A Living Laboratory
Angel of Death? What kind of nomenclature is that for a man dedicated to the Nazi ideal of Aryan perfection? One who absorbed and accepted fascist ideology and willingly undertook his duties, to perform medical scientific experiences causing physical torment and mental anguish to helpless, incarcerated concentration-camp dwellers.Negating his responsibility as a compassionate human being, as a medical professional dedicated to the healing of human beings. The Angel of Death dispatched his duties willingly.
It was he who would greet new arrivals at the welcoming gates of Auschwitz, swiftly assessing the physical condition of men, women and children and assigning them to the long lines of those who would swiftly perish in the gas chambers, and those whose existence within the concentration camp would be prolonged and miserable, and ultimately lead to death through disease, starvation, dire privation.
But in the meanwhile, they presented as handy living objects for his countless experiments. Experiments to ascertain how much cold a living human being could withstand before losing the struggle to live. How much pain could be inflicted on a human being before the wish to transpire into the Valley of Death would overtake them. And he loved experimenting on twins, to determine all manner of hypotheses.
He managed to evade justice when the Second World War concluded and the living corpses of those still existing were liberated from the death camps. He became a legend of evil incarnate. The search for his whereabouts were fruitless, in the end. He was thought to have escaped to Argentina, a country which somehow managed to overlook the fascist blight and welcome many Nazis, saving them from the Nuremberg Trials.
He eventually fled his sanctuary in Argentina, when he felt that Israeli agents were coming too close to discovery. And settled instead in Paraguay, in 1963. Then, good man that he was, he presented to villagers in a little town, Candido Godoi, in Brazil, as an itinerant medical practitioner. First as a veterinarian, offering to assist in the care of the animals there.
Later, extending his professional expertise to the women, offering to help them with their pregnancies. Gaining trust, he treated women with new experimental drugs. He amazed the townspeople, speaking of the potential in artificial insemination for animals and for people. Such advances in medicine had never before been spoken of, nor visualized. He gained the respect of the town.
"He told us he was a vet" explained a farmer. "He asked about illnesses we had among our animals, and told us not to worry, he could cure them. He appeared a cultured and dignified man. He said he could carry out artificial insemination of cows and humans, which we thought impossible, as in those days it was unheard of."
The town became his personal, living laboratory, where he was able to indulge in his professional curiosity. Originally he had sought to increase the incidence of multiple births in Germany, to produce, for the Third Reich, blue-eyed, blond-haired, strapping youth. And soon a very odd thing happened, in that small Brazilian town, women began to give birth to twins.
Imagine: one in five pregnancies resulted in twin births, where the usual rate of such events is one in eighty. And many of these Brazilian children turned out with blond hair and blue eyes. Of course, this was not Dr. Josef Mengele, this man was Rudolph Weiss. And the town boasts a road sign welcoming visitors to a "Farming Community and Land of the Twins."
His mission was accomplished.
Labels: Heroes and Villains, Particularities/Peculiarities, Technology
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, January 22, 2009
<< Home