenics explained that identical twins "start lives as halves of the
same whole" but "become more unlike if they were brought up apart."
Baur-Fischer-Lenz's Foundation of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene cited
several studies including those written by Popenoe in Journal of Het·edity.
The German eugenicists wrote, "Of late years, the study of twins has been
a favorite branch of genetic research" and thanked Galton for his "flash of
genius" in "[recognizing] this a long while ago."51

In a similar vein, most international eugenic and genetic conferences
included presentations or exhibits on twins-their disparity or similarity,
their susceptibility to tuberculosis, their likes and dislikes. R. A. Fisher
opened one of his lectures to the Second International Congress of
Eugenics with the phrase: "The subject of the genesis of human twins ...
has a special importance for eugenicists." The third congress offered an
exhibit on mental disorders in twins, an exhibit illustrating fingerprint
comparisons, a third juxtaposing identical and fraternal twins, and a fourth
offering an array of fifty-nine anthropometric photos.52

The quest for a superior race continued to intersect with the availability
of twins. In the July-August 1935 edition of Eugenical News, Dr. Alfred
Gordon published a lengthy article entitled "The Problems of Heredity
and Eugenics." His first sentence read: "Regulation of reproduction of a
superior race (eugenics) is fundamentally based on the principles of heredity."
Gordon went on to explain, "The role of heredity finds its strongest
corroboration in cases of psychoses in twins." He then gave an example of
just two case studies of twins. Such enthusiastic coverage in the biological
and eugenic media was prompted a few months before by the extensive
examination of just a single pair of twins undertaken at New York
University's College of Dentistry, this to identify pathological dentition. 53

There were so few twins to study that surgeons in the eugenics community
passed along their latest discoveries, one by one, to advance the field's
common knowledge. In one case, Dr. John Draper of Manhattan wrote to
Davenport, "Last Thursday, I opened the abdomen of twin girls, fourteen
years old. They presented very similar physical characteristics and the psy
choses so far as could be determined were identical." Davenport replied,
"Your observations upon the internal anatomy of the twin girls is exceedingly
important, as very few observations of this type have been made upon
twins." He offered to dispatch a field worker to make facial measurements.
Such random reports were precious to eugenicists because physical experimentation
on large groups was essentially impossible. 54

All that changed when Hitler came to power in 1933. Germany surged
ahead in its study of twins. The German word for twins is Zwillinge. There
were tens of thousands of twins in the Reich. In 1921 alone, 19,573 pairs
were born, plus 231 sets of triplets. In 192 5, 15,741 pairs of twins were
born, as well as 161 sets of triplets. Twins were now increasingly sought to
help combat hereditary diseases and conditions, real and imagined.
Verschuer's book, Twins and Tuberculosis, was published in 1933 and
received a favorable review in Journal of Heredity. In 1934, a Norwegian
physician working with Verschuer and Fischer published in a German
anthropology journal his analysis of 116 pairs of identical twins and 127
pairs of fraternal twins for their inheritance of an ear characteristic known
as Darwin's tubercle. 55

But many more twins would be needed to accomplish the sweeping
research envisioned by the architects of Hitler's master race. In early
December of 1935, Verschuer told a correspondent for the Journal of the
American Medical Association that eugenics had moved into a new phase. Once
Mendelian principles of human heredity were established, the correspondent
wrote, "Further progress was achieved with the beginning of research on
twins, by means of which it is possible to measure hereditary influence even
though the hereditary processes are complicated .... Many of these
researches, however, as Freiherr von Verschuer recently pointed out, are of
questionable value .... What is absolutely needed is research on series of families
and twins selected at random ... examined under the same conditions, a
fixed minimum of examinations being made in all cases." The article went on
to cite Verschuer's view that meaningful research would require entire families-
trom children to grandparents. 56 In plain words, this meant gathering
larger numbers of twins in one place for simultaneous investigation.

To attract more twins, the Nazi Party and the National Socialist
Welfare League promoted "twin camps" for the holidays. Verschuer circulated
handy text references for all German physicians who might encounter
twins. When Verschuer opened his Institute for Hereditary Biology and
Racial Hygiene in 1936, the event created such fanfare in Eugenical News
partially because, "Dr. Verschuer states that the object of his investigation
is mankind, not the individual man, but families and twins; and in this work
there will not [only] be investigated ... interesting twins, but all twins and
families of definite geographical origin."57

At about that time, German neuropsychiatrist Heinrich Kranz of the
University of Breslau published extensive genealogical details about seventy-
five pairs of twin brothers and fifty pairs of opposite gender twins,
seeking correlations on criminal behavior. In a Journal of Heredity essay,
Popenoe lauded Kranz's investigation and predicted that such efforts would
help identify "born criminals." Popenoe welcomed more such German
research because "it has become one of the most dependable methods of
studying human heredity."58

Indeed, a plethora of Nazi scientific journals were brimming with regular
coverage of eugenic investigations of twins. Several publications were
devoted solely to the subject, such as Zwillingsforschungen (Twin Research)
and Zwillings- und Familienfonchungen (Twin and Family Research). Verschuer
frequently wrote for these journals. In some cases Mengele coauthored
the articles, including an article on systemic problems and cleft
palate deformation published in Zwillings- und Familienjorschungen. Some
published twin research credited Mengele as the principal investigator,
such as an article on congenital heart disease, also for Zwillings- und
Familienjorschungen. 59

Verschuer's preoccupation with twin studies expanded feverishly. He
required more and more twins. In a September 1938 application for funds
from the German Research Society, Verschuer explained his plans. "Largescale
research on twins is necessary to explore the question of the hereditary
aspects of human characteristics, especially illnesses. This research can
take two paths: 1. Testing of all twins in a specific geographic area, done at
our institute by Miss Liebmann. All twins in the Frankfurt district back to
1898 have been listed and almost all have been examined; she discussed
some interesting cases in several articles and a comprehensive summary is
being done. 2. Listing of series of twins. Based on cases in over 100 hospitals
in west and southwest Germany, the number of twins among them
were determined and the cases were examined according to illnesses." He
listed rheumatism, stomach ulcers, cancer, heart defects, anemia and
leukemia as the conditions he was focusing on. Verschuer assured, "A good
deal of material has been collected."60

In 1939, Interior Minister Frick issued a public decree compelling all
twins to register with their local Public Health Office and make themselves
available for genetic testing. The Reich Statistics Bureau would cooperate
in the identification campaign. The announcement in the Nazi medical
publication Ziel und Ulfg (Goal and Path) was published with a lengthy quotation
from Mein Ktlmpf on the cover: "We must differentiate most stringently
between the state as a mere containe1· and race as its contents. This
container is meaningful only when it has the ability to preserve and protect
the contents; otherwise it is worthless."61

American eugenicist T. U. H. Ellinger was in Germany shortly after the
decree to visit with Fischer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. In a Journal of HeTedity
essay on his visit, Ellinger flippantly reported to his colleagues, "Twins
have, of course, for a long time been a favorite material for the study of the
relative importance of heredity and environment, of nature and nurture. It
does, however, take a dictatorship to oblige some ten thousand pairs of
twins, as well as triplets and even quadruplets, to report to a scientific institute
at regular intervals for all kinds of recordings and tests."62

When twins did report to the Institute for Anthropology, Human
Heredity and Eugenics, they were often placed in small, specially-constructed
examination rooms, each lined with two-way mirrors and motion
picture camera lenses camouflaged into the wallpaper. The staff proudly
showed Ellinger all of these facilities.63 However, eugenicists at the institute
could only go so far with mere observations.

Reich scientists needed more if they were to take the next step in creating
a super race resistant to disease and capable of transmitting the best
traits. Autopsies were required to discover how specific organs and bodily
processes reacted to various experiments. Verschuer needed more twins
and the freedom to kill them. The highest ranks of the Hitler regime
agreed, including Interior Minister Frick, who ran the concentration
camps, and SS Chief Heinrich Himmler.64 Millions of dispensable human
beings from across Europe-Jews, Gypsies and other undesirables-were
passing through Hitler's camps to be efficiently murdered. Among these
millions, there were bound to be thousands of twins.

Shortly after Verschuer took over for Fischer at the Institute for
Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, he proposed a Zwillingslagel',
or "twins camp," within Auschwitz. He applied to the German
Research Society, which between July and September of 1943 passed his
application through the various steps needed for approval and funding.
The grant covered a six-month period beginning in October 1943 under
contract number 0296/1595. The camp was approved and was bureaucratically
filed under the keyword "Twins Camp."65

At the end of May 1943, Mengele arrived in Auschwitz, where he took
control of the ramps where Jews were brought in. Verschuer notified the
German Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. JosefMengele (M.D., Ph.D.)
joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed as
Hauptsturmfuhrer [captain] and camp physician in the Auschwitz concentration
camp. Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial groups in
this concentration camp are being carried out with permission of the SS
Reichsfuhrer [Himmler]. "66

Nazi Germany had now carried eugenics further than any dared expect.
The future of the master race that would thrive in Hitler's Thousand-Year
Reich lay in twins. For this reason, there would now be a special class of
victims at Auschwitz. There would be a special camp, special medical facilities
and special laboratories-all for the twins.

After the locomotives lurched to a final stop at Auschwitz, after the
whistle shrieked and the doors rolled open, after the bewildered masses
tumbled out of the boxcars and onto the ramp, above the tumult of their
own fear and the incessant barking dogs, all of them heard one word, and
they heard it shouted twice.

As the SS passed through the trembling crowds lining up for the gas
chambers, they cried out for all to hear:

Zwillinge! Zwillinge.'
Twins! Twins!

LEA LORINCZI: "When we got off the trains, we could hear the Germans yelling,
'Twins, twins!'" Lea and her brother were spared.67

MAGDA SPIEGEL: "SS guards were yelling, 'Twins, twins, we want twins.' I saw
a very good-looking man coming toward me. It was Mengele. " They were also
spared.68

JUDITH YAGUDAH: "When it was our turn, Mengele immediately asked us ifwe
were twins. Ruthie and I looked identical. We had similar hairdos. We were wearing
the same outfits. Mengele ordered us to go in a certain direction-and OU1'
mother, too." Judith and Ruthie were spared.69

EVA MOZES: "As I clutched my mother's hand, an SS man hurried by shouting,
'Twins! Twins!' He stopped to look at us. Miriam and I looked very much alike. We
were wearing similm' clothes. 'Al'e they twins?' he asked my mother. 'Is that good?'
she replied. He nodded yes. 'They are twins,' she said." Eva and Miriam were
also pulled out of the gas chamber line.70

ZVI KLEIN: "My twin brother and I were mmThing toward the gas chambers
when we heard people yelling, 'Twins! Twins!' U7ewere yanked out of the lines and
brought over to Dr. Mengele." Zvi and his brother were spared.?!

MOSHE OFFER: "] heard my father cry out to them he had twins. He went over
personally to Dr. Mengele and told him, '] have a pair of twin boys.'... But we didn't
want to be separated from our mother, and so the Nazis separated us byforce. My
father begged Mengele ... As we were led away, ] saw my father fall to the ground. "
The Offer boys lived. Their parents disappeared into the selection.72

HEDVAH AND LEAH STERN: "Some prisoners told [my mother} in Yiddish, 'Tell
them you have twins. There is a Dr. Mengele here who wants twins. Only twins
are being kept alive. '"

The Stern sisters lived to tell their story.73

All of them lived through the Selektion. But now they lived in Mengele's
world of torture and testing, electroshock and syringes, eye injections and
other hideous experiments-where live children and fresh cadavers were
equally prized-all to achieve the eugenic ideal of a superior race in a place
where mankind had sunk to the nadir of humanity.

***

Sadistic science at Auschwitz was part of Nazi Germany's eugenic desire to
create its master race.

Like Verschuer, Mengele considered himself a warrior in the battle for
eugenic supremacy. In an autobiographical account, Mengele spoke of his
desire to create a super race as his initial motive for becoming a doctor. He
traced his own family pedigree-pure Aryan stock-back four generations.
An inmate anthropologist, Martina Puzyna, saved from death in order to
work with Mengele, recalled, "He believed you could create a new superrace
as though you were breeding horses .... He was mad about genetic
engineering." A prisoner pathologist forced to work closely with Mengele
wrote that the Angel of Death was obsessed with "the secret of the reproduction
of the race. To advance one step in the search to unlock the secret
of multiplying the race of superior beings destined to rule was a 'noble
goal.' If only it were possible, in the future, to have each German mother
bear as many twins as possible."74

Shortly after arriving at Auschwitz, Mengele established Verschuer's
twin camp at Barrack 14 in Camp F. Mengele had his pick of assistants from
the finest doctors and pathologists in Europe, who came to Auschwitz condemned
in sealed boxcars. One whom he selected from the ramp was a
Hungarian Jewish pathologist named Miklos Nyiszli, a graduate of
Friedrich Wilhelm University medical school in Breslau. He became one of
Mengele's favorite assistants. yiszli's task was to dissect the endless torrent
of special corpses and create meticulous postmortem reports. For this
process, Mengele would not settle for a typical ramshackle, makeshift concentration
camp facility. Instead, amid the filth and squalor of Auschwitz,
Mengele requisitioned and created a modern well-equipped pathology lab.75

The lab had everything needed for perfect autopsies. It was eerily professional,
with light green painted walls surrounding a red concrete floor. A
polished marble dissection table with fluid drains abutted a utility basin with
shiny nickel faucets. Three white porcelain sinks lined the wall. Mosquito
screens covered the windows. In the adjacent room, Nyiszli found a wellstocked
library with the latest publications, three microscopes, and a closet
full of mortuary supplies-everything from aprons to gloves. Nyiszli
recalled it as "the exact replica of any large city's institute of pathology."76

Dina, a Czech inmate known for her skillful paintings, was selected at
the ramp to become Mengele's anthropological artist. She would create
anatomical drawings of the twins' features: noses, ears, mouths, hands, feet
and skulls. Her artwork would accompany the experimentation data in each
patient's folder.77

Mengele was happy in his work, frequently whistling as he selected
human guinea pigs, discarded others to the gas chambers, inflicted his
experiments and then reviewed the autopsies. A broad smile lit up his face
as he surveyed his precious subjects, especially the children. "Almost like he
had fun," one surviving twin recalled, adding, "He was very playful."
Diligent and detailed, he once noticed a smudge on a bright blue file cover
and sternly turned to Nyiszli, asking, "How can you be so careless with
these files, which I have compiled with so much love!"78

Love was a corrupted word for Mengele. He certainly loved his work. At
times, he seemed to love the youngest twins. All of Mengele's twins were
better fed than other prisoners and even allowed small personal freedoms,
such as roaming around the camp. Sometimes he served the children chocolates,
patted them on the head affectionately, chaperoned them to camp
concerts and made them feel as though he were a father figure looking after
them. Eva Kupas remembered that once, when she wanted to see her twin
brother, Mengele personally escorted her and "held my hand the whole
way." He seemed to identify with one very young boy who somewhat resembled
him, and actually trained the child to say "My name is 'Mengele."'79

But without warning Mengele could fly into uncontrollable murderous
frenzies. One teenage girl wept and begged when she was separated from
her mother and sisters. She recounted that Mengele "grabbed me by the
hair, dragged me on the ground and beat me." When the girl's mother
pleaded, Mengele brutally beat her with his riding crop. In one case, a frantic
mother fought to remain with her younger daughter. Mengele simply
drew his pistol and shot the woman and her daughter, then waved the
entire transport to the gas chambers, remarking, "Away with this shitl"
Another time he caught a woman named Ibi, who had cleverly evaded the
gas chambers six times by jumping off the truck just in time. A suddenly
enraged Mengele shrieked, "You want to escape, don't you. You can't
escape now! ... Dirty Jewl" As he screamed, Mengele viciously beat the
woman to death and kept beating her until her head resembled a bloody,
formless mass. After these savage incidents, Mengele could immediately
Jekyll-Hyde back to the charming, whistling clinician enchanted with his
subjects and his science.8o

In fact, Mengele loved his twins not because he thought they should be
preserved, but only because they briefly served his mad scientific quest.
Nyiszli recounted that siblings were subjected "to every medical examination
that can be performed on human beings," from blood tests to lumbar
punctures. Each was rigorously photographed naked, and calipered from
head to toe to complete the record. But these were only the baselines and
vital signs. Then came the actual experiments. The Reichenberg boys, mistakenly
thought to be twins because they so closely resembled each other,
piqued Mengele's interest because one possessed a singer's voice while the
other couldn't carry a tune. After crude surgery on both boys' vocal chords,
one brother lost his speech altogether. Twin girls were forced to have sex
with twin boys to see if twin children would result. Efforts were made to
surgically change the gender of other twins.81

One day, Mengele brought chocolates and extra clothing for twin brothers,
Guido and Nino, both popular with the medical personnel. A few days
later the twins were brought back, their wrists and backs sewn together in a
crude parody of Siamese twins, their veins interconnected and their surgical
wounds clearly festering. The boys screamed all night until their mother
managed to end their agony with a fatal injection of morphine.82

Mengele suspected that two Gypsy boys, about seven years of age and
well-liked in the lab, carried latent tuberculosis. When prisoner doctors
offered a different opinion, Mengele became agitated. He told the assembled
staff to wait a while. An hour later he returned and sedately declared,
"You are right. There was nothing." After a brief silence, Mengele
acknowledged, "Yes, I dissected them." He had shot both in the neck and
autopsied them "while they were still warm."83

It was imperative that twins be murdered simultaneously to analyze
them comparatively. "They had to die together," Nyiszli recounted. For
example, the bodies of four sets of Gypsy twins under the age of ten were
delivered to Nyiszli for autopsy in one shipment. Twelve sets of gassed
twins were diverted from the furnace so they could be dissected as a group;
to facilitate identification among the hundreds of twisted corpses, the
twelve had been coded with chalk on their chests before they entered the
chamber. One girl recovered from an implanted infection too soon; he
killed her quickly so both siblings would be freshly deceased.84

If one of Mengele's precious human guinea pigs was harmed before he
could complete his work, he became incensed. Guards were under strict
instructions to keep Mengele's twins alive, or face his wrath if they died
during the night prior to his handling. Some 1,500 twins were subjected to
Mengele's atrocities. Fewer than two hundred survived.85 Those who lived
had simply not yet been killed.

Mengele also sought dwarfs and the physically deformed-really any
specimen of interest. He ghoulishly and capriciously explored the effects of
genetics, disease and mass breeding. In one case, Mengele removed part of
a man's stomach without administering anesthesia. To investigate the
pathology of dysentery, Mengele told Nyiszli to prepare for 150 emaciated
corpses, and to autopsy them at the rate of seven per day; Nyiszli protested
that he could only complete three per day if he was to be thorough. Eye
color was a favorite subject for experimentation. Eager to discover if brown
eyes could be converted to Nordic blue, Mengele would introduce blue
dyes, sometimes by drops, sometimes by injection. It often blinded the subjects,
but it never changed their eye color.86

While evidence of mass murder in the trenches of Russia and the gas
chambers of Poland was systematically destroyed, Mengele's murders were
enshrined in the protocols of science. Mengele's ghastly files did not remain
his private mania, confined to Auschwitz. Every case was meticulously
annotated, employing the best scientific method prisoner doctors could
muster. Then the files were sent to Verschuer's offices at the Institute for
Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem for study.

An adult prisoner, chosen to help care for the youngest twins,
recounted, "The moment a pair of twins arrived in the barrack, they were
asked to complete a detailed questionnaire from the Kaiser-Wilhelm
Institute in Berlin. One of my duties as [the] 'Twins' Father' was to help
them fill it out, especially the little ones, who couldn't read or write. These
forms contained dozens of detailed questions related to a child's back
ground, health, and physical characteristics. They asked for the age,
weight, and height of the children, their eye color and the color of their
hair. They were promptly mailed to Berlin. "87

Nyiszli, who had to fill out voluminous postmortem reports, recalled
Mengele's warning: "'I want clean copy, because these reports will be forwarded
to the Institute of Biological, Racial and Evolutionary Research at
Berlin-Dahlem.' Thus I learned that the experiments performed here were
checked by the highest medical authorities at one of the most famous scientific
institutes in the world."88

The reports, countersigned by Mengele and sent to Berlin, were not
just received and warehoused, they were carefully reviewed and discussed.
A dialogue developed between Verschuer's institute and Mengele. Another
prisoner assistant recounted that Mengele "would receive questions about
the twins from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and he would send
them the answers. "89

The volume of exchange was massive. In a March 1944 memo from
Verschuer to the German Research Society, which financed his work, he
asked for more clerical assistance and supplies for the Auschwitz project.
The memo, entitled "On the continuation of hereditary-psychological
research" and filed under the keyword "Twins camp," was coded G for
geheime, or "secret." Verschuer explained, "Analysis of material obtained
from the twins camp continued during the half-year reporting period
October 1943 to March 15, 1944. Some 25 psychological analyses, each of
which consisted of about 200 pages, were dictated during this period, continuing
to round out the overall description of the experiences gained through
the twins camp. These analyses were continued, following the same methods
as those analyses which began in the summer of 1943. The evaluation system
employed has proven useful and was developed further. Several secretaries
will be necessary in order to continue the evaluation, as well as sufficient
amounts of typing paper, steno blocks and other writing equipment. Some
10,000 sheets of paper will be needed for the coming quarter-year."90

More than just reports, Nyiszli sent body parts. "I had to keep any
organs of possible scientific interest," he remembered, "so that Dr.
Mengele could examine them. Those which might interest the Anthropological
Institute at Berlin-Dahlem were preserved in alcohol. These
parts were specially packed to be sent through the mails. Stamped 'War
Material-Urgent,' they were given top priority in transit. In the course of
my work at the crematorium I dispatched an impressive number of such
packages. I received, in reply, either precise scientific observations or
instructions. In order to classify this correspondence I had to set up special
files. The directors of the Berlin-Dahlem Institute always warmly thanked
Dr. Mengele for this rare and precious material."91

Among his many grisly memories, one case especially haunted Nyiszli.
Mengele spotted a hunchbacked Jew, a respected cloth merchant from
Lodz, Poland, and his teenage son, handsome but with a deformed foot
supported by an orthopedic shoe. Mengele ordered his slave pathologist,
Nyiszli, to interview the father and son for the file. Nyiszli did so, not in
the dissecting room, which reeked of formaldehyde, but in an adjacent
study hall, trying his best not to alarm them. After the interview, the father
and son were shot. yiszli performed detailed autopsies, complete with
copious notes. Mengele was fascinated with the eugenic potential of the
information, since each individual carried his own deformity. "These bodies
must not be cremated," Mengele ordered. "They must be prepared and
their skeletons sent to the Anthropological Museum in Berlin." After some
discussion, Nyiszli began the gruesome chore of creating two lab-quality
skeletons. This involved cooking the corpses to detach all flesh. During the
long cooking process in the courtyard, four starving Polish slave workers
mistook the contents of the vats and began eating. Nyiszli ran out to stop
them. The cooled and treated skeletons were then wrapped in large sacks,
labeled "Urgent: National Defense," and mailed to the Institute for
Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics.92

In the depths of his misery, Nyiszli wondered if he had witnessed too
much. "Was it conceivable," he wrote, "that Dr. Mengele, or the Berlin-
Dahlem Institute, would ever allow me to leave this place alive?"93

Like many eugenic research organizations, the Institute for Anthropology,
Human Heredity and Eugenics valued twins' eyes. For decades,
American eugenicists had stressed the research importance of twins' eyes,
and the German movement naturally adopted the precept. Indeed, typical
enthusiasm for the topic was evident in the March-April 1933 edition of
Eugenical News in an article headlined "Hereditary Eye Defects," which
reviewed a newly released book that included a chapter on "eyes of twins."
Eugenical News closed its review with the comment, "We have nothing but
praise for the assiduity in the gathering of the data .... We are happy to
have this long needed work done and so well done." Similarly enthusiastic
reviews and articles on the subject of twins' eyes and vision were published
in Eugenical News during the latter 1930s.94

In 1936, a colleague had sent Laughlin a request to expand the eye color
question of the ERO's Twin Schedule. The new instructions would read:
"Look at the colored part of the eye carefully in a good light with the help of
a mirror. Is there any difference that you can see in the color or pattern of
marks in the right and left eyes? Blue and gray eyes have brownish streaks,
sometimes a few, which can be easily counted and usually more in one eye
than in the other. Please describe any such difference between your eyes."95

Like his American colleagues, Verschuer was long interested in twin eye
color. He wanted eye color studies included in his Auschwitz experiments,
and the German Research Society funded one such project in September of
1943. Mengele was careful to gather all the eyes Verschuer needed.96

Inmate doctor Jancu Vekler never forgot what he saw when he entered
one room at the Gypsy camp. "There I saw a wooden table with eyeballs
laying on it. All of them were tagged with numbers and little notes. They
were pale yellow, pale blue, green and violet." Vera Kriegel, another slave
doctor, recalled that she walked into one laboratory and was horrified to see
a collection of eyeballs decorating an entire wall, "pinned up like butterflies
.... I thought I was dead," she said, "and was already living in hell."97

One day a prisoner transcriptionist was frantic because while a family of
eight had been murdered, only seven pairs of eyes were found in the
pathology lab. "You've given me only seven pairs of eyes," the assistant
exclaimed. "We are missing two eyes!" He then scavenged similar eyes
from other nearby corpses to complete the package for Verschuer's institute-
without Mengele being the wiser.98

Chief recipient of the eyes was Karin Magnussen, another Verschuer
researcher at the institute who was investigating eye anomalies, such as
individuals with irises of different colors. In a March 1944 update subheaded
"Work on the Human Eye" and submitted to the German Research
Society, Magnussen reported, "The first histological work, which was concluded
in the fall, 'On the Relationship Between Iris Color, Histological
Distribution of Pigment and Pigmentation of the Bulb of the Human Eye,'
to be published in the Zeitschrijt fUr Morphologie und Anthropologie [Journal
for Morphology and Anthropology], is currently in press. Material for a second
series of experiments is currently being prepared for histological examination.
The article on the determination of iris color, which was intended for
publication in Erbarzt in December 1943, was printed but destroyed by
enemy attacks and is now being reprinted. Observations continue on links
among certain anomalies in humans. Other observations of humans had to
be temporarily suspended for war-related reasons, but are to resume in
summer if possible. Material is constantly being collected and evaluated for
the expert opinions. "99

Among the several scholarly articles on eyes from Auschwitz that
Magnussen was authoring was one intended for the journal Zeitschrift jUr
Induktive Abstammungslehre und Vererbungsforschung (Journal for Inductive
Genealogical Science and Hereditary Research). Editorial board member
Professor George Melchers, who reviewed the submission draft, remembered,
"I was struck by the fact that the whole family-grandparents, parents
and children-had died at the same time. I could only assume they had
[all] been killed in a concentration camp." The war was coming to an end,
so Melchers never submitted Magnussen's article to the full board.loo

Magnussen later told her denazification tribunal, "I became acquainted
with Dr. Mengele, who had been inducted as a medical officer, in [Berlin-]
Dahlem during the war, when he visited the institute while on leave. I
spoke with him a few times during such visits to the institute about scientific
projects and scientific problems .... I completed my research, although
after [a Gypsy] clan with heterochromatic eyes was imprisoned in
Auschwitz, I was refused all access to these family members. Completion of
my research was only possible through the help given me by Dr. Mengele,
who coincidentally had been transferred to the camp. At that time, he
helped me trace the hereditary path by determining eye color and family
relationships. Through him I also learned that one of the most important
families in the clan was contaminated with tuberculosis. I then asked him if
he could send me the autopsy and pathological tissue from the eyes if
someone from this family should die." She added, "The impression I
received from the cases of illness and from the very responsible and very
humane and very decent behavior exhibited by Dr. Mengele toward his
imprisoned patients and subordinates ... was such that I would never have
thought that anything could have happened in Auschwitz that violated laws
of the state, medicine or ofhumanity."lOl

In addition to eyes, Verschuer wanted blood. Liters of it. For decades,
eugenicists had sought the genetic markers for "carriers," or people who
appeared normal but were likely to transmit a Mendelian predisposition for a
range of defective traits from pauperism to epilepsy. This effort was at first
bogged down in early attempts to assemble race-based family trees and to
create pseudoscientific ethnic and class countermeasures. But by the twenties,
the most talented eugenicists and geneticists were working hard to analyze
blood serum to solve the question of defective germ plasm. They weren't
sure whether they were seeking a specific hormone, an enzyme, a protein,
genetic material or other blood molecule. They only knew that mankind's
eugenic destiny was lurking in the blood and waiting to be discovered.lo2

In 1924, Davenport had told the Second International Congress of
Eugenics, "The hormones that determine our personality, constitute the
bridge that connects this personality on the one hand, with the specific
enzymes packed away in the chromosomes of the germ cells, on the other."
Davenport went on to explain, "You and I differ by virtue of the ... atomic
activity of the enzymes and hormones which make up that part of the
stream of life-yeast which has got into and is activating our protoplasm and
will activate that of the fertilized egg that results from us and our consorts."
He stressed that a human being was dictated "by virtue of the peculiar
properties of those extraordinary activating substances, which are specific
for him and other members of his family and race or biotype. The future of
human genetics lies largely in a study of these activities .... Of these [studies],
one of the most significant is that of twin-production."lOJ

The Eugenical News report on the 192 7 grand opening of the Kaiser
Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics pointed
out, "In the section on human genetics, twins and the blood groups were specially
considered." On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation's Paris
office dispatched a radiogram to its New York headquarters asking for funds
to support Verschuer's research while he was at the Institute for Anthropology,
Human Heredity and Eugenics. The foundation approved a three-year grant
totaling $9,000 to "KWG Institute [for] Anthropology for research [on] twins
and effects on later generations of substances toxic for germ plasm."J04

At the same time, the foundation was already funding an array of vocal
German anti-Semites in a five-year $125,000 study. Internal foundation
reports described the study as "the racial or biological composition of the
German people and of the interaction of biological and social factors in
determining the character of the present population." Twin research was
repeatedly cited as a key facet of the research. Among the scientists listed
on the foundation's roster was Riidin in project items 9 and 10; project item
16 was Verschuer. This $125,000 grant was not made directly, but channeled
through the Emergency Fund for German Science (Notgemeinschaft
der Deutschen Wissenschaften), which evolved into the German Research
Society (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). 105

When Hitler came to power the next year, Rockefeller did not cease its
funding of race biology in Germany. However, unlike many American
eugenic leaders, Rockefeller officials were more circumspect. Rockefeller
executives did not propagandize for Nazism, nor did they approve of the
Reich's virulent repression. The foundation's agenda was strictly biological
to the exclusion of politics. It wanted to discover the specific genetic com
ponents of the blood of the unfit-even if that meant funding Nazi-controlled
institutions.

Rockefeller's seed money was not wasted. In 1935, Eugenical News published
a notice entitled "Blood Groups of Twins," which summarized a
Nazi medical journal article based on Verschuer's research. "The Kaiser-
Wilhelm Institute fur Anthropologie Menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik, at
Dahlem-Berlin," reported Eugenical News, "is conducting, through Dr. O.
v. Verschuer, studies on twins. Of 202 one-egg twins on whom the blood
group was determined, in every case the serologic findings were the same;
that is, both fell into the same blood group, just as both are of the same sex.
On the other hand, in the case of two-egg twins the blood groups of the
twins, whether of same or opposite sex, were frequently unlike."106

After attorney Raymond Fosdick assumed the presidency of the
Rockefeller Foundation in 1936, the charitable trust became increasingly
reluctant to fund any projects associated with the term eugenics. Rockefeller
money continued to flow into prewar Nazi Germany to fund eugenic projects,
but only when the proposals were packaged as genetics, brain research,
or serology investigations attempting to locate the specific substances in the
blood. However, Rockefeller financing was often too slow for Verschuer,
who now sought faster and closer funding through the Reich Research
Fund in Berlin, which in the thirties continued to enjoy annual Rockefeller
monies. In June of 1939, when the Rockefeller Foundation tried to convince
protestors that it was not financing Nazi science, Fosdick was forced
to remind his colleagues that such denials were "of course hardly correct."
Rockefeller money was still flowing through the Emergency Fund for
German Science, now the German Research Society. 107

A cascade of German Research Society grants financed Verschuer's continuing
heredity research, including a 1935 grant for twin studies. In 1936
and 1937, Verschuer again received funding for twin research and his search
for the specific components in blood. The grants continued through the war

years, supporting a broad array of concentration camp experimentation. 108
In the late summer of 1943, Verschuer received German Research
Society funding for serology experiments filed under the keyword
Spezijische Eiweisskorper, alternately translated as "Specific Proteins" or
"Specific Albuminous Matter." His project would require voluminous
blood samples, as he was seeking the specific blood proteins or albuminous
matter that carried genetic traits, from epilepsy to eye color. Verschuer
explained in a memo that the blood would come from the Twins Camp at
Auschwitz. Mengele, wrote Verschuer, would supervise the operation with
the explicit permission of Himmler. "The blood samples are being sent to
my laboratory for analysis."109

Victim after victim, Mengele extracted large amounts of blood from
twins and gypsies. He siphoned it from their arms, sometimes both arms,
from the neck, sometimes from fingers. Hedvah and Leah Stern recalled,
"We were very frightened of the experiments. They took a lot of blood
from us. We fainted several times." One twin survivor remembered years
later, "Each woman was given a blood transfusion from another set of twins
so Mengele could observe the reaction. We two each received 350 cc of
blood from a pair of male twins, which brought on a reaction of severe
headache and high fever." 110

Mengele returned to Berlin from time to time. On one of these trips, he
visited his mentor Verschuer for a cozy family dinner. Mengele was asked
whether his work at Auschwitz was hard. Years later, Verschuer's son
recalled Mengele's reply to his mother: "It's dreadful," Mengele said. "I
can't talk about it. "Ill

Nevertheless, Mengele was tireless in his bloodletting, his eyeball
extractions, his infecting, his autopsying and his selecting, most to the left
and some to the right. In mid-August of 1944, his superior filed a letter of
commendation. "During his employment as camp physician at the concentration
camp Auschwitz," Verschuer asserted, "he has put his knowledge to
practical and theoretical use while fighting serious epidemics. With prudence,
perseverance and energy, he has carried out all tasks given him,
often under very difficult conditions, to the complete satisfaction of his
superiors and has shown himself able to cope with every situation."112

Years later, Verschuer's medical technician, Irmgard Haase, was interviewed
about the work at Auschwitz. She admitted, "There was the
research work, which included enzymes in the blood of Gypsy twins and of
Russian prisoners of war .... From the middle of 1943 onwards, there were
several consignments of30 ml samples of citrated blood." Asked where the
blood had come from, she replied, "I don't know. The specimens were in
boxes, which had been opened. I never saw the sender's name." She added,
"I thought that they were from a camp for prisoners." Auschwitz? "I never
heard the word at that time."l13

Mengele? "Never heard of him." She emphasized, "Specific enzymes in
the blood were being investigated by means of ... protective enzyme reactions."
Were there any misgivings? Haase responded no: "It was science,
after all."114

***

Mengele was not alone. Hitler's doctors operated a vast network of experimentation
in Nazi concentration camps, euthanasia mills and other places
in the territories it occupied. Much of that experimentation was eugenic
and genetic, such as the work of Mengele. Much of it was strictly medical,
such as the testing at Buchenwald designed to find cures or medicines for
well-known diseases. Much of it was simply strategic, such as the cruel ice
water and high altitude tests at Dachau intended to benefit Luftwaffe pilots
bailing out over the North Atlantic. I IS

But even when strictly medical or military testing was inflicted on helpless
subjects, it was most often imposed along eugenic lines. More specifically,
many Aryans-such as habitual criminals, Jehovah's Witnesses and
socialists-were imprisoned in camps under beastly conditions. Mostly, it
was the worthless and expendable-Jews, Gypsies, Russians and other "subhuman"
prisoners-who were victimized as medical fodder. The exceptions
were those Germans considered hereditary misfits, such as homosexuals
and the feebleminded. All of it was in furtherance of Hitler's biological revolution
and his quest for a master race in a Thousand-Year Reich.

Hitler's master race would be more than just chiseled blond and blueeyed
Nordics. Special breeding facilities were established to mass-produce
perfect Aryan babies.116 They would all be closer to super men and women:
taller, stronger and in many ways disease-resistant. Therefore Verschuer
was the vanguard of a corps of Nazi medical men who saw the struggle
against infirmity and sickness as consonant if not intrinsic to their struggle
for eugenic perfection. Nazi Germany was indeed engaged in advanced
medical genetics, now amply funded by the Reich's plunder, and militarized
and regimented by the fascist state.

Therefore, even as Verschuer and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics were supervising the
eugenic murders at Auschwitz, they enjoyed military contracts and
German Research Society funding to attack a gamut of dreaded inherited
diseases. This research could be conducted in concentration camps such as
Buchenwald and Birkenau, or in Kaiser Wilhelm's grandiose complex of
centers for higher learning.

For example, Hans Nachtsheim, who also worked under Verschuer,
investigated epilepsy and other illnesses under German Research Society
aegis and military contract SS 4891-5376, filed under "Research into
Heredity Pathology." One typical status memo in October of 1943
reported that, "Experiments on the significance of a lack of oxygen for
the triggering of epileptic seizures in epileptic rabbits, which were carried
out jointly with Dr. Ruhenstroth-Bauer from the Kaiser Wilhelm
Institute for Biochemistry ... have essentially been concluded. A preliminary
report of the research is currently being printed in the journal
KJinische "Wochenschrift [Clinical U7eekry];a comprehensive report is in the
process of being drawn up to be published in the journal Zeitschrift fUr
menschliche Vererbungs- und Konstitutionslehre [Journal for Science of Human
Genetics and Constitution]." 117

The depth of Nachtsheim's learning was evident. "Further experiments,"
he continued, "are concerned with the effect of the epilepsy gene
in association with other genes [Gengesellschaft]. It has been determined
that a single dosage of the epilepsy gene may suffice to induce epilepsy in
combination with certain other genes, although the epilepsy gene is usually
recessive, meaning that it must be present in a double dosage in order to
become effective. Thus, a carrier of two albino genes and a single epilepsy
gene can become an epileptic. The albino gene is the most extreme and
most recessive allele [chromosomal pair] of a series of 6 alleles. In order to
understand the essence of genes and their interaction, it is important to
know how the other alleles act in combination with the epilepsy gene. Up
to now, it could be proven that the allele most closely related to the albino
gene ... reacts just as the albino factor, while the normal allele, which is
dominant over all other alleles in the series, suppresses the outbreak of
epilepsy even in a single dosage in the presence of even one epilepsy gene.
Experiments with the other alleles remain to be done."118

Verschuer studied tuberculosis in rabbits under German Research
Society aegis and contract SS 4891-5377. One typical report explained
that, "In addition to crossbreeding, pure breeding continued; in particular,
the attempt was made to determine why the members of one family were
always killed by lung tuberculosis while this form did not develop in the
other family. The attempt was made to change the way in which tuberculosis
presented in the various breeds. This was done by means of sac blockage,
reinfections and organ implants. These experiments have not yet been
concluded, but it appears that the development of tuberculosis in the
breeds is extremely resistant. It will be necessary to expand these experiments,
since their results could be of fundamental significance for the
treatment of tuberculosis in humans."119

Similar genuine science could be seen in the other reports of the various
Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes. One of them was the Institute for Brain
Research, an organization financed by Rockefeller money from the ground
up starting in the late 1920s. Senior researchers Drs. Julius Hallervorden
and Hugo Spatz published their pioneering work on a form of inherited
brain degeneration, which was eventually named Hallervorden-Spatz
Syndrome. After Institute for Brain Research founder Oskar Vogt was
removed for his lack of Nazi activism, Spatz took his place and the organization
was fully integrated into the Nazi killing process. While
Hallervorden held the neuropathology chair at the Institute for Brain
Research, he was also appointed senior physician at Brandenburg State
Hospital, one of six institutions operating gas chambers under the T-4
euthanasia program. Ultimately, more than 70,200 Germans classed feebleminded
were gassed under T-4. In 1938, four autopsies were performed
at the Brandenburg facility. During the next five years, 1,260 would be
completed. The brains-nearly 700-went to Hallervorden.120

Hallervorden to his interrogators after the war: "I heard that they were
going to do that, and so I went up to them and told them, 'Look here now,
boys, if you are going to kill all those people, at least take the brains out so
that the material could be utilized.' ... There was wonderful material
among those brains, beautiful mental defectives, malformations and early
infantile disease .... They asked me: 'How many can you examine?' and so I
told them an unlimited number-the more the better. ... They came
bringing them in like the delivery van from the furniture company. The
Public Ambulance Society brought the brains in batches of 150-250 at a
time .... I accepted the brains, of course."121

Direct Rockefeller funding for Hallervorden and Spatz's Institute for
Brain Research during the Hitler regime stopped in 1934, and funding
for Riidin's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry ended in 1935.
However, there were undoubtedly additional Rockefeller funds made
available to institute researchers through the German Research Society.
Rockefeller also provided the seed money for research at the Kaiser
Wilhelm Institute for Biology until the war broke out. Moreover, the
foundation continued to fund individual physicians, such as Tiibingen
forensic psychiatrist Robert Gaupp, Breslau patho-psychologist Kurt
Beringer, Munich psychiatrist Oswald Bumke and Freiburg neurologist
Werner Wagner, each affiliated with his own institution. During these
years, Rockefeller also subsidized social scientists in Nazi-annexed
Vienna. Much of this money continued until 1939. During the thirties,
millions in Rockefeller Foundation grants also flowed to other Kaiser
Wilhelm Institutes devoted to the physical sciences. One such was the
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry,
which was engaged in weapons research. In

The mentality behind the foundation's biological funding could best be
seen in the words of Rockefeller Natural Science Director Warren Weaver.
Just a few months after Hitler came to power in 1933, Weaver circulated a
report to the trustees entitled "Natural Sciences-Program and Policy:
Past Program and Proposed Future Program." That report asserted,
"Work in human genetics should receive special consideration as rapidly as
sound possibilities present themselves. The attack planned, however, is a
basic and long-range one." A year later, Weaver asked "whether we can
develop so sound and extensive a genetics that we can hope to breed, in the
future, superior men?" 123

In pursuing its breeding goals, the Rockefeller Foundation could reassure
itself and others that it was not actually furthering the pseudoscience of
eugenics. In fact, that 1933 report to the trustees specifically stated, "The
attack [for heredity research] planned, however, is a basic and long-range one,
and such a subject as eugenics, for example, would not be given support." After
rejecting eugenics by name, the report went on to advocate that "support
should be continued and extended to include the biochemical, physiological,
neurological and psychological aspects of internal secretions in general." I 24

But while openly eschewing eugenics with statements and memos,
Rockefeller in fact turned to eugenicists and race scientists throughout the
biological sciences to achieve the goal of creating a superior race.

Rockefeller never knew of Mengele. With few exceptions, the foundation
had ceased all eugenic studies in Nazi-occupied Europe when the war
erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had been cast. The talented men
Rockefeller financed, the great institutions it helped found, and the science
it helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.

What could have stopped the race biologists of Berlin, Munich,
Buchenwald and Auschwitz? Certainly, the Nazis felt they were unstoppable.
They imagined a Thousand-Year Reich of super-bred men. Hence
when the twins, the prisoner doctors and those selected for the gas chamber
looked at Mengele, time after time they reported the piercing look in his
eyes. That look-Mengele's glare-was the Nazi vision wedded to a fanatical
science whose soul had been emptied, its moral compass cracked; a science
backed not merely by iron dogma but by men wielding machine guns
and pellets of Zyklon B. All of them were versed in the polysyllabics of cold
clinical murder. Surely, to the victims of Auschwitz, it must have seemed
like nothing could stop Nazi science from its global biological triumph.

But something did defeat Mengele and his colleagues. Not reason. Not
remorse. Not sudden realization. Nazi eugenicists were impervious to
those powers. But two things did stop the movement. On June 6, 1944, the
Allies invaded at Normandy and began defeating the Nazis, town by town
and often street by street. They closed in on Germany from the west. The
Russian army overran the Auschwitz death camp from the east on January
27, 1945. Mengele fled. 125

Hence, Auschwitz was indeed the last stand of eugenics. The science of
the strong almost completely prevailed in its war against the weak. Almost.

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