Speaker 1: What oh boy, Yeah, you know what that might have been,
Speaker 1: that might have been over the line, That might have
Speaker 1: been over the line, Robert, Yeah, my god, I feel
Speaker 1: like there's some government agency we need to report me
Speaker 1: to for saying that.
Speaker 2: Now I didn't know. Yeah, man, Robert, go to hell.
Speaker 1: I'm leaving that was that was a step too far.
Speaker 3: Huh, well you use that language ever?
Speaker 1: Well years, what's wrong with you? We'll let it that
Speaker 1: all out and uh, you at home can imagine what what?
Speaker 1: What horrible thing I said? What cancellable thing I said?
Speaker 1: That will get leaked seven years from now.
Speaker 2: Please replace it with you know, embarrassing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this is.
Speaker 3: Garters, Matt Leeve got a fresh haircut. It's gonna be
Speaker 3: a good day.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a good day talking about Joseph Mangola.
Speaker 1: As usual, Robert forgot once.
Speaker 2: Again, we're talking about something that's going to make everyone sad,
Speaker 2: and I like to think that is, you know, a
Speaker 2: guest of this podcast. I'm here to, you know, try
Speaker 2: to lighten the mood. So, along with Jargia, I brought
Speaker 2: this Excuse me, I don't want to talk about me.
Speaker 2: I just want to talk about happy things, just happy things,
Speaker 2: all right. That's so I'm gonna bust that out every time.
Speaker 4: A little Dicky, Yeah, that's it's like Little Dicky did
Speaker 4: like a Tommy style concept album, but about Josephs together.
Speaker 1: Oh dear god, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Wow, oh boy, percentage your listeners who uh do not
Speaker 2: like grievously offended? Yes, yes, and that was for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I got a new I got a new kind
Speaker 1: of offense recently where somebody was like, it's messed up
Speaker 1: that your show is called Behind the Bastards and you
Speaker 1: call the bad people bastards because that that's hurtful to
Speaker 1: people who were born out of woodlock. And oh yes,
Speaker 1: people don't use that word that more any like that.
Speaker 1: That's just not a thing that we do well. When
Speaker 1: I hear someone say bastards, I don't think, ah, yes,
Speaker 1: this is this is someone referring to a person born
Speaker 1: outside the bounds of holy matrimony.
Speaker 2: Right, this is you know. I feel like language evolves.
Speaker 1: Is the thing, Robert.
Speaker 3: I raise your people being offended over the word bastards
Speaker 3: to the cocoachanell apologists in my DMS, like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Boy, if you did that, I saw it. I saw it.
Speaker 1: I hope by now the liver King episodes will be dropping,
Speaker 1: So I hope you've got liver king apologists in there too,
Speaker 1: being like, look, man, a lot of people take fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in steroids every single month.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, what's wrong with that?
Speaker 3: Singering from you? Definitely gentlemen, m M.
Speaker 1: Dudes speaking of a dude. Joseph Mangela definitely was a
Speaker 1: dude and his wife Irene had been married just over
Speaker 1: a month when Germany invaded Poland after carrying out a
Speaker 1: false flag attack to justify said aggression. World War two,
Speaker 1: you know, starts, and Joseph is over the moon about it.
Speaker 1: He believes the war is the quote last desperate fight
Speaker 1: of the German nation, by which he meant that without
Speaker 1: a cleansing genocidal war to clear out large swaths of farmland,
Speaker 1: Germans would be doomed to interbreeding and genetic collapse.
Speaker 2: God damn it.
Speaker 1: Yeah at he buys into it. You know, he's all
Speaker 1: full throated now because he's got some health issues. It's
Speaker 1: not until nineteen forty one and the start of Operation
Speaker 1: Barbarossa that Mengla actually sees combat in Ukraine. His posting
Speaker 1: is the infamous ss Viking Division, which is spelled Wiking,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna call it Wiking because that makes them
Speaker 1: sound silly and they are terrible war criminals.
Speaker 5: So the Vikings was where we where we scaled, where
Speaker 5: we scale, we Wikings, we scare we Wiking. So the
Speaker 5: Viking Division is made up of Germanic peoples, mostly from
Speaker 5: outside of Germany. There is like a German battalion or
Speaker 5: whatever in there, but a lot of them are from Belgium, Norway,
Speaker 5: a lot of them are Norwegian dent people from Denmark,
Speaker 5: from France, from Holland. They're basically like Arians from all
Speaker 5: the places the Germans have conquered. And the actions of
Speaker 5: the Wiking Division are you would call them controversial to
Speaker 5: this day. The unit fought exclusively in the East during
Speaker 5: the worst atrocities of the Second World War, and they
Speaker 5: participated in several of those atrocities. But because the membership
Speaker 5: is largely foreign, there has been a lot of effort
Speaker 5: dedicated to minimizing the culpability of the volunteers. A good
Speaker 5: example would be this ABC Australia article about a Finnish
Speaker 5: government report that concluded the fourteen or so finish volunteers
Speaker 5: in the unit likely committed war crimes. The report notes
Speaker 5: accurately that the Finns agreed to supply soldiers for the
Speaker 5: Elite Division after their brutal war with the USSR, which
Speaker 5: is true enough, but check out how they word this Reluctantly.
Speaker 5: Finns complied and covertly recruited the first group of four
Speaker 5: hundred SS volunteers to be sent for training. The vast
Speaker 5: majority of them had no ideological sympathies with the Nazi regime.
Speaker 5: The report said Finns were above all interested in fighting
Speaker 5: against the Soviet Union due to their brutal experiences in
Speaker 5: the Winter War. In this way, the starting point for
Speaker 5: Finn's involvement was different compared to most other countries joining
Speaker 5: SS foreign Volunteer units.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, didn't. They didn't have a choice. You know,
Speaker 1: just wound up in that SS unit on accident. You're
Speaker 1: stumbling home from the bar, you had a couple of rounds,
Speaker 1: and then you wind up in the SS. It happens
Speaker 1: to all of us.
Speaker 2: You find a friend where you've got a mutual hatred
Speaker 2: of this other dude, and he happens also hate every
Speaker 2: Jew who's ever lived, and you're like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: you turn the.
Speaker 1: Good with the bad. Yeah, and it's one of those
Speaker 1: like there's a movie coming out right now that's about
Speaker 1: like some Finnish guy murdering Nazis, And there's a concern
Speaker 1: some people have is like, are they just going to
Speaker 1: kind of whitewash the fact that an awful lot of
Speaker 1: Fins were completely on board with the Nazis? Yeah, it
Speaker 1: will now, and obviously you can note that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Finns had just suffered this devastating invasion from the USSR,
Speaker 1: that they had no fault in, and that that would
Speaker 1: make things complicated. They're in a difficult geopolitical situation. But
Speaker 1: you don't need to whitewash these SS guys, especially when
Speaker 1: you read passages like this from David Marwell's book. Early
Speaker 1: in the morning of July second, Sst. And dart and
Speaker 1: Fua Wackerl, the beloved commander of the division's West Lynn Regiment,
Speaker 1: was shot and killed by a sniper near the village
Speaker 1: of Sloweitka. In the days that followed Wackerl's death, members
Speaker 1: of the Wyking Division carried out acts of extreme violence,
Speaker 1: claiming an estimated several thousand Jews as victims. Strue present's
Speaker 1: evidence from the records of various German Army units in
Speaker 1: the area, quoting, for example, the diary of a Lieutenant Kaysburg,
Speaker 1: with the two hundred and ninety fifth Engineer's Battalion firing
Speaker 1: everywhere it crackles, the SS bumps off anyone they get
Speaker 1: their hands on. It is horrific. The chief of staff
Speaker 1: of the fourth Army Corps absorbed that individual members of
Speaker 1: the Wiking Division were seen hunting for Jews the war
Speaker 1: diary of a unit in the area, and noted that
Speaker 1: the SS was indiscriminately shooting Russian soldiers and civilians in
Speaker 1: large numbers. A member of the supply unit of the division,
Speaker 1: Hans Gunther Otto, in a sworn affidavit after the war,
Speaker 1: claimed that his unit had been informed that Wackel had
Speaker 1: been killed by a Jew and that their participation in
Speaker 1: the revenge actions marked the beginning of the unit's participation
Speaker 1: in the extermination of the Jews. Otto described an order
Speaker 1: that was read to his unit after Wackerl's death. The
Speaker 1: order said that we were no longer held accountable for
Speaker 1: the killing of any Jews we could get hold of,
Speaker 1: and that we could indeed shoot any Jew we saw.
Speaker 1: So this is who Mangola serves with when he does
Speaker 1: his combat tours, great good influences. Yeah, yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: like that's going to moderate his natural shittiness a lot. Now,
Speaker 1: we unfortunately know very little about the specific details of
Speaker 1: what Mangola did with the Viking Division. He's there for
Speaker 1: close to two years, but he is present with them
Speaker 1: through one of the most bloody periods in the history
Speaker 1: of human warfare. Given his professional expertise at identifying Jewish
Speaker 1: ancestry and the fact that his division is hunting Jews,
Speaker 1: there's a pretty good chance he was consulted on who
Speaker 1: to kill right on doomy massacre this village or not right,
Speaker 1: you know, that's pretty good chance he was enrollved in.
Speaker 2: But they would just like wheel Mangla out to look
Speaker 2: at every villager and just be like point out which
Speaker 2: ones you think as the most Jewy? Yeah, like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's my favorite thing to do. That's what they do.
Speaker 1: So the first massacre by the Viking Division was carried
Speaker 1: out a town at a prison in a town called Zulusiv,
Speaker 1: where the retreating Soviet army had massacred about six hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty prisoners on their way out. When the SS
Speaker 1: discovered the bodies, they and their Ukrainian allies slaughtered more
Speaker 1: than a thousand Jews in the area. One survivor later
Speaker 1: recalled the SS people stood around the pit, and from
Speaker 1: time to time they ordered someone, especially men with beards
Speaker 1: and sidelocks, to come out and kneel in front of them.
Speaker 1: With sadistic pleasure. They hit their victim until he lay
Speaker 1: unconscious on the ground, and they kicked them back into
Speaker 1: the pit. Sometimes family members tried to help the poor people,
Speaker 1: but then they often made their fate even worse. Some
Speaker 1: were taken out of the grave and beaten to death
Speaker 1: with unimaginable brutality. Yeah, Joey mengs everybody, this is his
Speaker 1: baptism of fire. This is kind of known as seen
Speaker 1: by historians who study him as like this is what
Speaker 1: go This is what takes us from the Joseph Mangela,
Speaker 1: who's like doing science that's kind of racist but is
Speaker 1: relativetively mid for its day, to the Joseph Mangla who
Speaker 1: is capable of doing the things he's going to do
Speaker 1: at Auschwitz. Right, Yeah, there's a process of brutalization. You
Speaker 1: can't get a more brutalizing environment than being part of
Speaker 1: this SS division.
Speaker 2: Of the Nazi or the Jew hunting Italian in the
Speaker 2: entire Nazi Army, one of the worst units in terms
Speaker 2: of war crimes. Yeah, I mean, I don't like him. No,
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: They don't sound nice to me. I'm not a fan. No.
Speaker 1: In a single week, the SS Wiking Division was responsible
Speaker 1: for between four and seven thousand murders of Jewish Ukrainians.
Speaker 1: They're often just kind of killing every person they can
Speaker 1: in a city or a town that they wind up
Speaker 1: billeted in. It's possible that Mangola participated directly and at
Speaker 1: least some of the killing. We simply don't know. Our
Speaker 1: records of his performance only detail his combat actions, and
Speaker 1: he performed well against partisans, winning an Iron Cross second
Speaker 1: class and then first class for pulling comrades out of
Speaker 1: a burning tank. Mangola provided field medicine through a number
Speaker 1: of heavy combat actions. In the first five months in
Speaker 1: the field, his division lost twenty percent of its manpower,
Speaker 1: which is heavy. That's an intense rate of casualties.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 1: I hope, I'm sad. Yeah, I hope, I hope they
Speaker 1: all suffered real tenseling. Yeah, now, Mengolo was praised by
Speaker 1: his superior officers, even as the tight of war turned
Speaker 1: gradually against the Nazi forces. At the end of November
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, he was nearly killed an aerial attack.
Speaker 1: A comrade described in his unit log vigorous air activity. Again,
Speaker 1: doctor Mengola buried. Bomb explodes next to foxhole and buried him.
Speaker 1: They got him out alas So. Another thing that a
Speaker 1: thing that is cool in this time period is the
Speaker 1: Russians counterattack at Stalingrad and the Romanian army kind of collapses,
Speaker 1: and then they surround the German sixth Army, and you know,
Speaker 1: massacret Joseph Mengola is in and around that action, and
Speaker 1: he actually gets evacuated by air during one of the
Speaker 1: last moments in which that would have been possible. No
Speaker 1: one's really sure why he gets evacuated. He doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have been injured, which would have been a normal
Speaker 1: reason to like pull an officer out from the front.
Speaker 1: There's a pretty good chance it's just because he's a doctor.
Speaker 1: He's seen as having high value as a rachel hygienist.
Speaker 1: The war in the East is failing, but the Nazi
Speaker 1: regime's race war they felt was still winnable and they
Speaker 1: needed Mangola on another battle front, a place called Auschwitz.
Speaker 1: So we're only episode three. Yeah, it's mostly gonna be
Speaker 1: Auschwitz today, this is gonna be this this week is
Speaker 1: all Auschwitz. Oops, all Auschwitz. Oops. Switch it is not.
Speaker 1: So he gets.
Speaker 2: I just fucking I just throwing SSRs in my mouth.
Speaker 1: This is the only way to talk about Joey mengs
Speaker 1: is with with a lot of reverb. So he gets evacuated.
Speaker 1: He's in Berlin for a little while before he gets
Speaker 1: his next assignment, and he gets in touch with his
Speaker 1: old boss, Otmar von Verschuer, and Ottmar is now running
Speaker 1: the Kaiservillehelm Institute for Anthropology, so he makes Mengola a
Speaker 1: guest scholar there, you know, as he's recovering from being
Speaker 1: at the warfront, and Mengola continues to aid Verschure in
Speaker 1: his work on an ad hoc basis. Von Verschuer had
Speaker 1: taken over for the previous Nazi in charge, Eugene Fisher,
Speaker 1: as part of an agreement between the two men that
Speaker 1: race science had now advanced to an exciting new era,
Speaker 1: one in which the study of heredity could now look
Speaker 1: at traits like criminality or heroism, or work shyness or industriousness,
Speaker 1: and determined with scientific precision to what extent those traits
Speaker 1: were caused by heredity or by environment. The missing piece
Speaker 1: of the puzzle was that heredity science as they saw it,
Speaker 1: still could not explain how a genetic disposition became a
Speaker 1: physical trait. In his book on Mangola, Marwoll quotes historian
Speaker 1: Walter Schmuel. The idea generally accepted up to that time
Speaker 1: that every attribute was simply transmitted as dominant or recessive
Speaker 1: monofactorial genetic information did not hold up to the results
Speaker 1: of mutation research, population genetics, or developmental physiology. Thus, Mendelian
Speaker 1: genetics was giving way, in the words of the day,
Speaker 1: to higher mendalism, which presumed much more complicated mechanisms of heredity. Now,
Speaker 1: part of why the Nazis are confused is that a
Speaker 1: lot of the things they saw as traits simply are
Speaker 1: not behaviors or traits that have a genetic component, or
Speaker 1: just aren't traits at all. You have to consider the
Speaker 1: Nazis considered criminality a trait, and their definition of a
Speaker 1: criminal was kind of broad.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it was weirdly sounded a lot like they
Speaker 2: were just trying to describe Jews in any aspect and
Speaker 2: just trying to use science to justify it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you can see how they would be confused
Speaker 1: that all of their calculations aren't adding up here.
Speaker 2: And also what's a crime, because yeah, they would also
Speaker 2: like anything gay was a crime, and sure, you know
Speaker 2: exactly anything gender queer was a crime. So criminality quite
Speaker 2: broad as well.
Speaker 1: Broad term for the Nazis. Now, yes, there were, and
Speaker 1: they were asking because these guys are scientists, and some
Speaker 1: of what they're asking, we're legitimate at the time, scientific
Speaker 1: questions about heredity. They were not just trying to do
Speaker 1: stuff that was nonsense race science. They were trying to
Speaker 1: answer real questions that scientists all over the world were
Speaker 1: kind of grappling with. The pseudoscience here though, is pretty
Speaker 1: complex and not worth kind of delving into in much
Speaker 1: more detail, so we will continue to focus more on
Speaker 1: the personalities. Vershure and Fisher, both highly regarded race scientists,
Speaker 1: were obsessed with unraveling the mystery of heredity. So they
Speaker 1: made an agreement and Vershure gets made the head of
Speaker 1: the institute because he's really good at getting funding and
Speaker 1: support from the Nazi state. I'm going to quote again
Speaker 1: now from Marwell's book, although he himself here is largely
Speaker 1: quoting the work of a historian named Sheila faith Weiss.
Speaker 1: In pursuit of this this new paradigm argues wise a
Speaker 1: combination of experimental research on animals and humans was necessary.
Speaker 1: She writes that Dalam Institute scientists could provide the necessary
Speaker 1: human clinical supplement to the ongoing experimental work in the
Speaker 1: developmental genetics of normal and pathological traits in animals. Mengel's
Speaker 1: four month association with the institute and the winter and
Speaker 1: spring of nineteen forty three laid the foundation for a
Speaker 1: crucial link between the scientists at the institute and a
Speaker 1: colleague who could be instrumental in supplying all manner of
Speaker 1: human specimens and data to advance their work. So they
Speaker 1: hit this point where they're like, in order to do
Speaker 1: more heredity research, the only way to properly do this
Speaker 1: is to study a bunch of humans. And that kind
Speaker 1: of study is going to involve dissection, it's going to
Speaker 1: involve autopsies, it's going to involve finding people who have
Speaker 1: rare different kind of genetic disabilities and studying their bodies
Speaker 1: after they die. If you were to do that legitimately,
Speaker 1: you know, using only bodies that people had willingly donated
Speaker 1: after their deaths, well you're not going to actually be
Speaker 1: able to do that science. It's at the rate at
Speaker 1: which these Nazis want to do it. They're going to
Speaker 1: need a supply of human material, and that is where
Speaker 1: Joseph Mangel is going to be useful to them.
Speaker 2: So God, it's so fucking suppressing brow.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is I mean, these are the Mangola episodes. Yeah, yeah, Lita,
Speaker 1: people going down.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, you can cut that one about this one instead,
Speaker 2: except it's jarring Mesa Buston. That's always nice. It's nice
Speaker 2: to remember the finer parts of life. As we have
Speaker 2: we delve into this darkness. So Joey mangs gets assigned
Speaker 2: to work at Auschwitz in the May of nineteen forty three,
Speaker 2: and we don't exactly know why, because they get rid
Speaker 2: of a lot of their documentation around Auschwitz shortly after
Speaker 2: this period. It is likely, and Mangola's son would later
Speaker 2: say that von Verschuer basically pulled strings to get him
Speaker 2: appointed at Auschwitz. It is worth noting doctors were never
Speaker 2: work at death camps. Not one of the SS doctors
Speaker 2: who worked at any of the death camps was there
Speaker 2: on pain that they would be punished. You didn't even
Speaker 2: suffer career consequences for refusing to work at a death camp.
Speaker 2: It was this work. Normal empathy was like, oh, I no,
Speaker 2: I'd rather not. Yeah, I get it. Bro, it's talk
Speaker 2: about that. It's fucked up. It's fucked up. Bro, I
Speaker 2: tolt me neither.
Speaker 1: It is often errantly stated that Mengelo was the chief
Speaker 1: medical officer at Auschwitz, but this is inaccurate. His direct
Speaker 1: supervisor was the chief medical director at the camp, and
Speaker 1: Mengela is more accurately viewed as basically the number two
Speaker 1: man in terms of like the medical system at Auschwitz.
Speaker 1: Gerald Posner credits this errant reputation to the fact that
Speaker 1: Joseph was a workaholic as well as one of the
Speaker 1: few SS men there who had seen combat in the East.
Speaker 1: Mengela frequently referred to his combat experience, and he quickly
Speaker 1: developed a special aura in the camp because of his
Speaker 1: frontline fighting, which contrasted sharply with the desk careers of
Speaker 1: the other doctors, Mengl coupled his combat status with a
Speaker 1: workaholic devotion to his duties. While other Auschwitz doctors did
Speaker 1: no more than was required of them, Mangelo was always
Speaker 1: undertaking new projects and extra responsibility, and one example of
Speaker 1: an extra responsibility he took on was eradicating a typhoid
Speaker 1: epidemic that occurred at one of the barracks soon after
Speaker 1: his arrival. Now, for reference, Auschwitz was made up of
Speaker 1: several labor camps, each with a different set of barracks,
Speaker 1: generally divided between men and women, but also between inmates
Speaker 1: from different regions. As a general rule, families were split
Speaker 1: up on arrival by sex and availability to work. But
Speaker 1: sometimes too many people came in at once Auschwitz. I
Speaker 1: think the most people it ever killed in a day
Speaker 1: was nine thousand, and there were days where more than
Speaker 1: that arrived. And thus, yeah, I mean it was a
Speaker 1: factory for producing death. And so sometimes when they had
Speaker 1: too many people arrive, communities would be kept intact until
Speaker 1: they could be exterminated. And when you stick large numbers
Speaker 1: of people in tiny, poorly made bear with no insulation
Speaker 1: in the middle of a European winter, and you feed them,
Speaker 1: maybe seven hundred calories a day, and you deprive them
Speaker 1: of clean water, illness is going to spread. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: typhoid epidemics were rampant at the time. With the technology available,
Speaker 1: it was basically impossible to stop typhus from spreading once
Speaker 1: it had become endemic and something like a crowded barracks.
Speaker 1: This had been an intractable problem for the camp administration
Speaker 1: prior to Mangola's arrival, and the SS saw this as
Speaker 1: a serious issue, not because they cared about the comfort
Speaker 1: and safety of prisoners, but because typhoid just spreads. You know,
Speaker 1: the SS can get typhoid from the prisoners at the barracks, right,
Speaker 1: so you have high.
Speaker 2: Foyd can't even tell who's Jewish or not. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: really messed up.
Speaker 1: It's like they're all's the same species.
Speaker 2: I don't understand it. Well, you're gonna have to do
Speaker 2: more science, unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So something has to be done, and Joseph Mangela
Speaker 1: is going to be the guy to do it. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote now from a memoir by a
Speaker 1: Jewish doctor cad in Germany named Miklos n named Miklos Nisli.
Speaker 1: Miklos is interned at Auschwitz with his family and forced
Speaker 1: to work as a medical officer there by doctor Mengela
Speaker 1: and here are his recollections of how Joseph fought the
Speaker 1: typhoid outbreak. The quarantine camp, C Camp, Dcamp and the
Speaker 1: F section were terribly overcrowded, despite the quotas which were
Speaker 1: filled daily for shipment to more distant camps and the
Speaker 1: Czech camp. Both the children and the aged had been
Speaker 1: greatly weakened by their two year ordeal. The children's bodies
Speaker 1: were mere skin and bones, and the elderly prisoners were
Speaker 1: so weak they could scarcely walk. Both had to relinquish
Speaker 1: their places to new arrivals who were still strong enough
Speaker 1: to work. During the preceding weeks, their situation had steadily worsened.
Speaker 1: When the first Hungarian convoys began arriving, their rations had
Speaker 1: been sharply reduced. Then a few weeks later, when the
Speaker 1: stream of new deporte tees had swelled the flood proportions,
Speaker 1: the camp authorities had found themselves faced with a serious
Speaker 1: shortage of food. As usual, their remedy had both been
Speaker 1: both drastic and efficient. They had practically suppressed the ch
Speaker 1: The check camp's rations. Altogether, hunger had reduced the prisoners
Speaker 1: to raving, moaning maniacs within a few days. There already
Speaker 1: weakened organisms had disintegrated entirely. Diarrhea, dysentery, and typhus had
Speaker 1: begun their deadly work. Fifty or sixty deaths a day
Speaker 1: was normal. Their last days were spent in indescribable suffering
Speaker 1: till at last a death came and set them free.
Speaker 1: The closing of all barracks was ordered early in the morning.
Speaker 1: Several hundred SR soldiers surrounded the Czech area and ordered
Speaker 1: the inmates to assemble. Their cries of terror as they
Speaker 1: were loaded into the waiting vans were terrible to hear,
Speaker 1: for after two years in the KZ they no longer
Speaker 1: had any illusions about what lay in store for them.
Speaker 1: Liquidation day found some twelve thousand prisoners left in the
Speaker 1: check camp. From among that number, fifteen hundred able bodied
Speaker 1: men and women were chosen, along with eight physicians. The
Speaker 1: rest were sent to Number two and Number three crematoriums.
Speaker 1: On the following day, the check camp was silent and deserted.
Speaker 1: I saw truck loaded with ashes leave the crematorium and
Speaker 1: head towards the Vistula, it's a river. Thus, the Auschwitz
Speaker 1: muster rolls were reduced by more than twelve thousand units,
Speaker 1: and one more bloody page was added to the Auschwitz archives.
Speaker 1: That page contained only the following brief inscription. The checks
Speaker 1: section of the Auschwitz concentration camp was liquidated this date
Speaker 1: due to what prevalence of typhus among the prisoners signed
Speaker 1: Doctor Mengola helps to them for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I uh, this is exactly like forcing people
Speaker 2: to get vexed. You know, it's the same thing, same thing, bro.
Speaker 2: It doesn't punch an anti vaxer in the face. It's like,
Speaker 2: every time I listen to this podcast about like different
Speaker 2: Nazi atrocities or read about it, I'm always just like,
Speaker 2: if I ever see an anti vaxxer walk into a
Speaker 2: Baskin Robbins with a fucking star of David that says
Speaker 2: it because they're like, I don't need a vaccine, I
Speaker 2: just want all thirty two flavors. I don't punch him
Speaker 2: in the fucking mouth.
Speaker 1: I think it is justified to do violent to people
Speaker 1: who compare like think and it's not even you're not
Speaker 1: even being forced by the state to get a vaccine.
Speaker 1: You're being told like, yeah, man, if you want to
Speaker 1: work in a high school cafeteria, you have to get
Speaker 1: a COVID vaccine.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1: No, it's super isn't It's it's totally not I yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's one of those things, like everybody knows
Speaker 1: Auschwitz like horrible, right, Like that's not we're not We're
Speaker 1: not like blowing any minds with the fact that this
Speaker 1: was a bad place. But when you actually dig into,
Speaker 1: like I recommend if you want to get an actual
Speaker 1: degree of personal physical context for what it was like there,
Speaker 1: uh Miklos Sneezley's memoir Auschwitz, a Doctor's Eyewitness Account is short.
Speaker 1: You can finish it in an afternoon. It's not a
Speaker 1: long book, and it's fucking harrowing, like just absolutely some
Speaker 1: of the some of the worst things that you can
Speaker 1: possibly hear.
Speaker 2: That was just one passage you read. Yeah, I already
Speaker 2: need a nap. That's not one of the bad ones.
Speaker 2: Like it's bad, but like in terms of the degree
Speaker 2: of personal brutality involved, that's not one of the most
Speaker 2: That's not the worst thing we're going to talk about today. Cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're gonna need a lot of jar jar buddy.
Speaker 2: Well, that smells Stinka with absolutely Jesus.
Speaker 1: So it's important to note we just talked about the
Speaker 1: fact that, like the doctors at Auschwitz were not at
Speaker 1: all forced to be there, Auschwitz and the death camp
Speaker 1: system in general could not function without doctors. They were
Speaker 1: the key lynchpin that held the entire thing together. The
Speaker 1: kind of thugs who were doing the mass, you know,
Speaker 1: shootings of people and carrying the guns and manning the
Speaker 1: guard towers, those were much less important to the system
Speaker 1: of killing than medical doctors. In January of nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: a group of Nazi functionaries under friend of the pod
Speaker 1: Reinhardt Heidrich, sat down in a suburb of Verlin called
Speaker 1: Vonse to plan out technical details of the Holocaust. Prior
Speaker 1: to this moment, the genocidal vibe of the Nazis had
Speaker 1: been a mix of deportations, mass shootings, restrictive laws, and
Speaker 1: random beatings and murders. After Vonse, the death camp sprung
Speaker 1: up to full production, with a goal of cleansing Europe
Speaker 1: from undesirable races. As we've discussed throughout these episodes, this
Speaker 1: was seen as a medical task. Doctors like von Verschuer
Speaker 1: were key advocates throughout the escalating process of preparing the
Speaker 1: German state to carry out genocide. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote from the book Racial Hygiene here. Ottmar von Verschuer
Speaker 1: described in his textbook the need for a complete solution
Speaker 1: of the Jewish question. On March twenty seventh to twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one, at opening ceremonies for the Institute for
Speaker 1: Research of the Jewish Question in Frankfort, Eugene Fisher and
Speaker 1: Hans F. K. Gunther were guests of honor at a
Speaker 1: meeting where possible solutions to the Jewish question were discussed.
Speaker 1: At this meeting, Walter Gross reviewed the shortcomings of previous
Speaker 1: efforts in this regard emancipation, persecution, partial annihilation, and so forth,
Speaker 1: and claimed that a final solution could only come from
Speaker 1: the complete removal of Jews from Europe. So that's Mengla's job.
Speaker 1: That's why these doctors are there, right, They are seeing
Speaker 1: through the future health of the race by exterminating people.
Speaker 1: And that's very much how they see their role. Mngla's
Speaker 1: first job, and the first job of all SS doctors
Speaker 1: at Auschwitz, was to sort new arrivals to the camp.
Speaker 1: The trains would arrive packed full of starving, desperate people,
Speaker 1: often jammed in with the corpses of their loved ones
Speaker 1: who had starved or died of illness. After days stuck
Speaker 1: in a dank, airless train car without access to sanitation,
Speaker 1: they would be marched out and sorted by a man
Speaker 1: like Mengola. And we're gonna talk more about that. But what.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoy commercial break.
Speaker 1: Here we go. That's got everybody in a good mood,
Speaker 1: ready for capitalism.
Speaker 2: Somehow. That was in a minor key. I don't even know.
Speaker 2: It's on autotune, and even the autotune is depressed.
Speaker 1: Little little miracles. Oh we're back.
Speaker 2: Oh back. I just took three thousand in prozac and
Speaker 2: I am ready to rock.
Speaker 1: There we go, There we go. So, speaking of prozac,
Speaker 1: m Mengela and the other doctors that are there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: their job is selecting these people. And I can describe
Speaker 1: this experience of selection in broad terms, but nothing does
Speaker 1: a better job of illustrating it than the words of
Speaker 1: a man who went through it. Miklos Neiezley arrived at
Speaker 1: Auschwitz in May of nineteen forty four, less than a
Speaker 1: year into doctor Mengela's time there, and he met the
Speaker 1: man himself immediately on arrival. We jumped to the ground,
Speaker 1: then turned over to take our wives and children in
Speaker 1: our arms and help them down, For the level of
Speaker 1: the cars was over four and a half feet from
Speaker 1: the ground. The guards had us line up along the tracks.
Speaker 1: Before us stood a young SS officer, impeccable in his uniform,
Speaker 1: a gold rosette gracing his lapel, his boots smartly polished.
Speaker 1: Though unfamiliar with the various SS ranks, I surmised from
Speaker 1: his armband that he was a doctor. Later I learned
Speaker 1: that he was the head of the SS group, that
Speaker 1: his name was doctor Mengola, and that he was the
Speaker 1: chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp. As the medical
Speaker 1: selector for the camp, he was present at the arrival
Speaker 1: of every train. Now, obviously you know Miklos has imperfect
Speaker 1: recall like all light witnesses, Mangolo was not the chief physician,
Speaker 1: and he was not present for the arrival of every
Speaker 1: single train. This was a duty that doctors switched off
Speaker 1: on taking, and there's not documented evidence that Mangela did
Speaker 1: more than his share of shifts, which still means that
Speaker 1: he personally sent potentially several hundred thousand people to their annihilation.
Speaker 2: We just don't know if he, you know, worked over time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't seem like there's evidence that he did.
Speaker 1: We'll talk a little bit more about why Miklos has
Speaker 1: some of these kind of beliefs about what Mangola did
Speaker 1: at the camp that don't line up with the documentation.
Speaker 1: Because he's not the only one. This is not like
Speaker 1: a personal flaw. For one thing. Stress like talk to
Speaker 1: people who have been president like a mass shooting, and
Speaker 1: you'll get different accounts of what happens and when eyewitnesses,
Speaker 1: often because it's a stressful, terrifying situation, and Auschwitz is
Speaker 1: the most stressful and terrifying situation of all of the
Speaker 1: stressful terrifying situations. So, yeah, your memory is going to
Speaker 1: have a couple of errors. It doesn't mean anything about
Speaker 1: the overall trustworthiness of his account. It's just that you
Speaker 1: get little details like that wrong. It is worth noting
Speaker 1: that the evidence suggests Mengelo was unusually well suited to
Speaker 1: the mental task of selection. Doctor Ella Lingoln's, who was
Speaker 1: also interned at Auschwitz, later noted that Joseph handled the
Speaker 1: duty with less stress than his colleagues. Quote some like
Speaker 1: Werner Roade, who hated his work and Hans Kanig, who
Speaker 1: was deeply disgusted by the job, had to get drunk
Speaker 1: before they appeared on the ramp. Only two doctors performed
Speaker 1: the selections without any stimulants of any kind, doctor Joseph
Speaker 1: Mengela and doctor Fritz Klein. Doctor Mengelo was particularly cold
Speaker 1: and cynical, and Klein, who definitely deserves to be remembered
Speaker 1: in the same breath as a piece of shit like Mengola,
Speaker 1: had hated Jewish people with a passion ever since a
Speaker 1: Jewish guy stole his fiance when they were undergrads.
Speaker 2: That was the way.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, that's that's.
Speaker 2: His that's Holocaust, because that's my assumption for most Nazis.
Speaker 1: No, that is absolutely what happened.
Speaker 2: Some tall, handsome Jews such as myself, you know, like
Speaker 2: you know, maybe dated their ex girlfriend who broke their
Speaker 2: heart and now it's like, well, must kise him on that.
Speaker 2: That is perfect faces AND's a nice penis.
Speaker 1: Is that is that is definitely that is definitely the
Speaker 1: case for doctor Fritz in cell Kleine. Klein was known
Speaker 1: to brag that he liked the smell of the crematoria.
Speaker 1: Lingoln's talked to Mangola about his own opinions on the subject,
Speaker 1: and she claimed she's one of these doctors who's forced
Speaker 1: to work at the camp because she's a prisoner. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of these folks. Langen's talked to Mangla
Speaker 1: about his own opinions on the subject, and she claimed, quote,
Speaker 1: he once told me that there are only two gifted
Speaker 1: people in the world, Germans and Jews, and it's a
Speaker 1: question of who will be superior. So he decided that
Speaker 1: they had to be destroyed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. See, this is like underneath all of the now. Granted,
Speaker 2: my entire like or at least most of my personal
Speaker 2: dealings with anti Semitism has been like chuds online, but
Speaker 2: it does seem very like, I don't know, like rooted in.
Speaker 2: I don't want to say they're jealous, that they're fucking
Speaker 2: jealous of us, but it does seem like a lot
Speaker 2: of it is just like Zie, it's so smart and
Speaker 2: so funny, and all the girls likes him, and I
Speaker 2: mean and me, I'm just so nice too, so all
Speaker 2: the girls I'm too nice. I need to be mean.
Speaker 2: And then they you know, they read Jordan Peterson, they
Speaker 2: start cleaning their room, they start doing racial hygiene, and
Speaker 2: then Bob's your own.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's the that's the it goes. Yeah, God almighty.
Speaker 1: So it's one thing to kind of give an overview
Speaker 1: of how the selection process worked, which is harrowing enough.
Speaker 1: But I think I'd be doing it a service if
Speaker 1: I didn't give you an account of meeting Joseph Mangela
Speaker 1: as a prisoner approaching selection. This one comes from our
Speaker 1: buddy Miklos, who does survive the camp. We'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how later, because by God, it's a story.
Speaker 1: Quote to start, the SS quickly divided us according to sex,
Speaker 1: leaving all children under fourteen with their mothers. So our
Speaker 1: once united group was straightway split in two. A feeling
Speaker 1: of dread overwhelmed us, but the guards replied to our
Speaker 1: anxious questions in a paternal, almost good natured manner. It
Speaker 1: was nothing to be concerned about. They were being taken
Speaker 1: off for a bath and to be disinfected, as was
Speaker 1: the custom. Afterwards, we would all be reunited with our families.
Speaker 1: While they sorted us out for transportation, I had a
Speaker 1: chance to look around in the light of the dying sun.
Speaker 1: The image glimpsed earlier through the crack, and the box
Speaker 1: cars seemed to have changed, grown more eerie and menacing.
Speaker 1: One object immediately caught my eye, an immense square chimney
Speaker 1: built of red bricks, tapering towards the summit. It towered
Speaker 1: above a two story building and looked like a strange
Speaker 1: factory chimney. I was especially struck by the enormous tongues
Speaker 1: of flame rising between the lightning rods, which were set
Speaker 1: at angles over the square tops of the chimney. I
Speaker 1: tried to imagine what hellish cooking would require such tremendous fire.
Speaker 1: Suddenly I realized that we were in Germany, the land
Speaker 1: of the crematory ovens. I had spent ten years in
Speaker 1: this country, first as a student, later as a doctor,
Speaker 1: and I knew that even the smallest city had its crematorium.
Speaker 2: Yeah, before you were like, I feel like it would
Speaker 2: be a disservice to do the police feel free to
Speaker 2: deserve me. Yeah, you know, I don't need to hear all.
Speaker 1: Sorry, it's like, yeah, I think One of the stories
Speaker 1: that's kind of worth telling about Mingola in this period
Speaker 1: is the fact that like there's one point where a
Speaker 1: doctor gets sent to the camp and he kind of
Speaker 1: realizes what is happening, and he's like, I'm not willing
Speaker 1: to do this, you know, I don't want to to
Speaker 1: go through this shit. This is like not what doctors do.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's immoral for me to be here.
Speaker 1: And so he says that he's going to like leave
Speaker 1: and like tries to get his way out of Auschwitz.
Speaker 1: This guy, Oh, yeah, so I found it here. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this SS physician named Horse Fisher is like, yeah, he
Speaker 1: goes through like one of these selections and he's just
Speaker 1: so horrified of it that he tries to transfer out
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: And yeah.
Speaker 1: Fisher asks himself kind of over the next couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: like why they're doing this, Why these starving people, the
Speaker 1: poorest of the poor, who couldn't possibly have like influenced
Speaker 1: the economy or politics or harmed Germany in any way.
Speaker 1: Why these people had to be exterminated. And as he's
Speaker 1: like trying to leave the camp, he asks Mangola these
Speaker 1: questions that he's been asking himself, and Mngola responds, it
Speaker 1: was precisely from this reservoir of people that the Jews
Speaker 1: drew new power and refreshed their blood. Without the poor
Speaker 1: but supposedly harmless Eastern Jews, the civilized Western European Jews
Speaker 1: would not be capable of survival. Therefore, it was necessary
Speaker 1: to kill all Jews. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: Mangola does is he takes this questioning doctor and he
Speaker 1: starts doing like selections with him in order to like
Speaker 1: talk him up throughout the process, until eventually the guy
Speaker 1: is willing to continue the job as an SS physician.
Speaker 1: So he's he's yeah, yeah, he talks him into it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, weak minded bitches, dude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they're Nazis.
Speaker 2: Just like he gets close to like feeling something close
Speaker 2: to human fucking startasy.
Speaker 1: To recognize the dimensions of the horror that he's been
Speaker 1: complicit in. And Mengola is like, Nona, bro, you're good, Like,
Speaker 1: let me let me walk you through why we need
Speaker 1: to be doing this.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: So, our friend Miklos, who we've been talking about, is
Speaker 1: lucky by the standards of Auschwitz. His daughter is old
Speaker 1: enough to work, and so she and his wife are
Speaker 1: sent to the right so they don't get murdered immediately. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: he gets pulled out of the mass of prisoners, along
Speaker 1: with several other doctors among the crowd, by Joseph Mengela.
Speaker 1: The SS was always shorthanded, and they needed men and
Speaker 1: women with proper medical skills, even if those men and
Speaker 1: women were Jews who were condemned to die. Miklos and
Speaker 1: the other doctors who suited Mangela's need became part of
Speaker 1: what was known as the Saunder Commando. These special units,
Speaker 1: to translate their name literally, were used to handle most
Speaker 1: of the dirty work of actually executing the Holocaust. They
Speaker 1: would drag bodies out of the gas chamber and incinerate them.
Speaker 1: They would sort out things like gold fillings and take
Speaker 1: other possessions from the dead. It's one of the worst
Speaker 1: things imaginable that you could be forced to do now.
Speaker 1: To keep the commando fununctional, the SS allowed them to
Speaker 1: take things like canned or preserved food from the dead
Speaker 1: and off an alcohol. The commando also found it easy
Speaker 1: to acquire gold and jewelry, which they were able to
Speaker 1: use sometimes to bribeguards for things like newspapers. These were
Speaker 1: Nazi newspapers, but they were still like they gave you
Speaker 1: some kind of outside context as to how the war
Speaker 1: is going, like what is happening outside of Auschwitz? And
Speaker 1: this and alcohol are pretty much the only thing that
Speaker 1: kept these people functional. Miklos basically says, every night we
Speaker 1: kind of drank ourselves into, you know, sleep to a stupor. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: how else do you do this job?
Speaker 2: Right? Right? Well, I mean fucking Mangola is going completely sober,
Speaker 2: just like whistling.
Speaker 1: He's not bothered by this is kind of the thing
Speaker 1: about Mangla. Most of the SS are also drunk, right.
Speaker 1: The other doctors are hammered, like everyone working this. Miklos
Speaker 1: writes a lot about this one specific SS guy who's
Speaker 1: like the trigger man, Like, whenever they need people shot,
Speaker 1: this guy, I think he's a captain, will like just
Speaker 1: go and shoot them in the head. And he does
Speaker 1: this all day. And he's like he's one of the
Speaker 1: nicer Nazis to Miklos, and he's clearly just like drinking
Speaker 1: himself to death while he's doing this job. But not Mangola. Mangola.
Speaker 1: For Mangola, this is like an unparalleled career opportunity, right,
Speaker 1: and that's how he treats it. Yeah, So each of
Speaker 1: these sonder commando units. Obviously, you can't do this job
Speaker 1: for very long, right Like, for one thing, your brain
Speaker 1: won't handle it, and for another, the SS doesn't want
Speaker 1: these people because they have extra privileges. They don't want
Speaker 1: them around long enough to potentially execute, as they eventually
Speaker 1: will some sort of sabotage. So every sonder commando was
Speaker 1: wiped out every four months, and the next commando units
Speaker 1: first duty was disposing of the corpses. So Miklos when
Speaker 1: he takes this job, knows like, we've got I've got
Speaker 1: four months to live, basically because I've gotten picked for
Speaker 1: this job. That said, he occupied a special position. Like
Speaker 1: other slave doctors. He would help to care for workers
Speaker 1: who took ill and keep track of things like the
Speaker 1: outbreak of Typhus. One of the fucked up things is that,
Speaker 1: like when workers come in sick to the doctors here,
Speaker 1: they have to try to hide whatever's going on because
Speaker 1: Mangela pays attention to everyone admitted to the camp hospital,
Speaker 1: and if you're not getting well fast enough, or if
Speaker 1: it looks like you're not, you're going to be immediately killed,
Speaker 1: right like, so they have to they have to be
Speaker 1: extremely careful. A big part of what the Sounder Commando
Speaker 1: do because they have more access to like luxury goods
Speaker 1: and things like medicine that they take off the dead,
Speaker 1: is they will like bribe SS guards with gold that
Speaker 1: they take from the dead and then use that to
Speaker 1: go into the camps and distribute medicine and food to
Speaker 1: some of like the people in the barrackses. It's the
Speaker 1: only reason some of the people who live through Auschwitz
Speaker 1: live through Auschwitz is that you know, these people in
Speaker 1: this impossible fucking position, use this relative level of privilege
Speaker 1: that they have to save some of their fellow inmates.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's it's bleak quite so, Yeah, Mingla
Speaker 1: needed Miklos in particular because he was a skilled human dissectionist. Right,
Speaker 1: he is a doctor who has pathological experience, Like he
Speaker 1: is trained to do medical pathology labs and stuff, and
Speaker 1: Mengola is not a very good doctor, right, And that's
Speaker 1: the same reason, like Miklos understatement, whenever the SS guys,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, but whenever, like the SS guys get sick,
Speaker 1: they go to Miklos and like he actually he's able
Speaker 1: to do a lot of good for other people in
Speaker 1: the camp because like some SS guy will get like
Speaker 1: fucked up or sick, and he will help that guy.
Speaker 1: And then when he's trying to like get into an
Speaker 1: area of the camp, he'll be like, hey, man, like
Speaker 1: I had your fucking back when you you know, got
Speaker 1: yourself the fucking clap or whatever, you know, I need
Speaker 1: I need to get in for a minute. So like again,
Speaker 1: these are kind of the ways things actually work on
Speaker 1: the ground, which you might think is weird given how
Speaker 1: strict in theory these ideas of racial superiority are. That
Speaker 1: these assessment they're letting this untermnched doctor touch their bodies.
Speaker 1: But like again, they don't have the SS. Doctors are
Speaker 1: poor physicians often, and Joseph hates providing medical care in
Speaker 1: a clinical setting. He's also not common job of a doctor,
Speaker 1: the job of a doctor. It's a normal doctoring.
Speaker 2: Yeah, He's also he's this whole thing where I have
Speaker 2: to you know, like I have to do the thing
Speaker 2: with the knee, make the knee move.
Speaker 1: I like, take their vitals. I like the part of doctoring.
Speaker 1: If they've just do fucked up shits, that's that's really
Speaker 1: that's really what I'm into.
Speaker 2: I got into this to sow people together, and now
Speaker 2: everyone wants me to fucking just put band aids on people.
Speaker 2: What is this ship?
Speaker 1: You know what this ship isn't what the ads that
Speaker 1: support our podcasts. That's true, It isn't that. It couldn't
Speaker 1: be any less that. Yep, ah ah, we're back. Everybody's
Speaker 1: having a good time.
Speaker 2: Everyone's having fun. Yeah. Where you know this is like, uh,
Speaker 2: I forgot that we always get to this point in
Speaker 2: the podcast where everything is just so sad that I
Speaker 2: want to die. Yeah. So sometimes I'm just going to
Speaker 2: be doing my taxes. Yeah, just letting you know this
Speaker 2: is uh. And I'll occasionally respond with, oh, you don't
Speaker 2: say that way. You'll think I'm paying attention.
Speaker 1: See, I should probably get to my taxes as well.
Speaker 2: Well. It's just it's weighing on my mind. Yeah, to
Speaker 2: do it. It's coming up very quickly. It'll be it'll
Speaker 2: be tax time by the time these episodes drop. Happy
Speaker 2: tax Day, everybody.
Speaker 1: See. That's the nice thing about studying Joseph Mangela is
Speaker 1: it makes the taxes seem a lot less unpleasant.
Speaker 2: Honestly, it really does. I was seeing that exact same thing.
Speaker 2: I was like, you know, I'm like stressing out about this.
Speaker 2: There's so many other worst things in the world. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: getting all my documents together.
Speaker 1: See that's the one song that Joseph Mengela did all
Speaker 1: of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Joey mang Thanks.
Speaker 1: So me Close takes this job that's offered to him,
Speaker 1: and he kind of nod says when Mangla makes a
Speaker 1: bunch of threats that like, if you're not good enough
Speaker 1: at doing these dissections, you know, I'll send you away
Speaker 1: to the labor camp and stuff. And this is like
Speaker 1: you have to you have to think about what an
Speaker 1: impossible fucking position me Close is in because he has
Speaker 1: no idea if his wife and daughter are still alive,
Speaker 1: like they've been immediately separated. He has no contact with them.
Speaker 1: He's quickly told when he meets with the other sunder commander,
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, man, they're gonna kill us all in
Speaker 1: like three months, Like that's just what they do every
Speaker 1: couple of months. Have some fucking gin you know, get
Speaker 1: through the night. So yeah, he goes for like weeks.
Speaker 1: He has no answer to the question of what's happened
Speaker 1: to his family, and he's just being handed bodies to
Speaker 1: dissect by doctor Mangola. We'll talk more about that in
Speaker 1: a little bit, but for right now, it's worth digging
Speaker 1: into exactly what Joseph was doing at Auschwitz. The work
Speaker 1: of carrying out selections and ordering the massacre of typhoid
Speaker 1: patients was of course enough to qualify him as a bastard.
Speaker 1: We've already met the bastard threshold sometime. Agr threshold has
Speaker 1: been far surpassed. In my opinion, we hit that at
Speaker 1: the latest during the Operation Barbarossa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I thought I have a pretty low
Speaker 2: bar for bastards. So yeah, he'd been a bastard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he leapt right over that low bar. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about what he was doing here. You know, we
Speaker 1: talked about what he did with those typhoid patients, but
Speaker 1: that's not why he's famous for being the angel of death.
Speaker 1: And for an overview of that, I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: now from the Urologic History Museum in an article talking
Speaker 1: about Nazi experiments at Auschwitz. In the first phase of
Speaker 1: his experiments, Manglis subjected pairs of twins and people with
Speaker 1: physical handicaps to specific medical examinations that could be carried
Speaker 1: out on the living organism usually painful and exhausting. These
Speaker 1: examinations lasted for hours and were a difficult experience for
Speaker 1: starved terrified children, For such were the majority of the twins.
Speaker 1: The subjects were photographed. Plaster casts were made of their
Speaker 1: teeth and jaws, and their fingerprints and toeprints were taken.
Speaker 1: As soon as the examinations of a particular pair of
Speaker 1: twins or dwarf were finished, Mengola ordered them killed by
Speaker 1: phenal injections so that he could go on to the
Speaker 1: next phase of his experiments, the comparative analysis of internal
Speaker 1: organs at autopsy. Although gynecology was not his specialty, Mangola
Speaker 1: conducted experiments on pregnant women. He had them infected with
Speaker 1: typhoid in order to determine whether or not the children
Speaker 1: would be born with the infection too. Ruth Elias was
Speaker 1: pregnant when she was transferred from Terresenstat to Auschwitz. She said,
Speaker 1: I delivered a big, beautiful blonde girl, but Mengola ordered
Speaker 1: that my breast be bound so that, as he said,
Speaker 1: we can see how long a newborn baby can survive
Speaker 1: without food. After watching her baby suffer for several days,
Speaker 1: a female check doctor gave elias a syringe with an
Speaker 1: overdose of morphine to end the child's agony.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna go hug my baby real quick.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of that. Some of the most unsettling
Speaker 1: stories about Mangola are the things that make it clear
Speaker 1: that like he's not this like unhinged, unchecked, like vehicle
Speaker 1: of maliciousness. Evil is for him, it's a technology, it's
Speaker 1: a tool. It's like picking up a screwdriver. Because there
Speaker 1: are stories where he will he will carefully and in
Speaker 1: an excellent advanced medical fashion, deliver a baby and then
Speaker 1: immediately send the mother and baby off to the gas chamber.
Speaker 2: And it's yeah, so fucked up because it's like we'd
Speaker 2: like to imagine, especially someone is you know, twisted as
Speaker 2: this fucking guy, yeah, being Jigsaw. Yeah, but he's like
Speaker 2: he's like if Jigsaw were fucking boring. He's like if
Speaker 2: Jigsaw were in you know, fucking marketing, if Jimsaw were
Speaker 2: a middle manager at a firm that reduced murdered people, right,
Speaker 2: and he is doing some bad stuff, but he's doing
Speaker 2: some bad stuff at like the administrative like like middle
Speaker 2: manager level, right, Like that's that is that is the
Speaker 2: thing kind of that he is doing, and often he is.
Speaker 2: He does kill people. He does do some of these,
Speaker 2: like Hill inject chloroform into people's hearts so that they
Speaker 2: can be killed in autopsied. But a lot of the
Speaker 2: killing and a lot of the the butchery is just
Speaker 2: other doctors who are better that he has as slaves,
Speaker 2: that he makes them do the work for him, right,
Speaker 2: Like he's delegating a lot of this. And these doctors,
Speaker 2: by the way, like absolutely no mortal judgment on them.
Speaker 2: They are participating and helping him carry out fucked up
Speaker 2: experiments so that they can save as many people as
Speaker 2: possible right through the crack, and they are saving lives.
Speaker 2: It's an incredibly it's literally the worst position a human
Speaker 2: being could be put in, Like they're doing this podcast.
Speaker 1: Ye yeah, other than this podcast. So a lot of
Speaker 1: meek work at Auschwitz involved autopsying dozens of twin pairs
Speaker 1: of children who had been killed by the Nazis. Popular accounts,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about a little bit of Menglo's butchery,
Speaker 1: go whiter than this. You will find claims that he
Speaker 1: sewed sets of twins together as part of some mad experiment,
Speaker 1: and that he ejected colored dyes into their eyes to
Speaker 1: make them change colors. And this is where we get
Speaker 1: to the stuff about Mangola that's not entirely accurate. Some
Speaker 1: of the more lurid experiments that he's accused of undertaking
Speaker 1: either didn't happen or just weren't as crazy as they sound.
Speaker 1: Mind you, all of this is bad science, but the
Speaker 1: work that Mengla did at Auschwitz was not considered unhinged
Speaker 1: or disconnected from the work of the broader German medical establishment.
Speaker 1: Rather than being a mad scientist conducting horror at Auschwitz
Speaker 1: like some sort of demented musician, he was, as we've said,
Speaker 1: a mid level piece of an engine of scientific quackery
Speaker 1: that needed body parts and lots of them to further
Speaker 1: research into heredity. And we are going to talk about
Speaker 1: that and a lot more. But I feel like I
Speaker 1: feel like we've hit our limit for this episode of.
Speaker 2: My limit for the next fifteen years. Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: too much for me.
Speaker 1: I'm fine, Yeah, good, Well, for the next For the
Speaker 1: next time we have you on, Matt, we'll find some
Speaker 1: guy who, like I don't know, convinced people to drink
Speaker 1: horse piss so they'd grow muscles, that's my favorite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll get one of those guys. Any do an.
Speaker 2: Episode on mister hands on him?
Speaker 1: Oh no, now that's a good one. Yeah. Back to
Speaker 1: Death by a Horse, that's Heroes of the Old Internet. Yes, no,
Speaker 1: this is so obviously I think we started by talking
Speaker 1: about this, but like people keep asking for Mangola over
Speaker 1: and over, like number one, as we've said, it's not
Speaker 1: responsible to just do Mangola because that's kind of falling
Speaker 1: into this great man of history. Like he was this
Speaker 1: one terrible guy who happened to get a job where
Speaker 1: he could hurt people. No, no, no, he was part
Speaker 1: of a massive engine of man tyranny that was created
Speaker 1: by the Nazis as part of like their racial plans,
Speaker 1: and he was tied in directly to mainstream medical like
Speaker 1: the mainstream medical establishment of his time, and that's an
Speaker 1: important part of his story. But also, like this is
Speaker 1: just so much worse than most of our episodes. There's
Speaker 1: not like there's not like these you know moments where
Speaker 1: he does he's never silly, like, he's never ridiculous, he's
Speaker 1: like it only makes him more evil. Yeah, no, he's
Speaker 1: he's a quiet, competent monster.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, it's the worst kind of evil because
Speaker 2: you know, he's not even occasionally stepping on a rake
Speaker 2: and hidden his face.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, Donald Trump is evil, but you get
Speaker 1: those moments of beautiful comedy where he gets arrested or something.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and and this guy is just yeah, he's
Speaker 2: the worst type of evil. He's the type of evil
Speaker 2: that makes me want to do my taxes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's really evil.
Speaker 1: This this episode has been sponsored by the Internal Revenue
Speaker 1: Service the i r S. We don't seem so bad, now,
Speaker 1: do well?
Speaker 2: Yes, the i r S. Who has you know at
Speaker 2: this point my endorsement. I'm a big fan of the
Speaker 2: way you make me think about other things. So pay
Speaker 2: your taxes on time. Yeah, I think you know, I
Speaker 2: think it's time to end those thirteen years of sobriety.
Speaker 2: I have guys, JK.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm I'm I'm. I'm gonna just kind of sit
Speaker 1: and stare at the wall for several minutes.
Speaker 3: M h.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna hug my child, and I'm gonna remind you
Speaker 2: that if you like podcasts, I do the wire Rewatch podcasts.
Speaker 2: Pot yourself a gun, we do the Sopranos, And now
Speaker 2: we're doing the Wire. It's a lot of fun and
Speaker 2: it's a good time. Everyone have fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen to that. I'll be on your wire podcast.
Speaker 2: Soon, Yes you will.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll lighten the load a little bit.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and you know it's uh, it's got its depressing moments,
Speaker 2: but not so much. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, none compared to this ship, all right.
Speaker 2: The Zoomba.
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 3: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.