Josef Mengele and the Roma and Sinti Holocaust
Gemma Lees writes about Josef Mengele’s actions as a Nazi doctor in the Auschwitz Gypsy Family Camp during the Roma and Sinti Holocaust, and how he escaped justice by fleeing to South America.
The Roma and Sinti Holocaust, (or Porajmos, ‘Devouring’) perpetrated by the Nazis during WWII is estimated to have murdered between 200,000 and 500,000 innocent adults and children, approximately 25% of the pre-war European population. The 1935 Nurenberg laws designated Gypsies, (or ‘Zeiguner’) as ‘enemies of the race-based state’ and ‘asocials’ with ‘alien blood’. This first led to their civil rights being removed, reportedly with local collaboration, and in 1943 Heinrich Himmler ordered that all Gypsies be deported to concentration camps.
Auschwitz-Birkenau housed the Gypsy Family Camp to which 23,000 people were deported and 4000, mainly women and children were murdered in the gas chambers. Others were used as slave labour or for macabre medical experimentation. The doctor who carried out many of these experiments was Josef Mengele.
Mengele, a proudly decorated SS doctor firmly believed that purifying the German race was both ideologically and scientifically justified. Part of his job as a concentration camp doctor was to select victims for the gas chambers and to administer the gas. He reportedly took great delight in this and took on many more shifts cheerfully parading down the line of newcomers making split-second judgements than he was assigned.
As the chief doctor of Auschwitz, he was free to carry out medical research without any ethical considerations. He experimented on a number of Gypsy victims suffering from Noma, a facial gangrene that was prevalent due to the deplorable conditions in the Family Camp, Mengele instead was convinced that it was racially genetic in Roma and Sinti people.
He had a particular obsession with twins and carried out experiments on numerous Gypsy children, injecting dye into their eyes to try and make them more Aryan-looking, clamping parts of their bodies to see how long they survived, performing spinal taps and even connecting their circulatory systems, in an attempt to make conjoined twins. It goes without saying that many of these children died horrendous deaths. Jewish doctors forced to assist him in his horrific experiments later reported one night where Mengele himself murdered then immediately carried out post-mortems on fourteen Gypsy twin children, after they were placed alive on the dissecting table.
Mengele was described as a ‘sadist’ with ‘dead eyes’ who would give out sweets and rides in his car to the same children he was experimenting on. They were even instructed to call him ‘Uncle Pepi’. He envisioned his future as a revered Nazi scientist and professor of genetics.
In 1945, the Soviet Army advanced into Poland where Auschwitz stood, and Mengele fled. He evaded US custody with false papers and worked as a farm hand in Bavaria for the next four years. In the meantime, the Nurenberg Trials were held in 1946. Judges from the US, USSR and UK tried 199 Nazi defendants for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. 161 were convicted, with 37, (including many top-ranking Nazis), were sentenced to death and hanged the next year.
Fearing the same fate, Mengele fled to Argentina with false papers issued to him by the Red Cross. Argentina under President Juan Peron had become something of a safe haven for high-ranking Nazis in the post-war period. Peron took a huge anti-US and anti-UK stance and envisioned WWIII breaking out by 1948. As a leader, he loved all of the trappings of the Nazi regime, the parades, the uniforms, the rallies and the anti-Semitism.
Late into WWII, Peron had declared war on Nazi Germany, but this had proven to just be a way to get Argentine agents in place to ease the passage of Nazis into South America. The Argentine consulate in Barcelona issued false passports and wealthy Argentines of German and Italian descent paid the Nazis’ way. Much of this money was returned to Argentina in the form of confiscated gold from Holocaust victims.
Many of the Nazis became instrumental to Peron’s regime. He ignored extradition requests and Mengele and others were able to live openly, going by their real names. Mengele had an Argentine ID card in his real name and a plaque on his door that read ‘Dr Josef Mengele’.
In 1954, Mossad, (the Israeli Intelligence Agency), snatched Nazi Adolf Eichmann off the streets of Argentina and took him back to Israel to be tried. Mengele got scared and fled to Paraguay and then Brazil under the false name Wolfgang Gerhard. Despite being one of the most notorious Nazi fugitives and Auschwitz survivors desperate to see him punished for his horrific crimes, the manhunt was called off in 1962.
Mengele’s son, Rolf, visited him in 1956 and reportedly found an ‘unrepentant Nazi’ who insisted he ‘only carried out his orders’. This bitter old man spent the remaining 25 years of his life in isolation and destitution. His health began to decline and he died after suffering a heart attack whilst swimming in 1979. He was buried under his alias of Gerhard and never saw justice.
A raid of family friend and business associate, Hans Sedlmeier’s house in 1985 found letters to and from Mengele which led police to his grave. The body was exhumed, forensically examined, and determined to be Mengele. DNA texting in 1992 confirmed it beyond a doubt.
After WWII, a lot of anti-Gypsy sentiment remained in Europe and it took until 1979 for West Germany to finally acknowledge that Roma and Sinti people had been victims of a racially-motivated genocide not criminals rightfully punished. This meant that they were finally able to access reparations, although by that time many survivors had died of old age. In 2011, Germany finally recognised an official day of remembrance for the Roma and Sinti victims, 2nd August and Poland officially recognised the Porajmos.
Just like the Gypsy victims who barricaded themselves in their quarters and fought bitterly with improvised weapons the first time the Nazis had attempted to ‘liquidate’ the Family Camp, we have never stopped fighting for recognition and justice. And this is how we regain our freedom as a people, by controlling the narrative and telling our truth. That way we can make sure that nothing as horrific as Mengele’s experiments is ever perpetrated against our children again.
By Gemma Lees
(All photographs courtesy and © Robert Dawson unless otherwise stated: Robert Dawson - Home)
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