Langbein Hermann. People in Auschwitz
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cian in Dachau or Auschwitz ever told me not to do so. I did this because
I had observed that this form of address, which was unusual in the camp,
replaced the customary curt military tone with an informal civilian one that
could more easily be given a personal note. Many a conversation that went be-
yond daily duties was eased by such an unmilitary address and an avoidance
of the required snappy ‘‘Jawohl !’’ (Yes sir!) in favor of a gentle Austrian ‘‘Bitte
schön’’ (Gladly). My work as the inmate clerk of the ss garrison physician of
Auschwitz brought me in close contact not only with that physician but with
all other ss physicians, who depended on me in their expanded bureaucratic
activities. Besides, I attentively registered everything that I could learn from
friends about the conduct of the physicians in the camp.
From the only point of view that interested us, three types of ss physicians
could be distinguished,though with the caution necessary in making any clas-
sification by type: those who reluctantly participated in the machinery of de-
struction, those who executed all orders impassively and stolidly, and those
who added to the murderous orders ‘‘for extra credit.’’
n Of the ss physicians I was able to observe—that is, those who were in
AuschwitzafterAugust1942—Dr.FriedrichEntress was themost strikingem-
bodiment of the type that took the initiative in acting ‘‘for extra credit.’’ He
was born in 1914, came from Posen, where his father worked in the univer-
sity library, and had just completed his medical studies when he was sent to
the Groß-Rosen camp at the beginning of 1941 and from there to Auschwitz
in December of that year. He received the title of physician in 1942 without
having had to submit a dissertation; this was made possible by a decree that
gave preferential treatment to Germans from the eastern region.
Entress interpreted an order from the Central Office as a license to kill and
introduced lethal injections in the infirmary, organizing it in such a way that
any of the ss medics to whom Entress soon entrusted this dirty work could
easily and without a hitch kill a hundred or more patients by means of phenol
injections. Entress limited himself to determining who would be murdered
and supervising the injections.
He did not hesitate to learn from inmate physicians. Together with the
Polish lung specialist Wladyslaw Tondos, Entress and his colleagues Dr. Jäger
and Dr. Vetter practiced for about three months treating tb patients with
pneumothorax. He arranged for the patients to receive double food rations
during this treatment, for otherwise the results could not have been observed
without distractions and the patients would have died. When Entress and his
colleagues lost interest in this treatment, their patients were murdered by in-
jecting them with phenol, something that only Entress could have ordered.
This probably happened toward the end of 1942.
334 n the jailers
Entress also studied surgery with another Polish physician, Dr. Wladyslaw
Dering. At one time he ordered that healthy prisoners be infected with the
blood of typhus patients, for he wanted to study the consequences of such an
infection.
Entress directed the biggest campaign of extermination that was ever con-
ducted in an Auschwitz infirmary: the selection of the typhus patients, the
convalescents, and even several nurses in late August of 1942. Among those
who had already recovered was the former head of the Polish ministry of
health, Dr. Bujalski. He asked Dr. Entress to be allowed to stay in the infir-
mary because he felt well and was able to work. Entress replied that he would
be sent to a convalescent home where he would have rewarding work as a
physician. Dr. Bujalski believed the ss physician, and when he had already
boarded the truck that was to take him with all the others to a gas chamber,
he asked Entress for permission to get off and fetch his stethoscope. Entress
told him he would be given a stethoscope in the sanatorium and need not take
his along. He cynically played this scene to the very end.
His zeal brought Entress in close contact with the office that was most
radically instrumental in the extermination. He established a close connec-
tion with the Political Department, one that he kept up even when Dr. Wirths
became the ss garrison physician and thereby his superior. He did so even
though he must have known that Wirths’s attitude ran counter to that of the
PoliticalDepartmentand thatthis quickly produced an ever increasing conflict
between Wirths and Grabner.
This conflict was caused by the vague and frequently contradictory orders
of the Central Office and the different interpretations of them by Grabner and
Wirths. The ss garrison physician followed an order from his superior to the
letter: patients with pulmonary tuberculosis were to be given ‘‘special treat-
ment’’ because they could not be cured in Auschwitz but constituted a focus
of infection for as long as they were alive. But he also relied on another di-
rective that called for a decrease in the number of deaths. In his view, only
sufferers from tuberculosis and no other inmates were to be killed. Grabner
and Entress, however, interpreted the order from Berlin as a license to inject
all Muselmänner and patients who were not likely to become fit for work again
in the near future. Wirths’s predecessors had introduced this practice, and
their initiative was clearly appreciated. In line with this attitude, Entress con-
tented himself with just glancing at the naked patients presented to him in
the clinic before he made his decision. However, he reported to Wirths that
all those he had destined for death had tuberculosis. I have already described
how it was possible to provide the ss garrison physician with evidence that
Entress was deceiving him.
After that, the daily killings by means of phenol injections were stopped,
Physicians in the ss n 335
and Entress was transferred to Monowitz as the camp physician.This brought
about a clear improvement for the inmate infirmary in the main camp but
worsened the situation in Monowitz. Oszkár Betlen has testified that Dr. En-
tress was particularly radical in categorizing inmates, and Stefan Budziaszek,
the camp elder of the Monowitz infirmary, has characterized Entress as a man
who was ‘‘imbued with the will to kill.’’ However, Entress did not introduce
injections in Monowitz.
Because of their permanent conflict,Wirths never proposed that Entress be
promoted. Only when Wirths used the favorable situation that had been cre-
ated by the transfer of Höß and the arrest of Grabner to remove Entress from
his post was Entress able to advance. ss Colonel Dr. Enno Lolling, the physi-
cian in charge of all concentration camps, knew about the cause of the con-
flict between Wirths and Entress, and he encouraged Entress as well as like-
minded physicians by appointing him as ss garrison physician of Mauthausen
and promoting him to the rank of ss captain.
Was it his markedly unathletic appearance and his sickly disposition that
prompted Entress to be ‘‘harder’’ and more cruel than others? Did he feel that
as an ‘‘ethnic German’’ he was inferior, and did he want to compensate for
this lack by displaying murderous overeagerness?
n Dr. Franz von Bodman also developed initiatives in murdering. He was in
Auschwitz for only a short time and therefore became less well known. After
contracting typhus, he never returned. In the summer of 1942 he temporarily
served as ss garrison physician and had no superior in the camp who could
have ordered him to do what he did. It was quite a bit. Unlike Entress, who
ordered his underlings to give phenol injections, Bodman personally killed in-
mates with such injections.The former camp elder of the inmate infirmary in
the women’s camp, which was then still located in a separate section of the
main camp, remembers that he ‘‘injected a great many people.’’ He injected
into a vein rather than the heart, which prolonged the agony.
One day a Jewish woman from Slovakia refused to work and called on her
comrades to stop working as well, whereupon a guard shot her. Manca Sval-
bova remembers how this girl was taken to the infirmary with chest and stom-
ach injuries and how Bodman prohibited the bandaging of her wounds. At
his behest she had to bleed to death as a deterrent. According to Svalbova, on
another occasion two girls who had been shot (one in the stomach and the
other in the thigh) were brought to the infirmary. Bodman again barred any
help and killed both of them with injections of poison.
n Of the camp physicians who killed in excess of their orders, Dr. Josef Men-
gele became the best known because, in contrast to most of his colleagues,
336 n the jailers
he was a workaholic. For a time he was in charge of the women’s camp. Olga
Lengyel reports: ‘‘Whenever there was an opportunity, Dr. Mengele never
neglected asking women embarrassing and offensive questions. When he
learned one day that a pregnant prisoner had not seen her husband, a sol-
dier, for many months, he could not hide his amusement. Another time he
discovered a fifteen-year-old girl who had evidently been impregnated in the
camp. He subjected her to a long interrogation and wanted to learn even the
most intimate details of her affair. When this curiosity was satisfied, he did
not hesitate to earmark his victim for the next selection.’’
Manca Svalbova remembers a young girl who begged Mengele to spare the
life of her mother, whom he had just selected. ‘‘Mengele’s response was to
send the child to the gas as well,’’ said Svalbova tersely.
Mengele can be most clearly characterized by what Anna Sussmann was
forced to experience because of him. When she was deported to Auschwitz in
August 1944, shewas pregnant, but this was not noticed at the entrance selec-
tion. At that time the camp administration had heard that pregnant women
were concealing their condition, and in order to avoid the bother of an exami-
nation it was announced that all pregnant women would receive a quarter liter
of milk every day. A Polish physician who had befriended Sussmann advised
her not to come forward under any circumstances. ‘‘That was a hard test,’’ re-
calls Anna Sussmann, ‘‘because each day we were given about two ladlefuls of
soup for six persons.’’ One expectant woman came forward and actually re-
ceived the promised milk for a few days. This prompted others to follow suit,
but Sussmann did not. All the women were taken out of the camp and never
seen again.
The heavy lifting she had to do at work caused Anna Sussmann to give birth
prematurely. ‘‘The labor pains started at the roll call,’’ she writes, ‘‘but I still
had to stand at attention. When the roll call was finally finished, I sneaked
into the block and had to deliver under some blankets. It was a live boy. I tried
very hard to restrain myself, but I did emit one scream. Mengele heard it, took
the child, and threw it into the open fire. At that moment, I hadn’t even ex-
pelled the afterbirth yet.’’ Twenty years later Anna Sussmann still turns pale
when she hears Mengele’s name. She is not the only one.
Ella Lingens describes how this ‘‘merciless cynic’’ with organizational tal-
ent and initiative combated the typhus in the women’s camp that other ss
physicians had not managed to keep under control. He first sent 1,500 sick
Jewish women to the gas chamber, thereby emptying barracks in the over-
crowded camp, which he had disinfected and provided with fresh pallets and
clean blankets. Then patients from another barracks were carefully deloused
and taken to the cleaned barracks without their clothes. At that point Mengele
had the free barracks disinfected, occupied, and so on. This actually stopped
Physicians in the ss n 337
the epidemic. That the same thing could have been accomplished without
sending human beings to their death, perhaps by building a new barracks,
does not seem to have crossed Mengele’s mind. In January 1944 typhus was
combated with similar methods in the infirmary of the men’s camp. Alfred
Fiderkiewicz writes that ‘‘the epidemic in the infirmary was controlled at the
cost of a few hundred human lives.’’ Mengele’s example probably found some
imitators.That Mengelewas satisfied with his success in fighting an epidemic
is shown by stories of Felix Amann, the capo of the disinfecting detail, who
successfully accomplishedthe delousingof the Gypsy camp. As a reward Men-
gele gave him cans of sardines, and once even a bottle of schnapps with these
words: ‘‘Du sollst auch leben’’ (Live a little).
At that time noma, an illness rarely encountered in Europe, was going
around in the Gypsy camp. This deficiency disease bores holes in children’s
cheeks. Czelny, at that time a corpse carrier in that section of the camp, had
to drag the bodies of children who had died of noma from the shed where the
corpses were stored until they were transported to the crematorium. He had
to separate their heads from their bodies under Mengele’s supervision, and
the physician had the heads placed in glass vessels filled with chemicals.
Dr. Berthold Epstein was the inmate physician in the Gypsy camp. Before
his deportation he had lectured on pediatrics at the German university in
Prague. Mengele told him that though he would certainly never get out of the
camp, he could make his life more bearable if he wrote a scientific paper for
him. Epstein decided to write a treatise about noma and help the patients in
this way. This was fine in Mengele’s opinion, and a noma section was estab-
lished in the infirmary. Forty-five Gypsy children were sent there, and Mengele
saw to it that they received medicines and better food. He took photos of the
children before their arrival and after treatment. One case became the show-
piece and pride of the noma clinic. After treatment a Gypsy girl named Zdenka
Ruzyczka, about ten years old, whose cheek had already been pierced, expos-
ing her teeth, was healed as her skin closed up and a scar formed.
n At that timeresearch on twins was actively promoted. A scientist who could
find a way to accelerate the growth of the ‘‘master race’’ could count on the
greatest support and recognition. Mengele had specialized in this field and
had worked at the Institute of Hereditary Biology before he was sent to the
front.
All ss physicians took turns working at the ramp, where they had to make
selections. Mengele showed up at the ramp even when it was not his turn be-
cause he was picking out pairs of twins who at his behest were housed in a
special barracks, given better food, and according to all the rules tested and
338 n the jailers
measured. Lucie Adelsberger, who for some time supervised the children’s
block, which was part of the Gypsy camp, has described Mengele’s visits. ‘‘His
pockets werefullofcandies, and hedistributedthemby playfully tossingthem
at the children.There was not enough foreverybody, but everychild got some-
thing—if not on that day, then on the next or the day after that. The children
beamed when the camp physician appeared. One piece of candy made them
forget their troubles.’’
And it was with candy that Mengele accompanied the twins to his car upon
the completionof his examinations,invited them to come fora drive, and took
them to the crematorium. Nowhere else in the world was a scientist doing
research on twins able to autopsy his test subjects and compare their vital
organs on the same day. Mengele saw to it that his twins died at the same time
and of the same cause. He established a pathological-anatomical section in
a crematorium, pulled the pathologist Dr. Miklos Nyiszli out of a transport
of Hungarian Jews and put him to work in that section. Nyiszli, who survived
Auschwitz, has reported how the corpses of a pair of twins were put on his
table together with the results of all kinds of clinical tests and X rays. ‘‘All that
was missing,’’ he writes, ‘‘were the autopsy findings, which I had to prepare.
Mengele sat next to me for hours surrounded by microscopes and test tubes,
orelse he stood for hours at the autopsy table in a blood-stained coat and with
blood-spattered hands, searching and researching like a man possessed.’’
The cause of death of the test subjects did not remain hidden from Nyiszli:
When I examine the heart, I find on the outside of the left ventricle a small,
roundish, pink spot that was caused by the sting of a hypodermic syringe
aimed at the heart. I open the left ventricle. As a rule, blood is taken from
it with a spoon and then weighed.That cannot be done in this case, for the
blood has congealed and become a solid mass. I remove the clotted blood
with a forceps and smell it. I notice the characteristic strong smell of chlo-
roform. The body parts, which might also be of interest to the Institute of
Hereditary Biology and Genetics in Berlin-Dahlem, have to be preserved
and expertly packed in accordance with the postal regulations for such ma-
terial. For faster delivery the packages are stamped ‘‘Rush. Important war
material.’’
The writer of that report remembers a total of more than sixty pairs of
twins, ranging in age from two to fourteen, in the Gypsy camp. When the in-
habitants of that section of the camp were murdered on August 1, 1944, only
seven of these pairs were still alive.
An inmate physician, Rudolf Vitek, who had to examine these children on
orders from Mengele, mentions the twins Dieter and Hans Schmidt, German
Physicians in the ss n 339
Gypsies who were three-and-a-half years old. Mengele invited them one time
to go for a ride with him in his car. On his return he asked which internist had
examined the two children, and Dr. Benno Heller, a Berliner, came forward.
Mengele was annoyed and yelled at him: ‘‘You are a bad internist. You wrote
down that neither of them had any pulmonary disease, but during the autopsy
I noticed that Dieter had diseased apexes of the lungs.’’
Deformed people, dwarfs, and other persons with anomalies shared the
fate of the twins. Mengele fished them out of the stream of deportees at the
ramp and had them thoroughly examined, killed, and dissected.
Mengele also conductedexperimentsin otherareasin whichlaurels seemed
attainable at the time. Here is a report by Ella Lingens: ‘‘I remember little Dag-
mar. She was born in Auschwitz (in 1944 as the child of an Austrian woman),
and I assisted at her birth. She died after Mengele had given her injections in
her eyes in an attempt to alter their color. Little Dagmar was supposed to get
blue eyes.’’ Dagmar was not the only child that Mengele misused for such ex-
periments. Romualda Ciesielska, a former block elder who was in charge of
a children’s block in Birkenau, reports that Mengele chose thirty-six children
from this block for experiments with eye colors. They were in pain, and their
eyes suppurated but slowly became normal again. According to Ciesielska,
one child became almost blind in one eye.
Mengele was generally interested in anomalies of eye color. Years later his
teacher, Professor Freiherr von Verschuer of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, ad-
mitted in a conversation with me that Mengele sent this institute extremely
interesting specimens of pairs of eyes with different colors. These were the
eyes of Gypsies whom Mengele had ordered to be killed because of this anom-
aly. When I informed the professor of this, he appeared to be surprised and
upset. Did he never wonder where his pupil had obtained these specimens?
n It is not surprising that false rumors circulated about this unscrupulous,
work-possessed physician.ThusOlga Lengyelheard that the only reason Men-
gele carried on his horrible experiments was to escape frontline service. This
is trueof some other physicianswho conducted experiments on human beings
in Auschwitz, but not of Mengele. I examined his health record in the ss in-
firmary, and it indicates that he was with an ss unit on the eastern front and
was transferred to Auschwitz in the spring of 1943 after he had been declared
unfit for service at the front. I remember that he proudly wore the Iron Cross
First Class and liked to remind his colleagues who had never seen a front that
he had already been in combat. Later I learned that after he had been found
unfit for duty at the front, he applied for a transfer to Auschwitz because he
would find sufficient human material for his scientific work in that camp.
340 n the jailers
Peoplewhowere rathercloselyacquainted with Mengelehave not described
him as a brute with a sadistic disposition. Czelny emphasizes that he always
spoke with inmates politely and calmly, eschewing the customary rudeness
of the ss. Robert Lévy, a former inmate physician in Birkenau, writes that he
sometimes managed to get Mengele to remove an inmate from the death list
aftera selection by pointing out that he might soon be fit for work again. How-
ever, if he spoke on behalf of inmates who were clearly too weak, Mengele
threatened to have him share the fate of the selectees.
A Polish pathologist who had to do research for Mengele was released from
Auschwitz with his help because she was pregnant. Living in freedom in Cra-
cow, she had to continue to prepare tissue samples for Mengele. After she had
given birth Mengele sent her a bouquet of flowers.
The background of this physician, who is so infamous that he is regarded
as the ss physician in extermination camps, is revealing. Mengele was born
in 1911 in Günzburg and received a ‘‘good Catholic’’ education from his well-
to-do parents. His fellow students describe him as a man who was popular,
friendly, and enjoyed life. Apart from his pronounced ambition, they do not
recall anything that might have indicated his later development, nor do they
describe him as a fanatical Nazi. In a questionnaire that he filled out in 1939,
Mengele stated that he had joined the nsdap on May 1, 1937, but had held no
office in the party or in the ss.
In a letter dated March 12, 1940, his teacher, Professor Freiherr von Ver-
schuer, the head of the Institute of Hereditary Biology, says that Mengele is
absolutely reliable and adds: ‘‘His special training in anthropology in addi-
tion to his general medical training is of great use to him in his work at my
institute, particularly for the hereditary and racial examinations to determine
an individual’s heritage.’’ Verschuer adds that lectures given by Mengele in
Verschuer’s absence demonstrated his ability to present even difficult intel-
lectual subject matters and his suitability for an academic career. In addition
to medicine, Mengele studied law and obtained degrees in both subjects.
The physicians Tadeusz Szymanski and Rudolf Vitek got to know Mengele
as inmates. Szymanski describes him as very intelligent, and Vitek portrays
him as a fanatical Nazi and a cynical, cold, devious, sly, and keen-witted per-
son. Vitek also says that Mengele had great medical knowledge and was am-
bitious in the scientific field.
Many years later, I asked the ss physician Hans Münch, who had been ac-
quitted in Cracow and clearly had a good regard for Mengele, how he was able
to commit the deeds described above. Münch replied: ‘‘Mengelewas convinced
that a life-and-death struggle between Germans and Jews was being carried
on and that the Germans consequently had to eradicate the Jews, whom he
Physicians in the ss n 341
considered an intelligent and therefore all the more dangerous race. He had a
different view of the Slavs, and there Mengele made distinctions.’’
n Mengele is regarded as the prototype of an ss physician who misused pris-
oners in the extermination camps for his experiments. However, he was cer-
tainly not the only one to do so. Physicians who were not members of the ss
also applied to conduct experiments on human beings in Auschwitz.
Themost prominent among theseis ProfessorCarl Clauberg,whowasborn
in 1898. He made a name for himself as a gynecologist specializing in research
on female sexual hormones. At international conferences of gynecologists, he
was regarded as an esteemed expert. No one could have forced this respected
scientist to work in an extermination camp.The correspondence that has been
preserved indicates that he personally asked Himmler for permission to ex-
periment with women interned in Auschwitz. He was searching for a method
of sterilizing women quickly and inexpensively, without an operation. Himm-
ler was interested in experiments of that kind and granted Clauberg whatever
he wanted.
Clauberg’s experiments were criminal, but that is not thewhole story.Their
aim was to support the ‘‘negative population policy,’’ as Himmler liked to
describe the most extensive crime organized by the Nazis. Clauberg was to
find an answer to a question that occupied the heads of all concentration
and extermination camps: how can offensive peoples be eradicated while still
making use of their labor for the arms industry? Block 10 in the main camp
was furnished in accordance with Clauberg’s wishes, and the women that he
required were placed at his disposal. In the camp lingo these women were
called ‘‘rabbits.’’
Clauberg was ruthless in conducting his experiments, but some women
have testified that he shielded them from brutalities of the ss. Because he was
the director of a clinic in Königshütte, he came to Auschwitz only occasion-
ally and used assistants. Thus he induced Dr. Johannes Goebel—an employee
of the Schering Works who had to obtain material for Clauberg’s injections—
to move to Auschwitz. Clauberg procured a house for him in the vicinity of
the camp, and, even though Goebel was not a medical man, he entrusted him
with independently giving intrauterine injections.
Goebel boasted about what he was doing so loudly that the ScheringWorks
dissociated itself from him. Eduard deWind has characterized him as follows:
‘‘He stuck his nose into everything and mercilessly forced all women to sub-
ject themselves to his experiments, whereas Clauberg was occasionally quite
decent and spared a woman if she asked not to be injected for one reason or
another. Goebel was crude and sarcastic. He displayed the typical pettiness
of people who have not learned how to occupy a leading position but are sud-
342 n the jailers
denly given great power.’’ De Wind has given this description of his appear-
ance: ‘‘He wore civilian clothes, and his riding breeches were ill suited to his
spidery legs. In his light sports jacket he looked like a minor official who had
grabbed something at a sale.’’
Clauberg recruited assistants among the prisoners as well. I have already
described how he induced the Polish inmate physician Wladyslaw Dering to
participate in the human experiments with his full ability and great ambition.
After Clauberg had secured Dering’s release, he made sure that he could con-
tinue to avail himself of Dering’s expertise by putting him towork at his clinic
in Königshütte.
He granted a young Slovak Jew named Sylvia Friedmann privileges in the
experimental block in order to have a willing servant. She was given consider-
able power over the other inmates of the block, and in return she had to be
Clauberg’s personal servant—for example, ‘‘organize’’ coffee and cigarettes
or knit pullovers for him. Once he even brought his three-year-old daughter
to the experimental block so his ‘‘rabbits’’ could take her measurements and
knit for her as well.
When the end of the war was in sight, Clauberg lost interest in his experi-
ments; he had evidently grasped that Himmler could no longer further his
career, and he increasingly reached for the bottle. After the end of the war,
Clauberg was arrested and extradited to Russia, and after summary proceed-
ings sentenced to a prison term of twenty-five years, which was obligatory
at the time. He was released with others in 1955. Proceedings were brought
against him in Germany, and in the court records may be found an answer to
the question as towhat induced this respected gynecologist to push tocommit
such crimes.
Clauberg testified that he had since his youth suffered from constant dis-
crimination because he was so short (154 centimeters) and had always felt a
need to fight back when he was mocked. In point of fact, his appearance was
ridiculous; he was short and stocky and wore civilian clothes having a mili-
tary tone. It was characteristic of him that in testimony before the examining
magistrate in Kiel he gave a higher military rank and a higher salary at the
Knappschaft Hospital in Königshütte than could be documented. A psychia-
trist diagnosed a craving for power; his evaluation had been ordered because
episodes had become known from Clauberg’s life that indicated striking bru-
tality. When he was a student, he was accused of murder, but later the pro-
ceedings were dropped because it was found that he had done the shooting
in self-defense. He once threatened his wife with a loaded hunting rifle and
injured his mistress by throwing a knife at her. Fourdays after his return from
Russiancaptivity, hewrotehis wifethat sheshould ‘‘recommend toyourpimps
and housekeepers (Zu- und Haushälter) that they hang themselves.’’ Otherwise,
Physicians in the ss n 343