From a 1959 article by Mr. Simcha Bunim Unsdorfer [Published later by the Jewish Observer in 1977]
Three Times
"Nazi Horror Man Seized!" "Aushwitz Doctor Captured!"
Once again headlines like these have appeared
in various newspapers this week - and, once again,
within hours of their publication, these reports were
promptly denied. They were either a "complete
fabrication," or a man was indeed arrested but it was
not the hunted Dr. Joseph Mengele, "the fingerprints
did not match .... "
Having had the displeasure of facing Dr. Mengele at
a time when he was the hunter and I the hunted, I follow
these reports with great interest.
"It was thought he was Mengele," one Agency
reported, but "the fingerprints didn't match!"
What kind of fingerprints, I wonder, would the
thumb of Dr. Mengele produce? The thumb that
motioned countless thousands, maybe millions, including
my own parents, my sister and her five
children, to their deaths? Would these prints, if looked
at through a fine microscope, bear witness to the mass
murder committed by the soulless Doctor of Annihilation?
I stood three times before that infamous left-hand
thumb that swung like a pendulum between life and
death. Three times my heart missed a beat as it waited for that thumb to move towards the right - life, or
towards the left - and Auschwitz Gas Chambers.
No Selection at Auschwitz
At 11 a.m., on Thurday 19th October 1944, a twelvetruck
cattle train came to a halt at Auschwitz Extermination
Camp. In it yet another load of a thousand
Jewish victims to face judgment before that self appointed
master of life and death, Dr. Joseph
Mengele. Amongst the victims were my parents and
myself - my sister and her family having gone through
the same ordeal a week earlier which ended in
Mengele's thumb pointing towards the left. ...
One hour after our arrival, we found ourselves inside
a huge wooden barrack, convinced that every single one
of us was doomed for the gas chambers. Our conviction
was based on two facts:
a) We were not subjected to the usual "selection"
that normally took place on the platform; and
b) of the thousand people in our transport, nearly
half were inmates of the only remaining Jewish Old
Age Home in my native Slovakia. These old people,
none of whom was below the age of 75, were assured by
the Germans that they would never be deported. That
assurance held good until Eichmann's Aide - S.S.
Obersturmfuehrer A. Brunner, who is also still at large,
allegedly in Egypt - had decided to rob them of this,
their one and only desire on this earth, that is to be allowed
to die in their own beds. He hauled them out and
pushed them into our transport.
And just as we expected to be led into the gas chambers, the huge barrack doors were flung open and
in marched a troop of S.S., headed by a high ranking
officer.
He stopped for a moment, as if to take a general view
of the mass of panic-stricken white-faced newcomers.
Then he gave a slight nod with his head, a signal which
only his fellow S.S. men could interpret. ...
That officer, I learned later, was Mengele. Dr. Joseph
Mengele, trained to cure the sick but practicing
wholesale murder.
He rested his right arm between the
shining buttons of his smartly fitting S.S. tunic, in true
Napoleonic style, and began to march forward to make
his "selection."
Mengele was certainly a "specialist" in his job. He
was looking for young, able-bodied men and women to
be sent to Germany's labor camps; he was looking for
the retarded, spastics, dwarfs, and even twins on whom
to perform his "medical" experiments; and he was
looking for the aged, the weak, and the ailing to feed
them into his gas chambers.
What was a few minutes earlier a crowd of tired and
silent people, suddenly turned into a mass of crying,
screatning, pulling, and pushing men, women and
children - a human stampede fighting for life. Women
trying to pull back their "selected" daughters; sons were
screaming to their fathers to follow them; hysterical
mothers clutching their babies, old couples tightly
holding on to each other - and all the time the S. S.
lashing out mercilessly against them all.
Dr. Mengele who gave the signal for "action" went
on with his "selection" quite undisturbed. To him this
had become a normal, perhaps a boring, day-to-day
routine. He swung his thumb from left to right - from
life to death - leaving it to the S.S. guards behind him
to do the rest.
Then the moment came. Mengele gave one glance at me
and his thumb motioned right. It was to be expected. I
was then only nineteen and fit for work. I tried to turn
round for a quick goodbye to my parents, one last word
to father, one last kiss for my mother. But no.
An S.S.
hand grabbed me by the collar and pulled me away. In a
flash my father's hand reached forward in a desperate
effort to protect me from the murderous grip of that
S.S. man. Mengele mistook it and thought that my
father was trying to follow me. "Dort bleiben!" he yelled.
"Stay there." My last moment with my parents -
and my first encouter with Mengele was over. ...
The Dead Filing Past the Living
Three mornings later as we stood assembled in
another barrack waiting for transportation to one of
Germany's many slave labor factories, the doors were
pulled open again. In came Mengele and his escort. The
sight of the man who had murdered my parents just 48
hours earlier made my blood boil but, within seconds, it
froze again at the thought that he was here not to apologize or to console us but to collect a fresh group of
victims, more food for the ever-burning four huge
crematoria of Auschwitz.
"Strip to the waist and form into a single column!"
the barrack leader - himself an inmate - ordered.
Within minutes we were filing past the slow-moving
thumb of Dr. Mengele again. Now and again he picked
his new victims from the line - no reasons, no protests
- just a flick of the thumb and a life was at an end.
Ironically, this "selection" had the appearance of a
crowd of mourners filing past the coffin of a departed
friend. So solemn and so silent was the atmosphere.
Yet, here you had the tragic difference of seeing the
dead filing past the living
Then it was my turn to face Mengele again; for a moment
it seemed as if he was hesitating. I was always on
the skinny side and his thumb remained still, as if
paralyzed. And just as I thought that my end was in
sight, a sudden push from the.impatient column behind
caused me to stumble forward and I was" through" for
the second time.
The "selection" over, Mengele counted his catch, an
unknown number of doomed men standing silently in a
comer behind a line of S.S. He counted them slowly
and then, in a flash, turned round again screaming and
raving that one man had escaped! Escaped? Who could
have got away from this column of fully armed six-foot
tall S.S. men? - But nobody dared question him, not
even his own men.
"Line Them up Again!"
"Line them up again!" he yelled at the barrack leader.
''I'll recognize that dark-haired skinny youngster. The
tall boy with the glasses - I'll recognize him immediately."
My blood froze as I heard this description. It fitted
me perfectly as, indeed, a good many others in the barrack.
As the line began to move again, I took a deep
breath to fill out my chest and lungs and in desperation
I removed my glasses. Slowly I cam nearer and nearer to
him. Then, suddenly, the column stopped. For there,
just about ten men ahead of me, he pulled out an 18-
year-old youngster shouting jubilantly: "You! You are
the one I picked out before."
"No! No!" the boy, a former classmate of mine,
cried: "It was not me, Sir. Look, my hair is red! I am
short, and I never wear glasses .... "
But Mengele was not interested. The "selection" was
over, and so was my last and final encounter with him.
Now Mengele is a hunted man. Hunted by the living
and haunted by the dead. And when the day of his capture
will arrive, there should be no difficulty in identifying
him. Those who, like myself, have stood in fear and
terror before him will require no fingerprints.... I
would recognize him by the mere sight of his thumb.
