Dr. Mengele’s “Medical Experiments” on Twins in the Birkenau Gypsy Camp

1. The “Crimes” of Dr. Mengele

In 1997, Helena Kubica, researcher at the Auschwitz Museum, published a long article entitled “Dr. Mengele und seine Verbrechen im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau” (“Dr. Mengele and His Crimes in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp”).[1] The author sifted through the numerous documents on Dr. Mengele’s activities at Birkenau preserved in the archives of the Museum in search of documentary proof of his presumed criminal medical experiments on twins. The situation is as follows.

Dr. Josef Mengele entered service at Auschwitz on 30 May 1943. His direct superior, SS–Standortarzt (garrison doctor) Dr. Eduard Wirths, appointed him Lagerarzt (camp doctor) at the so-called “Zigeunerfamilienlager” (gypsy family camp), Sector BIIe of Birkenau.[2]

He was particularly interested in the study of twins, especially identical twins, organizing a daycare center solely for this purpose:[3]

“In the gypsy camp, he caused Barracks 29 and 31 and a nursery – a sort of daycare center and preparatory school – to house not only the children under his observation (these lived in Barracks 31), but all gypsy children up to 6 years of age.

A total of several hundred children were housed in the nursery school from 8 to 14 years of age, where they were supervised by many prisoners. […] The barracks used as a nursery school were in slightly better condition than the others, entirely plastered on the inside, decorated with colored images representing fairy tales. For a short time, the children who lived there received a better diet – milk, white bread, vegetables and meat broth concentrates, even marmalade and chocolate […].

The area behind Barracks 31 was enclosed and a playground was installed, with sandboxes, merry-go-round, swings and gymnastic equipment.”

Naturally, for H. Kubica, all this was intended solely for “propaganda purposes.”[4] We need only inquire, however, for whom this alleged propaganda was intended, since not even the delegate from the Red Cross who visited Auschwitz in September 1944 was permitted to visit the Birkenau Camp.[5]

And how about the diet, incredibly rich for a concentration camp – as confirmed by former inmate Anna Lipka[6] – was this also solely intended for “propaganda purposes”?

This scene is not easy to reconcile with the panoply of the unprecedented crimes attributed to Dr. Mengele, but Kubica has decisive “proof” to hand.

An epidemic of noma faciei, a gangrenous illness affecting mostly children, broke out in the Zigeunerlager in the summer of 1943. The patients were transferred on Dr. Mengele’s order to an isolated barracks in the hospital of the gypsy camp and, we are assured by H. Kubica:[7]

“[…] many of the sick children were killed, always by order of Dr. Mengele, and their bodies were taken to the institute of hygiene of the Waffen-SS at Rajsko for histopathological research. There preparations of the individual organs were prepared and preserved in glass, even including the entire head of a child, among others, for the SS academy of medicine in Graz.”

From the pertinent footnote, we learn that our information on the entire affair is based exclusively on post-war testimonies. In this context, the author mentions a single document, reproduced below. The document is a bill of lading to the Institute of Hygiene of the Waffen-SS (SS-Hygiene-Institut) of Rajsko, Hygiene and Bacteriology Section, relating to the “head of a cadaver” (Kopf einer Leiche) taken from a “12-year old child” (12-jähriges Kind). Nothing is known of the cause of death of the child; the only thing that is certain is that the request for histological examination originated from the H-Krankenbau Zigeunerlager Auschwitz II, BIIe, that is, the prisoner hospital of the gypsy camp. The explanation advanced by H. Kubica is clearly a pretext. Noma faciei (or cancrum oris) is a disease which destroys the orofacial tissues. It currently strikes chiefly sub-Saharan African children between the ages of 2 and 16; the mortality rate, in the absence of adequate treatment, ranges between 70 and 90%.[8] One may therefore reasonably suppose that, at Birkenau, in the years 1943-1944, the mortality rate of young gypsy children stricken with noma was even higher. In 1943, 2,587 children below the age of 10 in the gypsy camp died,[9] including practically all those suffering from noma.

But then, what occasion was there to kill children who were inexorably dying of disease?

The obvious response to this rhetorical question is supplied by H. Kubica herself where she cites the testimony of Dr. Jan Čespiva, who had worked as a physician in the gypsy camp hospital:[10]

“There was an outbreak of noma. The disease caused entire pieces of flesh to fall off, also affecting the lower jaw. I had never seen gangrene of the face like that. The crania of the children were prepared for the SS Academy at Graz. I know because we wrote the address. The heads were preserved in formaldehyde, the bodies were destroyed in Crematory III.”

It is therefore obvious that the child in question died of noma and that the German physicians hoped to find a cure by studying the heads of children who had died of this disease.

And this request for histological examination is the only documentary “proof” of the “crimes” of Dr. Mengele to be found in the archive of the Auschwitz Museum! Not much for the so-called “Angel of Death” of Auschwitz, and H. Kubica, apparently aware of this, as a last resort cites the “eyewitness” so decisive to her, Miklos Nyiszli, about whom, more below.

After creating the school already mentioned above, Dr. Mengele created an “experimental laboratory,” the location where the “camp research on the birth of twins and congenital anomalies”[11] was performed – in a word, the ogre’s lair – to the head of which he appointed Dr. Bertold Epstein, from Prague. His assistant was another Czech, Dr. Rudolf Weiskopf (Vitek).[12] Two camp inmates also worked in Dr. Mengele’s laboratory: a Polish anthropology Ph.D., Martyna Puzina,[13] and the Czech painter Dinah Gottliebova, who produced drawings of the parts of the body of the children under examination.[14]

The activities of this “experimental laboratory” are well documented:[15]

“The archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum contain numerous documents signed by Dr. Mengele, such as requests for analysis by the Institute of Hygiene.”

but no document attests to Dr. Mengele’s presumed crimes. This is not at all surprising, considering the activities performed in his laboratory:[16]

“As shown by reports of inmates who performed tasks in the twins block, as well as reports from the twins themselves, the individual pairs of twins were subjected by Dr. Mengele to research of any kind, which constituted the starting point for the performance of the most varied types of experiments on the same. In general, they were subjected to anthropometric, morphological, psychiatric and radiological research. The anthropological research was initially performed in Dr. Mengele’s laboratory in the sauna of the gypsy camp. In November 1944, this laboratory was transferred to barracks 15, in the vicinity of the men’s hospital (BIIf). Every individual part of the body of the persons subjected to examination was measured in the most accurate manner: the twins were measured in pairs, comparing the results. The documentation contained annotations of the shape of the mouth, the nose, the muscles of the ears, the color of the eyes and skin of the individual parts of the body.“

There was no criminal activity, therefore, and it is easy to see what M. Puzyna and D. Gottliebova’s tasks consisted of: anthropometrical studies and anatomical drawings.

H. Kubica adds:[17]

“All the documentation, that is, photographs, drawings, descriptions and analytical results, were preserved in individual folders for every person examined,”

and she published a few of these documents. Notwithstanding this abundant documentation, H. Kubica notes:[18]

“Nevertheless, unfortunately, it has not been possible to find any document showing how many gypsy twins passed through Dr. Mengele’s laboratory.”

But a few pages later, the Polish researcher states:[19]

“The Archives of the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau also contain a document which contains personal data and copies of anthropological studies on 295 inmates – Greek, Hungarian, Dutch, French and Italian Jews – upon whom Mengele performed experiments. This list also contains the names of 117 Hungarian Jewish pairs of twins in the women’s sector of the camp. As for male twins from Barracks 15 of Camp BIIf, we know from the report on one pair of twins that there were 107 of them, aged from age 4 to 60.”

Thus, the total number of documented twins available to Dr. Mengele amounted to between 402 and 412. What happened to them?

A series of daily reports, not mentioned by H. Kubica, although they can be found precisely at the Auschwitz Museum, the Arbeitseinsatz (assignment of labor) of the Birkenau Camp,[20] reports starting from 28 July up to 3 October 1944 (the reports are complete only for the month of August) bears the heading “Zwillinge für Versuchzwecke” (twins for experimental purposes). In the 35 reports which are preserved, the number of these inmates never varies: it always reads 49. This absence of variation over a period of more than three months allows one to rule out any continual replacement of “guinea pigs”, and is fully compatible with the “anthropometric, morphological, psychiatric and radiological examinations” mentioned above.

H. Kubica, by contrast, claims that the fate of these twins was quite a different one:[21]

“The last stop in the search for several pairs of twins or individual persons was the analysis of the individual organs of the body during the autopsy. To this end, these persons were killed at Dr. Mengele’s order or by Dr. Mengele himself, by an injection of phenol in the heart. The bodies were taken to the dissecting room.”

At this point, the Polish researcher unveils her “decisive witness”: none other than the notorious impostor Miklos Nyiszli! The whole fable of Dr. Mengele’s “crimes” originates from the ravings of this mythomaniac, to whom I shall return in greater detail in the section below devoted to him.

Notwithstanding the absurd lies he told, this person is nonetheless held in high esteem by orthodox historians, but, in a sort of veiled schizophrenia, only as regards his accusations against Dr. Mengele. And in fact, his testimony constitutes the “demonstrative” framework for the accusations of every book on the subject, starting with Gerald L. Posner and John Ware on Dr. Mengele,[22] one of the most important, also mentioned by H. Kubica. The two authors cite him on pages 19, 20, 26, 33, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 53 and 152. In fact, the entire chapter on the “crimes” of Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz is built upon Nyiszli’s “testimony”! Even Robert Jay Lifton mentions him repeatedly.[23] H. Kubica cites him just as often. She even reproduces his photograph[24] and cites him several times.[25]

But Dr. Mengele’s “crimes” are not only not attested to by one single document: they are even overtly disproved by absolutely indisputable facts. In his description of the first autopsy allegedly performed by him upon a pair of twins, Nyiszli writes:[26]

“My legs are trembling with excitement. I have discovered the most monstrous secret of Third Reich medical science. They don’t only kill with gas; they kill with chloroform injections to the heart as well.”

If this had been true, Dr. Mengele would have proceeded to liquidate all the witnesses of his alleged criminal activity – his collaborators who also worked with twins – before leaving Auschwitz on 17 January 1945. He had enough time! But he allowed all the “eyewitnesses” of his alleged crimes to survive, i.e.:

• Dr. Bertold Epstein, one of the signers of the famous appeal by former Auschwitz inmates dated 4 March 1945;[27]
• Dr. Rudolf Weisskopf, liberated from Bergen-Belsen;[28]
• Martyna Puzyna, interviewed by G.L. Posner and J. Ware in June 1985;[29]
• Dinah Gottliebova, who moved to the USA in 1947, where she still lives;[30]
• Miklos Nyiszli, the purported essential “witness”, who, in his capacity as the physician of the so-called crematory “Sonderkommando,” would have shared in the “terrible secret” of the mass gassings, was also casually allowed to survive!

But what about the twins? What happened to the victims of Dr. Mengele’s experiments? Were they all killed en masse? Quite the contrary!

H. Kubica informs us that, in 1984, these twins were still numerous enough to form their own association:[31]

“In 1984, the victims of Dr. Mengele’s experiments, who had lived in the children’s camp, formed the organization Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiment Survivors (CANDLES ), with the self-appointed task of documenting Mengele’s crimes, informing the world, capturing the “Angel of Death” and dragging him before a court”

The Website of the association lists almost 400 twins from Auschwitz.[32] H. Kubica also presents a list of twins from Auschwitz, consisting of over 320 names.[33] The great majority of them were twins, but some were merely siblings, such as the sisters Tatiana Liliana and Alessandra Bucci. Both were deported to Auschwitz on 29 March 1943. The first, born on 19 September 1937, was registered under number 76484; the second, born 1 July 1939, was registered under number 6483.[34] Luigi Ferri, born on 9 September 1932, was deported in August 1944 and registered under number B-7525.[35] Sergio De Simone, born at Naples on 29 November 1937, was deported to Auschwitz on 29 March 1944, at the age of nearly 7 years, and registered under number 179614.[36]

No orthodox historian has yet succeeded in explaining why these children were not gassed immediately upon arrival. In reality, it is not so surprising, because on 16 January 1945, in just the men’s camp at Birkenau, there were 770 “Jugendliche bis 18. Jhr.” (youths aged up to 18 years), in addition to 400 “Invaliden” (invalids)![37] When the Soviets arrived, there were still 205 children at Birkenau, from just a few months up to 15 years of age, many of them twins.[38]

The three documents mentioned above, the list of the CANDLES organization, the list compiled by H. Kubica and the Soviet list of 1945, in addition to the Soviet list of inmates liberated at Birkenau,[39] permit the compilation of a list of 543 twins having passed through Auschwitz:[40] of these, 376 survived until the liberation of the camp; four died in the following months, one died on the evacuation transport on 27 January 1945, and twelve perished during the existence of the camp. Nothing is known of the remaining 154.

In just three cases, H. Kubica notes: “Starb im Lager infolge der durchgeführten Experimente”(“died [not: killed] in the camp as a result of the experiments performed [on them],”[41] so that these three would seem to constitute Dr. Mengele’s victims. It goes without saying that such an assumption is in no way backed up by proof of Mengele’s personal complicity.

In conclusion, the known facts are as follows:

Dr. Mengele’s alleged crimes are not proven by any document. No document shows that Mengele ever killed even one single child, or that one single child was ever killed on his orders. The essential and sole witness, the one upon whose testimony the whole accusation is based, was an extraordinarily creative impostor. Dr. Mengele’s closest collaborators, including the presumed essential witness, and at least 543 of his “victims” were allowed to live: but how, then, are we to believe seriously in the fairy tale of the “Angel of Death” of Auschwitz?

2. Miklos Nyiszli’s False Testimony

In an article on Dr. Mengele published in 1986,[42] Zdenek Zofka discussed the quality of the anti-Mengele testimony, writing:[44]

“The Mengele phenomenon presents a few mysteries. The available sources are few. Almost all the written notes capable of providing information on Mengele’s crimes at Auschwitz have been destroyed. We must have recourse almost exclusively to eyewitness testimonies. [But] testimonies, forty years later,[43] are always problematical – all the more so in an extreme case such as this one. In the minds of many former inmates, ‘harrowing reality and nightmares have inextricably merged together over a period of forty years.’ All too often, it is impossible to be sure that their recollections really refer to Mengele at all: it is all too often possible to show that Mengele has been confused with other SS physicians. Almost all the inmates state that they were selected by Mengele on the ramp. But camp physicians performed the selections in shifts: Mengele performed no more selections than any of the others. One gets the impression that Mengele’s name has gotten separated from his person. For the inmates, he became synonymous with all Auschwitz camp physicians as such.”

Zofka then added:[45]

“As has already been stated, the testimonies against Mengele must be treated with great caution. A number of incorrect statements can be explained on the grounds of mistaken identity, in which Mengele had gotten confused with other camp physicians or SS guards. Some witnesses in their statements were certainly motivated by self-importance and attention-seeking. Finally, even certain ‘exaggerations’ can be explained as innocent attempts to communicate and render the atrocity that was Auschwitz understandable – at least to a certain extent – to persons living later who hadn’t experienced it. Since Mengele was never tried, it has not been possible to put individual witnesses to the test. Even at the Mengele trial in Jerusalem in February 1985, rigorous cross-examination was waived for psychological reasons which were, after all, only too understandable – the need to recall to mind the horrors of Auschwitz was no doubt sufficiently agonizing. Nevertheless, clarification of Mengele’s crimes at Auschwitz requires a critical and detailed examination of the testimonies.”

But the critical examination undertaken by the author to “assess the individual crimes attributed to Mengele as more or less probable”[46] considers only obviously false, poorly supported accusations and does not in any way probe Miklos Nyiszli, whose testimony is, in the author’s view, “of fundamental importance”[47] – so much so that the author cites it repeatedly.[48]

It therefore remains to critically assess the statements of this fundamentally important witness to the alleged crimes of Dr. Mengele.

Miklos Nyiszli wrote a memoir published in Hungarian in 1946 entitled Dr. Mengele boncolóorvosa voltam az auschwitz-i krematóriumban (I Was Dr. Mengele’s Anatomical Physician in the Auschwitz Crematorium.)[49] The work was later translated into French, German, English, Polish and Italian, rising to prominence in orthodox Holocaust historiography of the 1960s.

Nyiszli claims that he reached Birkenau by train with a trainload of Jews deported from Hungary, in May of 1944 – May 29th, to be exact – as shown by the registration number A-8450, with which he was tattooed on that same day upon his arrival at the camp. After spending a few days in Sector BIIf of Birkenau, on 3 or 5 June (his chronology is contradictory), he was assigned as physician to Sonderkommando of the crematoria, under Dr. Mengele’s direct supervision, where he remained until January 1945. But in his sworn statement dated 8 October 1947,[50] Nyiszli asserts that he reached Auschwitz on 19 May 1944 and that he was immediately transferred to the “Buna-Monowitz” camp, where he remained between 20 May and 5 June. These two versions of his arrival at Auschwitz stand in total mutual contradiction. But this is nothing compared to the wave of contradictions, absurdities, historical falsifications and various impostures to be found in his work, which was published in Italian under the title Medico ad Auschwitz and later under a different title: Sopravvissuto a Mengele:[51] in my cursory study dedicated to this self-proclaimed “eyewitness”, I listed 120 of them.[52]

Let us now summarize the most salient of these nonsensical claims.[53]

Nyiszli provides a completely invented history of the Birkenau crematoria, even stating that they were built during the winter of 1939-1940, when Auschwitz didn’t even exist yet.

His description of the furnaces of Crematoria II and III (which he refers to as 1 and 2) is also completely afactual. He speaks, in fact, of 15 individual furnaces located in a room 150 meters long, while the actual room in question was only 30 meters long, equipped with five furnaces, each with three muffles.

The alleged gas chamber, a room (Leichenkeller 1) 30 meters long, becomes, for Nyiszli, 200 meters long [but no width given]; Nyiszli also describes an “adjacent room” which never existed.

The small freight elevator (Aufzug) located in the vestibule of the subterranean part of the crematorium is transformed, in Nyiszli’s narrative, into four powerful lifts.

What Nyiszli says about the crematory capacity of the cremation furnaces is technically impossible and historically nonsensical. He speaks of the cremation of 3 bodies in 20 minutes in one muffle, in each of the 15 muffles of Crematoria II and III, corresponding to a theoretical capacity of 3,240 bodies in 24 hours, which, for Nyiszli, however, becomes, incomprehensibly, 5,000. Therefore, according to him, the total capacity of the four Birkenau crematoria was 20,000 bodies per day. All this is absurd: in the coke-fired Topf furnaces of Auschwitz-Birkenau, 20 minutes would not even have sufficed to vaporize the water contained in a single body. The real capacity of such installations, as declared by Topf engineer Kurt Prüfer, who designed the furnaces, and Karl Schultze, who designed the blowers, was one single body per muffle per hour, or one ninth as much as asserted by “eyewitness” Nyiszli.

Moreover, while Crematoria II and III had a total of 30 muffles, Crematoria IV and V had only 16, but Nyiszli nevertheless attributes a capacity of 5,000 bodies per day each to this pair of crematoria as well. Therefore, one single muffle in Crematoria IV-V had almost double the capacity of the same muffle in Crematoria II-III, but, according to Holocaust historiography, the furnaces in Crematoria IV and V were less efficient than those in Crematoria II and III. For example, at the Höss trial, the expert Roman Dawidowski stated that a load of 3-5 bodies in one muffle burned in 20-30 minutes in Crematoria II-III, but in 30-40 minutes in Crematoria IV-V.[54] It goes without saying that Dawidowski’s “expert opinion” has the same value as the Polish-Soviet “expert opinion” on the 4 million deaths, in which he himself, Dawidowski, likewise concurred.[55]

Based on the absurd cremation capacity of 5,000 bodies in 24 hours for each crematorium, Nyiszli has built an arithmetically fantastic history of the mass gassings. Here are a few examples:

• The inmates in Sector BIId, 10,500 people, according to Nyiszli, were gassed and cremated in a single day in Crematoria III and IV (= 5,250 bodies in 24 hours each). In reality, even with a theoretical continuous duty cycle of 24 hours per day (which in practice is unattainable),[56] these installations would have required at least 19 days for the cremation of such a large number of bodies.
• 4,500 gypsies were gassed and cremated in one single night in Crematoria II and III, that is, 2,250 in 12 hours. This many cremations would in fact have required over six days.
• The 20,000 gassing victims from the ghetto of Theresienstadt were cremated in 48 hours in Crematoria II and III (= 5,000 bodies in 24 hours each). In actual fact, that many cremations would have required over 27 days.

Nyiszli claims that flames could often be seen shooting from the crematory chimneys, which is technically impossible.[57]

The gassing technique described by Nyiszli is completely invented, based on the erroneous supposition that Zyklon B (the alleged homicidal agent) was chlorine (rather than hydrocyanic acid). Since chlorine is heavier than air,[58] Nyiszli imagined that, in an area in which it was released in large quantities, the chlorine would spread from the floor to the ceiling, as if the area were being filled with water. As a result, he claims that the bodies, in the “gas chamber”, “were piled up in a mass up to the ceiling”, because “the gas first fills the lowers strata of air and then moves slowly upwards”. The victims therefore climbed on each others’ shoulders to get closer to the ceiling and escape the gas so as to survive for a short time longer. But hydrocyanic acid vapors are slightly lighter than air,[59] therefore the diffusion of the gas as described by Nyiszli is physically impossible.[60]

This absurdity was later appropriated lock, stock and barrel by the plagiarist Filip Müller, another self-described “eyewitness” who shamelessly plagiarized Nyiszli’s work.[61]

In a letter to the American translator of his memoirs, Nyiszli declared that he had discovered that the name “cyklon” (sic) was derived from the abbreviation of its principal ingredients: CYanid, ChLOr and Nitrogen, stating that there were two types of “cyklon”, Type A, which was an insecticide, and Type B, which was used for the homicidal gassings. This is another stupid fantasy. “Zyklon” in German is not an acronym, but, rather, an ordinary word meaning “cyclone”. And not only did Zyklon B not contain chlorine, but the German word for nitrogen is “Stickstoff”!

As for Zyklon A, use of this product was discontinued in Germany in the 1920s, when it was superseded by Zyklon B.

Nyiszli mentions eight extermination operations in the alleged gas chamber and in the vicinity of the “cremation pits”, at which he claims to have been personally present. Adding up the number of victims indicated by Nyiszli, we obtain a total of 605,000 persons, but he claims to have personally seen two million people enter the “gas chambers” with his own eyes. But in fact, near the “cremation pits”, the final destination for the “excess numbers from the Jewish ramp,” that is, those for whom there was no room in the over-filled gas chambers, 650,000 Jews were, according to him, killed with a bullet in the back of the neck, which is to say, more than the total of all the gassing victims, for the excess numbers of whom the “cremation pits” were supposed to have been dug in the first place.

Based on the data provided by this “eyewitness”, we get over 30 million people, all cremated in these “cremation pits” alone!

Nyiszli’s chronology is purely fictitious, as deduced from the numerous contradictions it contains. For example, if we follow the orthodox narrative, the presumed homicidal mass gassings ceased definitively on 17 November 1944, but for Nyiszli, 20,000 Jews from the ghetto of Theresienstadt were gassed, starting on that date.

One day in August, Nyiszli met his wife and daughter in Sector BIIc, but this meeting took place after the gassing of the gypsy camp (BIIe), which, for Nyiszli, occurred in the last ten days of September. What is more, according to his chronology, this meeting occurred in combination with that of Camp BIIc, and yet there was an interval of at least 26 days between the two alleged events.

Nyiszli moreover claims that the crematoria were located two kilometers from the Birkenau Camp, while in reality they were located inside the camp, and that the so-called Kanada warehouse barracks was not the Effektenlager (the camp warehouse containing the personal effects of the inmates), but, rather, a collection of rubbish which burned continuously!

In addition, Nyiszli knew nothing of the alleged “Bunker 2”: according to him, this Polish farmhouse was not transformed into a homicidal gas chamber by the SS, but, rather, into an “undressing room” for the victims of the “cremation pits”, who were then killed with a pistol shot to the back of the neck.

This overall picture, although highly condensed, shows clearly that Miklos Nyiszli was a false witness. The Holocaust Industry recognized this immediately, but, in a sort of “see no evil” posture, they prefer to continue utilizing Nyiszli’s “testimony” in support of the alleged crimes of Dr. Mengele.

In 2002, Charles D. Provan wrote an article entitled Miklos Nyiszli and His Auschwitz Book in a New Light[62] in which, based on research considered fundamental by himself, he attempted to justify the absurdities proffered by the self-proclaimed “eyewitness” (which Provan magnanimously referred to as “errors”), asserting that Nyiszli’s book was not a historical record, but a novel. This claim is based on two erroneous assertions:

1. that the first edition of Nyiszli’s book appeared between 16 February and 5 April 1947 in the Budapest newspaper Világ (World);
2. that the same newspaper, in its edition of 30 September 1947, stated that Nyiszli’s book was a novel.

In reality, as I have already mentioned, Nyiszli’s first edition was published in 1946. Moreover, the newspaper Világ, mentioned by Provan, refers to Nyiszli’s book as an “élménregény”, which means, not “a novel based on one’s own personal experiences”, but, rather, “a novel of experience”, that is, a real experience so exceptional in nature as almost to resemble a novel.

That this is the correct interpretation is proven beyond doubt by the Affidavit forming the preamble to the first edition of the book:

“I, the undersigned, a doctor of medicine, Nyiszli Mikloś, ex-inmate of the concentration camp, bearer of tattoo number A 8450, in this book, which has just been published, a work which contains, in itself, the darkest pages of human history, free from all passion, without the slightest exaggeration, write as direct spectator and actor of the activities of the crematoria and funeral pyres of Auschwitz, in the fires in which [sic] millions of fathers, mothers and children disappeared.”[63]

The Affidavit closes with these words:

“Oradea-Nagyvárad, month of March, 1946. Dr. Nyiszli Mikloś.”

There is not the slightest doubt that Nyiszli described his book as an historical narrative; in fact, he explicitly stated that it was written “free from all passion, in accordance with the truth, without the slightest exaggeration”.

In this context, even if Provan’s interpretation were correct (and it is not), it would be improper to attribute greater value to the opinion of an unknown journalist writing in September 1947 than to the Affidavit of the author himself, writing in March 1946.

Therefore, the excuse that the book is a “novel” does not hold water, and Nyiszli remains an impostor. This is shown no less clearly by another important fact. Provan writes:

“Although Dr. Nyiszli was sent as a witness at the IG-Farben trial at Nuremberg, he did not testify, probably because he was only at Monowitz for two weeks and could only supply information of little value. He was allowed to return to Romania during the course of the same trial.”[64]

In effect, the IG-Farben trial records contain no mention of Miklos Nyiszli being excused; he is not even mentioned.[65] Notwithstanding the simple fact that he never testified, upon returning to Romania, he immediately proceeded to write a series of articles entitled Tanu voltam Nürnbergen (I Was a Witness at Nuremberg) in which he pretended to have been interrogated by the Soviet representative of the defendant Emanuel Minskoff, quoting whole dialogues entirely invented by Nyiszli. The first of these mendacious articles appeared in the Világ newspaper on 18 April 1948.

It is impossible to ascribe good faith to this “eyewitness,” who was and remains a mere impostor.

In consequence, the essential eyewitness testimony of Dr. Mengele’s alleged crimes at Auschwitz crumbles inexorably, and the rest of the legend along with it.

APPENDIX

Abbreviations

Notes:

Translated by Carlos W. Porter. Article previously published under the title Il dottor Mengele e i gemelli di Auschwitz. Effepi, Genoa, 2008.