Display Bilingual:

The wrongs which we seek to condemn and 00:04
punish 00:07
have been so calculated, 00:09
so malignant and so devastating 00:12
that civilization cannot tolerate their 00:16
being ignored 00:19
>> because it cannot survive. 00:28
They're being repeated. 00:31
>> This appalling program of 00:34
experimentation 00:37
by Nazi doctors on live human beings. 00:39
[Music] 00:43
I use the word doctor kind of in 00:46
inverted commas because these people 00:48
aren't curing people. They're killing 00:49
people. 00:52
When we 01:00
help 01:05
the hair 01:23
foreign. 01:35
[Applause] 01:49
Jews were not allowed to walk on the 02:04
pavements. They had to walk in the 02:06
gutters. Jews were not allowed to 02:08
practice their professions. My father 02:10
couldn't go to work anymore. At first, 02:13
we had to wear an armband, a white 02:15
armband with a blue star of David on it. 02:18
They later changed it to a yellow star, 02:21
which we had to wear. All Jews in Europe 02:24
had to wear it. One in the front, one in 02:27
the back. If you walked out without it, 02:29
you could have been shot. 02:31
They put up 10 gallows in the center of 02:36
our ghetto and they picked up 10 men 02:39
from either from work or from their 02:42
homes. And while they gathered hundreds 02:44
of people to stand by and watch it, they 02:46
hung 10 men together. These gallows were 02:49
never dismantled, but every now and 02:51
again the procedure was repeated. And we 02:53
thought it can't get any worse. 02:56
The Nazis passed the Nuremberg laws in 03:02
September 1935 and in particular the law 03:05
for the protection of German blood and 03:09
honor was the law that prohibited or 03:11
banned any marriages or sexual relations 03:14
between Jews and Aryans. 03:17
And of course the point there was to 03:20
prevent racial misogenation or racial 03:22
mixing. 03:25
The measures against Jewish people came 03:31
up first slowly but then more dangerous. 03:34
People disappeared 03:37
and then in 42 we went into hiding. 03:40
[Music] 03:44
We went in hiding from Holland where 03:46
I've been born in Vienna and when the 03:49
Nazis came there the population changed 03:52
immediately. This was quite quite 03:55
shocking and amazing. We had many 03:57
non-Jewish friends and they all turned 04:00
against us. 04:02
For me as a child, something I couldn't 04:06
understand at all. 04:08
[Applause] 04:13
[Music] 04:15
I remember one incident a shoe maker 04:25
that lived not far away from us. They 04:28
went into him barely made a living and 04:30
stabbed him to death. 04:33
95% they used to get drunk after their 04:35
meetings. This was our party. And then 04:38
they went out just beating up juice. 04:41
They used to throw stones in windows, 04:46
breaking windows and this kind of thing. 04:48
But mainly the people were locked up and 04:53
they were in their houses and the their 04:55
apartments and everybody didn't go out 04:57
at the time when they knew that you're 04:59
going to have a meeting. 05:00
So this was the kind of a life they went 05:02
through day after day. 05:04
[Music] 05:07
There was this concept called racial 05:09
hygiene which sounds as basically as 05:11
disgusting as it was. It's this idea 05:14
that you have a race of of pure people. 05:16
With the Nazis, it was meant to be pure 05:18
Aryans. That was the word they used for 05:20
sort of kind of basically tall white 05:22
people. And they didn't want their race, 05:24
the Aryan race to be sullied, if you 05:27
like, by people from other races. So the 05:29
whole idea of different races breeding 05:32
with each other was seen as being kind 05:33
of, you know, medically totally 05:35
objectionable. It was, you know, 05:37
racially unhygienic. 05:39
The Nazi regime was concerned to create 05:44
a pure national community and in order 05:48
to do so it enlisted the help of medical 05:52
professionals so doctors, physicians, 05:54
psychiatrists also demographers, 05:57
population policy experts in order to 06:00
create the perfect society that it 06:02
wanted to create. So it really harnessed 06:05
the skills and the expertise of the 06:06
medical profession and drew the medical 06:09
experts very closely into the remitt of 06:11
the regime. 06:15
>> You you only had to walk into any 06:18
university library in Germany and and go 06:20
to the medical section and see journal 06:22
after journal, book after book uh about 06:24
this whole idea of racial purity, 06:27
combating uh hereditary diseases. And so 06:30
the medical profession looked at what 06:32
Hitler was doing, looked at what the 06:34
Nazis were doing and going, "This is 06:35
great. This is exactly where medical 06:37
philosophy in Germany is taking us. This 06:39
is what we want to happen." You know, in 06:42
other countries such as Britain and the 06:44
United States, people were far more wary 06:45
of this idea of kind of trying to breed 06:48
out weakness. They didn't necessarily 06:51
think it was that humane because it 06:53
really isn't. 06:54
In 1933, there wasn't a law to to stop a 07:01
kind of racial intermingling, you know, 07:05
and and and sex with people from 07:07
different races. Um, you know, the Nazis 07:09
did not like this whole idea of mixed 07:11
race people and it took the blood 07:13
protection law in September 1935 in 07:15
Nuremberg and that does make, you know, 07:18
relationships between kind of black 07:21
people and white people, between Jews 07:23
and non-Jews completely illegal. um it 07:25
would become a criminal act to actually 07:28
you know if you were an Aryan uh to go 07:31
to bed or marry a Jew. It seems 07:34
absolutely insane that you know the kind 07:36
of reach that Nazi party and Nazi medics 07:38
had on people's private lives. You know 07:40
surely you should be allowed to 07:43
reproduce with exactly who you want but 07:44
no the whole idea is you had to keep 07:46
things racially pure and if you have a 07:48
mixed race child that's going to be bad 07:51
for Germany. 07:53
[Music] 07:56
I don't think that anybody even us in 08:12
our wanted to feel like a piece of meat 08:15
and we have been reduced in this case to 08:19
a mass of breathing living cells. 08:22
So much of the detail of the experiment 08:27
I still do not remember because the only 08:31
way I could cope with it is by blocking 08:34
it out. I would let my mind just take 08:36
off into other directions. 08:39
Nazi medical experimentation then was a 08:53
drastic set of policies in which the 08:57
concentration camp prisoners were 09:01
experimented on often to the point of 09:03
death and if they didn't die during the 09:05
experiments they were often killed 09:08
subsequently. 09:10
This has been something of a taboo 09:12
subject. So in terms of questions of 09:14
medical ethics and medical research, 09:17
such difficult moral questions of 09:20
course, but I think that perhaps this 09:23
particular episode in a very dark 09:26
history of the whole of the Third Reich 09:28
is less wellknown and less well 09:30
understood, 09:33
perhaps reflecting an unwillingness to 09:34
come to terms or to address what was 09:37
essentially Nazi murderous science. 09:41
A friend of mine, they took her in for 09:46
surgeries. 09:50
She came back in the afternoon 09:52
and she was really 09:57
I mean we saw that she lost her mind. 09:59
She I mean the pain was so terrible 10:03
and she was still bleeding you know when 10:08
they pushed her out in the hospital 10:10
and then she said 10:14
they won't do that to me again 10:18
and she started running before we knew 10:20
it. There she was. 10:23
Yeah. She went to the fence. 10:26
She couldn't tolerate the pain. 10:29
What they did, they took you in and they 10:33
inflicted wounds on you and then to see 10:36
how it would heal if soldiers were 10:39
wounded like that. If they could 10:42
if there is a way to 10:46
>> one of the other kind of hallmarks of 10:48
Nazi medicine, if you like, is is not 10:50
just involuntary euthanasia and killing 10:53
the incurable, life unworthy of life, 10:55
getting rid of it. It's also this 10:58
appalling program of experimentation 11:00
by Nazi doctors on live human beings. 11:04
It's no accident in in the SS, you know, 11:11
Hinrich Himmler's kind of elite core of 11:13
of of evil. Really, there's no other way 11:17
of putting it. The profession that had 11:18
the most representation, the SS was the 11:20
medical profession. Doctors join the SS 11:23
in their droves. 11:25
Some of the most well-known of the Nazi 11:28
doctors were Yseph Mangala most known at 11:31
Avitz. Also Dr. Sigman Rasher who 11:35
conducted freezing and high alitude 11:38
experiments among other experiments at 11:42
DHA. 11:43
Klaus Carl Schilling who conducted 11:45
malaria experiments at Dah. 11:48
Carl Clowberg, a gynecologist at Avitz 11:51
who used hundreds of female prisoners to 11:55
conduct artificial insemination and mass 11:59
sterilization. 12:02
And Carl Vinett who was involved in 12:04
hormone research and was particularly 12:08
interested in experimenting on 12:10
homosexual men to see if he could cure 12:13
them. 12:16
Today there are a lot of people who who 12:20
regard, you know, frankly, experiments 12:22
on animals, you know, morally 12:24
objectionable. Well, how about if you 12:26
were kind of experimenting on living 12:28
human beings and that is what takes 12:29
place in so many concentration and 12:31
extermination camps all over the Third 12:33
Reich. 12:35
One of the things that Rashid does is 12:40
that he puts people in in pressure 12:42
chambers and he either increases or 12:44
decreases the pressure to simulate 12:46
different altitudes uh in which you 12:48
might not have any oxygen to see what 12:50
pilots could cope with. A and there is 12:51
footage you can see these poor men 12:53
usually in the and they're in agony 12:56
because the pressure is either too 12:58
little or too much in these chambers and 13:00
their their their bodies are screaming 13:02
out. They're literally screaming out or 13:03
they're put into freezing water and 13:05
they're basically made to get 13:07
hypothermia. And you know what is this 13:09
teaching anybody? If you get into 13:11
freezing water, you're going to get very 13:12
cold and then you're going to die. 13:14
Everybody knew that before Sigman Rash 13:15
is doing it in Dow. H how can this be 13:17
medically acceptable? What with a 13:20
stopwatch? You're just going to murder 13:22
someone and that's going to teach you 13:23
about what the human body can endure. 13:25
Where does that end? You're murdering 13:27
someone. And the whole idea, Rasher 13:29
would turn around and go, "This person's 13:31
not important. This person's unworthy of 13:33
life anyway, so we might as well use his 13:36
living body to gain some more data for 13:38
our wonderful Nazi medical experiments." 13:41
And you know, he kills about 300 people 13:43
of hypothermia alone. You know, how is 13:45
that medically useful? That's just 13:48
sadism. 13:50
Although we think we know quite a lot 13:54
about all the sinister and extreme 13:56
policies and brutalities of the Nazi 13:59
regime, 14:02
perhaps we understand less and know less 14:03
really about the extent and the 14:06
parameters and the scale of the human 14:08
medical experimentation that went on in 14:11
the Nazi camps. 14:14
We can take a figure of about 15,000, 14:17
20% of whom were Jewish and we know that 14:22
also a lot of the other experiments were 14:25
on the Cintian Roma and on prisoners of 14:27
war and other political prisoners. 14:30
In terms of the scale of the 14:36
experimentation though, if we take into 14:37
account large-scale nutritional project 14:39
at Mount Housen concentration camp as 14:43
well as other anthropological 14:45
experiments, the number can go up to an 14:47
estimate of around 90,000. 14:50
There was a sense that the sinister side 14:54
and the brutal side perhaps would never 14:58
be discovered. 15:00
The doctors and the scientists engaged 15:02
in carrying out the research did so with 15:06
callousness, very much coldheartedness, 15:08
brutality, but also especially with 15:12
impunity. 15:14
The truth is I witness I witness 15:19
hanging. I witness shooting. I witness 15:21
terrible beatings. I witness in Bhenwald 15:26
where they had a hose with a regulator 15:29
and had women out there by the wall 15:33
pregnant tried to see how much pressure 15:36
it takes to make a hole. 15:39
[Music] 15:41
I saw a pit in a where they made soap 15:43
from people. 15:46
You throw in people and took the fat and 15:48
make soap for the German military, 15:50
boiling water, 15:54
big pool. 15:57
I mean, there's a lot of things. Sure, 15:59
you you know, you don't want to talk 16:01
about it because it's, you know, I choke 16:03
or I start crying or something like 16:05
that. And besides, I tell you this is 16:08
except people they've been in there, 16:11
they saw it and witness this, it's very 16:13
hard for people even to imagine that 16:15
that this was there that this happened, 16:19
you know, taking people and throwing 16:21
them in and boiling water making soap 16:24
for the German army. a minute. There's 16:25
no one in the pictures that you know. 16:27
>> Mangala in my case never ever talked to 16:36
me. He talked about me. He talked at me. 16:41
You have to realize Mangala did not 16:46
treat us as human beings. 16:49
with just his treasured 16:52
experiment subjects. 16:56
>> Now, we shouldn't really even give him 17:00
the title doctor because what he did was 17:01
so anti-medical and actually the 17:03
university that gave him his degree took 17:05
away that degree when it discovered what 17:07
he had been doing. 17:09
>> He became very well known on the 17:11
arrivals ramp at Ashvitz. So when the 17:13
train loads of new prisoners arrived, he 17:16
could be seen there in a very callous 17:19
and matter-of-act manner directing um 17:21
the new arrivals straight to the gas 17:24
chambers or to work duties. 17:26
We arrived at Awitz and um there was 17:34
some Jewish people came up the train. He 17:38
said to us whatever we do don't say that 17:41
we are sick and we stand in the line and 17:46
Mangala was sitting there Dr. Mangala 17:51
they called them 17:55
and u 17:57
left right you know older the older 18:00
indeed they announced 18:03
every uh young woman should take the 18:06
baby give the children to the elderly to 18:08
the mothers to the elderly people. 18:11
Then when we came in the line you know 18:15
Mangala 18:17
he said uh he said on Germany he talked 18:19
us if we are healthy we are sick or 18:24
something is hurting us. He talked so 18:29
nice so soft you know things. 18:32
It seems that he sometimes spent time 18:40
there in an offduty capacity because he 18:43
was interested particularly in twins and 18:45
in people with dwarfism. So it seemed 18:49
that he would just turn up and sort of 18:52
have a look and see if he could pull any 18:54
people out of the line who were of 18:56
interest to him. Families would be 18:58
separated, children would be separated 19:00
from their parents and and the loss they 19:02
would see of their parents, you know, 19:04
would would be them going off to this 19:05
this weird sort of building with a 19:07
chimney coming out of it. 19:09
What Mangala was also looking out for, 19:13
and why he was particularly keen on 19:16
being there to receive these new 19:18
prisoners, he wanted to find twins. He 19:20
was obsessed with twins. 19:23
Why was he obsessed with twins? Because 19:31
what you can do with twins, if you are 19:33
basically an evil Nazi doctor, which is 19:35
what Mingala was, is that you can 19:37
experiment on one twin and then see, you 19:39
know, what goes on with that twin and 19:42
compare it to the still healthy twin. 19:44
So, you've got to kind of control as as 19:46
as medics call it. 19:48
>> I thought I was the only one. 19:51
In fact, it's interesting when in 1985 19:54
when we first found out there were other 19:57
twins who survived Ashitz, I said to 20:00
Renee, I said I thought we were the only 20:04
kids who survived. How could there be 20:06
anybody else? What do you mean there are 20:08
twins? 20:10
So, no, I 20:14
had no idea that anybody else was having 20:16
anything done to them. 20:19
We would stand by our bunk beds with our 20:21
hands behind our back like little 20:24
soldiers for mangalis inspection. 20:26
There was two we had three supervisor in 20:30
our back block 20:34
and one of them would stand at the front 20:37
and say mangala is coming 20:39
and everybody would just it's like like 20:43
some kind of a horror was entering. He 20:45
would come very elegantly with his hands 20:49
behind his back. He had his stick in his 20:53
hand. He would hit it sometime against 20:55
his riding boots and start counting. He 20:57
always had at least six people with him 21:00
many times, as many as eight or 10. Was 21:03
a big entourage. 21:06
>> What Alitz represented to Mangalow was 21:07
an absolutely unparalleled opportunity 21:09
to experiment on live human beings in a 21:12
way that you simply couldn't do outside 21:14
a place like Achvitz. You got to 21:17
remember that what mangallay symbolizes 21:19
is the ultimate embodiment of Nazi 21:21
medicine if you like. 21:23
Unfortunately, a lot of memories of um 21:32
the hospital and um the doctor's office, 21:35
it I seem to recall spending a great 21:40
deal of time 21:43
um there. also being in the hospital 21:46
and being very sick. 21:51
I know one time when I went to the 21:55
doctor's office, they took blood from me 21:57
and it was extremely painful because it 22:00
was from the left side of my neck. 22:03
That's a strange thing to remember. 22:05
I also remember having blood taken out 22:09
of my finger, but that wasn't quite so 22:12
bad. 22:14
And 22:16
I also remember having to sit um very 22:17
still for long periods to be measured 22:21
and 22:24
or weigh or and x-rays. I I remember 22:26
x-rays. X-rays 22:32
and injections. I remember injections. 22:36
And then I'd be sick because then I I'd 22:40
be in this hospital 22:44
and I remember having a high fever 22:47
because I know they were taking my 22:52
temperature. Somebody was 22:54
um 22:57
I really got to hate doctors. 22:59
>> I was with other I had to think were 23:03
twins. My visits to the um hospital I 23:06
don't think were anywhere near as 23:11
frequent as Irene's 23:12
and I don't remember ever being 23:14
invaded into my body. The only thing I 23:18
remember them doing to me is measuring. 23:20
And I do remember uh the runin the x-ray 23:24
I guess it was runken. I remember that 23:29
name. They used runin a lot and had to 23:31
stand still or sit still for a very long 23:34
time for this process to take place. It 23:36
was cold wherever you were. 23:38
Uh but that that was just about the 23:41
experience with the hospital. Very 23:45
minimal compared to Irene's. 23:47
One of the most horrific experiments the 23:54
Mangala did was to try and change the 23:56
color of people's eyes by injecting dye 23:58
into their eyes without any anesthetic. 24:01
You can imagine the pain on that. Why? 24:03
Because he thought that people with blue 24:06
eyes were racially more pure than people 24:07
who didn't have blue eyes. Well, the 24:09
idea that you just inject someone with 24:11
blue dye into their eyes and that's 24:13
going to kind of make them better is 24:15
clearly insane and it has to be seen as 24:17
sadism rather than anything, you know, 24:19
medically useful. 24:21
What he would also do would carry out 24:23
sterilizations, often without anesthetic 24:26
because he just wanted to try and see 24:28
what was the quickest way of sterilizing 24:30
women who were racially impure. If you 24:33
could make lots and lots of women 24:36
sterile very very quickly, that was 24:37
going to be a really good thing for the 24:39
Nazis to do to stop all these people 24:40
from reproducing. 24:42
We saw the the children in the camps for 24:45
mangala used to experime 24:48
in in the barracks not very long maybe 24:53
four weeks or six weeks I forgot 24:56
uh where I used to clean the bar. So 24:59
this was visible within the camp, but 25:01
again, I don't think a lot of people 25:04
took notice of it because everybody 25:06
tried to survive. So you didn't worry 25:07
about somebody else's problems. 25:10
And besides, you couldn't do nothing 25:13
about it anyway. You know, you lived on 25:14
the dictatorship. 25:16
You were just a number, not a not not a 25:19
person. 25:22
You know, I remember times when that was 25:25
a luxury which literally you envy the 25:27
people that were dead. You envy them. I 25:30
done it many times. Many times. 25:34
Cuz he no longer has to go through this 25:40
ordeal. He doesn't have to suffer. He's 25:42
finished. 25:45
So dying was a luxury 25:48
>> in a very grim way. You know what 25:52
Mangala thought he was doing was was 25:54
completely correct. And what he has in a 25:56
place like Ashvitz is living human 25:59
material he can experiment on. Under 26:02
normal circumstances, no, you're not 26:05
experimenting on living human beings. 26:07
But these people are largely Jews. 26:09
They're not worthy of life. And so if 26:11
you no longer see these beings as human 26:14
beings, it becomes very easy for someone 26:16
like Mangallay just to think of them as, 26:19
you know, like kind of lab rats. 26:20
One day I couldn't take anymore the pain 26:25
in my mouth. I had a very sore mouth. My 26:28
tongue was hanging out. I couldn't even 26:30
keep my tongue in my mouth. And there 26:33
was uh medical help, so-called medical 26:36
help. They said I should if anybody 26:39
wants a little treatment or help, but 26:41
you took a chance because that could 26:43
have mean that you going to the gas 26:45
chambers. But I couldn't take it any 26:47
longer. I said my mouth is very I have 26:49
very much pain. So they took us in 26:51
another room 26:53
and there was a lady who was a doctor 26:56
and she smeared something in my mouth. 26:58
As I was in that room there was Dr. 27:01
Mangala. 27:03
There were a few ladies on the floor. 27:05
They just gave birth. You see they come 27:08
to they came to Ashitz just in the 27:11
beginning of their pregnancy. Nobody 27:14
knew they were pregnant otherwise they 27:15
would have put them in the gas chambers. 27:16
But as they get they stayed there, the 27:18
baby developed and had to be born. So 27:21
the ladies were on the floor in that 27:24
room and there was about 10 babies on a 27:27
wooden bench wrapped in paper crying 27:29
and the mothers were were on the floor 27:34
all exhausted from giving birth. 27:36
I looked at Mangala. He was going to 27:39
each baby. Gave a needle for each baby 27:42
right in front of my eyes. So help me 27:46
God. 27:49
And those babies never cried again. 27:51
Right there. He killed one after 27:55
another. 27:57
And the mothers were so exhausted they 27:59
were half asleep from giving birth. 28:02
And then another thing happened. One 28:07
night a woman was very very sick in our 28:08
block 28:12
some she was in terrible pain and she 28:14
had about a 14 year old daughter with 28:16
her. So the daughter was running to the 28:18
block. Please help my mother help my 28:20
mother. So that was at night. So all of 28:22
a sudden we heard that meant everybody 28:26
got so quiet you could hear a pin 28:28
falling on the floor when Mangala walked 28:30
in. And he went up to the lady he looked 28:32
at her. He gave her a needle. 28:36
The woman was quiet forever. I suppose 28:41
they took her out. She looked dead and 28:44
I'm sure she was there. 28:46
>> One of the reasons why Mangallay becomes 28:49
this really kind of notorious figure is 28:50
because he does manage to escape after 28:53
the war. You know, when the Russians 28:55
come to outfits in January 1945, yes, 28:56
they find a load of kind of living 28:59
skeletons, if you like, but what they 29:01
don't do is find people like Joseph 29:03
Mangallay because he's got out. He knows 29:04
what he's done is wrong. Otherwise, why 29:07
would he want to escape? 29:08
So, he lives in hiding in Germany until 29:11
1949. And then he eventually escapes to 29:14
South America where he spends, you know, 29:17
the rest of his days until 1979 when he 29:19
drowns, probably has a stroke off a 29:23
beach in Brazil. He never faces justice. 29:26
What's really chilling about Mangallay 29:31
is that throughout the rest of his life, 29:33
he always would justify what he had done 29:35
in Achvitz. He had always thought he had 29:38
done the morally correct thing. And in 29:40
fact, he meets his son Rolf in 1977. 29:42
This is two years now before Mangala 29:45
dies and he's in his late 60s. And Rol 29:47
starts asking questions. Look, you know, 29:50
dad, you know, why did you do this in 29:52
Avitz? Why did you experiment with 29:55
people? Why did you kill people? A and 29:57
Mangallay would go through to two 29:59
different stages. First of all, he would 30:01
kind of deny that he had done many of 30:02
the things that the people said he had 30:05
done. Um, you know, and frankly, there 30:06
may have been slightly an element of 30:08
truth to that because there was an 30:10
enormous amount of mythologizing of what 30:11
Mangala did. But when he would admit to 30:14
doing some of the things, he said to 30:16
Rol, his son, you know, I've done 30:18
nothing wrong. I was saving lives and 30:19
out of it. I wasn't ending them. and and 30:21
he would see his work on the selection 30:23
ramps for starters saying to people, 30:25
well, you're going to live and you're 30:28
going to die. You know, we see that as 30:29
sending people to their deaths. Megalith 30:31
saw that as sending people to their 30:32
continued life because he had this 30:34
attitude that everybody there was going 30:37
to die anyway. So, in fact, he was, you 30:38
know, kind of delaying their deaths. He 30:40
was being the nice guy. And he also 30:41
would say that the experiments he did 30:44
were for the good of humanity that this 30:45
was an an essential role of medicine was 30:47
to experiment on people. It is totally 30:51
possible of course that Mangala deep 30:54
down in his you know deep dark heart 30:56
knew what he had done was completely 30:59
amoral and completely wrong and perhaps 31:01
he could never admit it to himself. If 31:03
that's the case it showed an enormous 31:05
amount of moral cowardice. 31:07
4 million people lost their lives at 31:10
Awitz. 31:13
The 620 barracks housed from 180 to 31:15
200,000 inmates. 31:20
Fascist builders had designed a singular 31:24
architecture 31:27
for people condemned to death. 31:29
There is no support. There's people just 31:36
absolutely full with their own misery 31:40
and pain. 31:43
There is no support. There is nobody. 31:47
You're on your own. You're on your own 31:49
with your thoughts and your pain and 31:52
your misery. There you're totally on 31:54
your own. 31:57
[Music] 31:59
Unbelievable that human beings cultivate 32:08
intelligent 32:12
human beings can treat other innocent 32:13
people like well worse than cattle. 32:18
One of the most kind of brutal, 32:30
pointless, sadistic uh Nazi experiments 32:32
was carried out in Saxonhousen 32:36
concentration camp on what was ominously 32:37
called the shoe testing track. 32:40
Prisoners were made to walk along like 32:43
25 30 miles a day, endlessly testing 32:46
various shoes until the shoes, you know, 32:50
were were completely worn out. And the 32:52
track had lots of different types of 32:54
surfaces on it. And of course, you know, 32:55
it it was barbaric because what you're 32:58
doing is you're making them walk or run 32:59
for hours at a time until these people 33:01
collapse. Doesn't matter how hot it is. 33:03
And of course, you know, the shoes would 33:06
wear thin. It didn't matter cuz their 33:07
feet would end up sort of bloodied. And 33:08
people would just be kind of almost walk 33:11
to their deaths or made to run to their 33:12
deaths just to test shoes. 33:14
[Music] 33:18
In the wounding experiments, the doctors 33:21
took perfectly healthy human beings and 33:25
inflicted injuries upon them that were 33:29
supposed to replicate war wounds and 33:32
they deliberately introduced foreign 33:34
objects like 33:37
of wood as well as deliberately 33:40
introducing infection um and bacteria to 33:42
the rooms as well. 33:45
As far as the practitioners were 33:49
concerned and the perpetrators, 33:52
they could somehow justify to themselves 33:54
the viciousness and the callousness and 33:58
brutality of these experiments by 34:01
somehow arguing that they were vital and 34:04
important for the future, for the future 34:06
of the Aryan race, for the future of 34:09
science. Even the Nazis had enough of a 34:11
moral compass to know that what they 34:14
were doing ultimately was wrong. other 34:15
cultures, other societies, you know, 34:18
wouldn't do it. And Himmler makes this 34:20
very famous speech in a place called 34:23
Posen in which he tells the assembled 34:25
kind of SS there, that look, what we've 34:27
got to do, what our generation's got to 34:29
do, it's distasteful. It's horrible. You 34:31
know, it, you know, killing all these 34:35
people is is is going to be a really 34:36
hard and tough thing to do. But 34:39
actually, humanity is going to thank us, 34:41
you know, in centuries and millennia to 34:44
come that we've got rid of these people. 34:45
[Music] 34:50
I'm 35:14
sorry. 35:21
[Music] 35:23
Foreign 35:26
speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. 35:38
[Music] 35:43
on 35:49
your hard 35:52
and hard in 35:54
[Music] 36:04
today. In the waning weeks of the 36:07
European War, the world sees proof of 36:09
acts of savagery unparalleled in 36:12
history. The Supreme Allied commander 36:15
himself views the Nazi murder mills with 36:17
his generals. Fearing that word of these 36:19
nameless horrors might not be believed 36:22
at home, he summons lawmakers and 36:24
editors to see for themselves, then 36:26
report to America. 36:29
At this fish gallows, men died in drawn 36:33
out agony. In the new light of this 36:36
camera record, the last war's atrocity 36:39
stories, once thought propaganda, gain 36:41
new credence. 36:44
The international community had a very 36:48
good idea from the word go that the 36:50
Nazis were anti-Semitic. But I don't 36:52
think anybody believed that Jews were 36:54
going to be killed on an industrial 36:57
scale. Uh it was a fullyfledged 36:59
industrial genocide. The Jews were 37:04
murdered in thousands at a time in gas 37:08
chambers and then their bodies were 37:11
subsequently cremated. When the Allied 37:13
forces turned up at the camps, places 37:16
like Bellson, uh the world was horrified 37:18
when they saw the footage that emerged, 37:22
you know, corpses piled up having to be 37:24
bulldozed into pits. And the Allied 37:26
forces when they saw what had been done 37:29
to all these people in the camps, they 37:31
often got local Germans in to come and 37:33
see what had been done in their name. 37:35
And and obviously they also made, you 37:37
know, some of the people running the 37:40
camps, the SS not only help, you know, 37:41
clean up the camps and and, you know, 37:44
dispose of the bodies, but obviously 37:46
there was also summary justice. Uh even 37:48
though it's not kind of officially 37:51
recorded, there are many stories of 37:53
troops getting absolutely livid with um 37:55
some of the SS who you know ran the 37:58
camps and just shooting them out of 38:00
hand. 38:01
The question of how much the Germans 38:09
knew about what had happened to the 38:11
Jewish population is very complex. So 38:13
certainly they knew that their Jewish 38:16
compatriots were disappearing, being 38:19
taken away. They were being taken away. 38:21
They believed as indeed some of the 38:24
Jewish people themselves believed they 38:26
were taken away to work um in the east. 38:27
You know during the war leaked out from 38:31
people who had escaped some camps. There 38:34
were aerial pictures uh taken of places 38:36
like Achvitz. So you know by the middle 38:38
of the war uh the world at large had a 38:41
very good idea that this slaughter was 38:44
being carried out on an industrial 38:47
scale. Yes, some rumors did circulate 38:49
back um from soldiers on leave and um 38:52
other information did filter back to the 38:55
Reich, but the the German population was 38:58
busy with facing its own war, dealing on 39:01
a day-to-day basis with the course of 39:04
the war, Allied bombings, rationing, 39:06
food shortages. 39:08
It took a long time for the German 39:10
people to really come to terms with what 39:12
had been done in their name. I think a 39:14
lot of German people throughout the war 39:16
had had more than an inkling, but I 39:17
don't think they knew the extent of the 39:20
savagery of what went on, you know, 39:22
behind those miles upon miles of barbed 39:24
wire. 39:27
>> There was a deliberate policy on the 39:28
part of the Nazis that this 39:29
extermination should take place not on 39:31
German soil. So these death camps were 39:34
all in Poland. So they were out of the 39:37
direct line of vision of the German 39:38
population, 39:41
>> you know, as as well as places like 39:42
Achvitz, which were relatively easy to 39:43
keep quite secret. What people also knew 39:46
about from troops returning from the 39:48
front and especially from the eastern 39:50
front was the Inats group and the mobile 39:52
killing squads that went behind the 39:55
German lines, killing anybody they 39:57
regarded as being an enemy of the Third 40:00
Reich, such as Jews and communists and 40:02
so on. a and these group had killed 40:05
millions of people and it was impossible 40:07
to keep that quiet. 40:09
>> So once again there had been some 40:11
knowledge but limited knowledge about 40:13
the extent of what the Nazi regime was 40:15
putting into place in terms of um this 40:19
genocide that was taking place in in the 40:21
death camps. 40:24
>> When when the Germans fully appreciated 40:25
what had been done in their name by the 40:29
Nazis, it took a very long time for that 40:30
to sink in. If you look at public 40:33
opinion polls carried out in the 40s and 40:34
the 50s in Germany, there was still a 40:36
lot of residual affection for Nazism. It 40:38
was felt that this was something that 40:41
had made Germany great again. It was 40:43
something that had got things moving and 40:45
done. Yes, there had been excesses, the 40:47
small matter of the Holocaust clearly, 40:50
but people some people in Germany were 40:53
willing just to say if we can divorce 40:56
the kind of genocide bit from Nazism, 40:58
you know, is Nazism so bad? So there was 41:01
still this sort of kind of I'm not 41:03
saying all Germans I mean but a minority 41:05
of Germans were still you know 41:08
affectionate uh towards Nazism and 41:10
towards Hitler but I think yes 41:12
ultimately when it was shown quite how 41:14
evil Nazism was and the German people 41:16
fully appreciated it then yes uh the 41:18
opinion of Hitler was not quite so 41:21
positive. 41:23
Well, as you get older, I taught as 41:27
older you get, you forget what happens. 41:29
And it worked quite different. The older 41:32
you get, the more it works on you. The 41:34
more guilty you feel that you alive or 41:36
how did you really survive or your 41:39
family becomes more important to you 41:42
generates the feelings of revulsion. 41:48
Something you just cannot imagine or 41:52
take in. 41:54
But the will to live is extraordinarily 41:56
strong even under these conditions. 42:01
And the way I went through my period in 42:04
the camps was 42:09
each morning trying to do my best to 42:12
still be alive that evening. 42:16
[Music] 42:23
It's very disturbing. Of course, it's 42:28
very painful. You know, I live today 42:30
with 42:33
nights that I don't sleep, wondering 42:35
what went through their mind before 42:38
they're dead, what they felt, what they 42:40
were thinking of. Cuz it didn't take 42:42
very long to know. You know, you go into 42:44
the gas chamber. Took a minute and a 42:46
half, 2 minutes. You start choking. 42:49
You're still a little bit conscious 42:51
till you're dead. And this is a very 42:54
pretty fast process, but a very slow 42:56
one. When you suffer 30 seconds is a is 42:59
is a year. And the screaming and the 43:02
hollering is still ringing in my ears. 43:06
Doesn't go away. Does never go away. 43:09
[Music] 43:16
[Music] 43:25
Quite frankly, I don't think that any 43:34
human being can ever be prepared for a 43:38
place like oh No matter how much 43:41
persecution before the 43:44
[Music] 43:46
I thought for a while it seemed like I 43:53
am watching 43:56
something that it's not really relating 43:58
to me. I was numb. 44:02
I closed my eyes and I thought maybe 44:08
this is a nightmare and if I close them 44:10
and open them up again maybe the whole 44:12
thing will disappear. 44:14
[Music] 44:22
[Music] 44:39
[Music] 44:48
[Music] 45:04
[Music] 45:19

– English Lyrics

📲 "" is trending – don’t miss the chance to learn it in the app!
By
Viewed
13,831
Language
Learn this song

Lyrics & Translation

[English]
The wrongs which we seek to condemn and
punish
have been so calculated,
so malignant and so devastating
that civilization cannot tolerate their
being ignored
>> because it cannot survive.
They're being repeated.
>> This appalling program of
experimentation
by Nazi doctors on live human beings.
[Music]
I use the word doctor kind of in
inverted commas because these people
aren't curing people. They're killing
people.
When we
help
the hair
foreign.
[Applause]
Jews were not allowed to walk on the
pavements. They had to walk in the
gutters. Jews were not allowed to
practice their professions. My father
couldn't go to work anymore. At first,
we had to wear an armband, a white
armband with a blue star of David on it.
They later changed it to a yellow star,
which we had to wear. All Jews in Europe
had to wear it. One in the front, one in
the back. If you walked out without it,
you could have been shot.
They put up 10 gallows in the center of
our ghetto and they picked up 10 men
from either from work or from their
homes. And while they gathered hundreds
of people to stand by and watch it, they
hung 10 men together. These gallows were
never dismantled, but every now and
again the procedure was repeated. And we
thought it can't get any worse.
The Nazis passed the Nuremberg laws in
September 1935 and in particular the law
for the protection of German blood and
honor was the law that prohibited or
banned any marriages or sexual relations
between Jews and Aryans.
And of course the point there was to
prevent racial misogenation or racial
mixing.
The measures against Jewish people came
up first slowly but then more dangerous.
People disappeared
and then in 42 we went into hiding.
[Music]
We went in hiding from Holland where
I've been born in Vienna and when the
Nazis came there the population changed
immediately. This was quite quite
shocking and amazing. We had many
non-Jewish friends and they all turned
against us.
For me as a child, something I couldn't
understand at all.
[Applause]
[Music]
I remember one incident a shoe maker
that lived not far away from us. They
went into him barely made a living and
stabbed him to death.
95% they used to get drunk after their
meetings. This was our party. And then
they went out just beating up juice.
They used to throw stones in windows,
breaking windows and this kind of thing.
But mainly the people were locked up and
they were in their houses and the their
apartments and everybody didn't go out
at the time when they knew that you're
going to have a meeting.
So this was the kind of a life they went
through day after day.
[Music]
There was this concept called racial
hygiene which sounds as basically as
disgusting as it was. It's this idea
that you have a race of of pure people.
With the Nazis, it was meant to be pure
Aryans. That was the word they used for
sort of kind of basically tall white
people. And they didn't want their race,
the Aryan race to be sullied, if you
like, by people from other races. So the
whole idea of different races breeding
with each other was seen as being kind
of, you know, medically totally
objectionable. It was, you know,
racially unhygienic.
The Nazi regime was concerned to create
a pure national community and in order
to do so it enlisted the help of medical
professionals so doctors, physicians,
psychiatrists also demographers,
population policy experts in order to
create the perfect society that it
wanted to create. So it really harnessed
the skills and the expertise of the
medical profession and drew the medical
experts very closely into the remitt of
the regime.
>> You you only had to walk into any
university library in Germany and and go
to the medical section and see journal
after journal, book after book uh about
this whole idea of racial purity,
combating uh hereditary diseases. And so
the medical profession looked at what
Hitler was doing, looked at what the
Nazis were doing and going, "This is
great. This is exactly where medical
philosophy in Germany is taking us. This
is what we want to happen." You know, in
other countries such as Britain and the
United States, people were far more wary
of this idea of kind of trying to breed
out weakness. They didn't necessarily
think it was that humane because it
really isn't.
In 1933, there wasn't a law to to stop a
kind of racial intermingling, you know,
and and and sex with people from
different races. Um, you know, the Nazis
did not like this whole idea of mixed
race people and it took the blood
protection law in September 1935 in
Nuremberg and that does make, you know,
relationships between kind of black
people and white people, between Jews
and non-Jews completely illegal. um it
would become a criminal act to actually
you know if you were an Aryan uh to go
to bed or marry a Jew. It seems
absolutely insane that you know the kind
of reach that Nazi party and Nazi medics
had on people's private lives. You know
surely you should be allowed to
reproduce with exactly who you want but
no the whole idea is you had to keep
things racially pure and if you have a
mixed race child that's going to be bad
for Germany.
[Music]
I don't think that anybody even us in
our wanted to feel like a piece of meat
and we have been reduced in this case to
a mass of breathing living cells.
So much of the detail of the experiment
I still do not remember because the only
way I could cope with it is by blocking
it out. I would let my mind just take
off into other directions.
Nazi medical experimentation then was a
drastic set of policies in which the
concentration camp prisoners were
experimented on often to the point of
death and if they didn't die during the
experiments they were often killed
subsequently.
This has been something of a taboo
subject. So in terms of questions of
medical ethics and medical research,
such difficult moral questions of
course, but I think that perhaps this
particular episode in a very dark
history of the whole of the Third Reich
is less wellknown and less well
understood,
perhaps reflecting an unwillingness to
come to terms or to address what was
essentially Nazi murderous science.
A friend of mine, they took her in for
surgeries.
She came back in the afternoon
and she was really
I mean we saw that she lost her mind.
She I mean the pain was so terrible
and she was still bleeding you know when
they pushed her out in the hospital
and then she said
they won't do that to me again
and she started running before we knew
it. There she was.
Yeah. She went to the fence.
She couldn't tolerate the pain.
What they did, they took you in and they
inflicted wounds on you and then to see
how it would heal if soldiers were
wounded like that. If they could
if there is a way to
>> one of the other kind of hallmarks of
Nazi medicine, if you like, is is not
just involuntary euthanasia and killing
the incurable, life unworthy of life,
getting rid of it. It's also this
appalling program of experimentation
by Nazi doctors on live human beings.
It's no accident in in the SS, you know,
Hinrich Himmler's kind of elite core of
of of evil. Really, there's no other way
of putting it. The profession that had
the most representation, the SS was the
medical profession. Doctors join the SS
in their droves.
Some of the most well-known of the Nazi
doctors were Yseph Mangala most known at
Avitz. Also Dr. Sigman Rasher who
conducted freezing and high alitude
experiments among other experiments at
DHA.
Klaus Carl Schilling who conducted
malaria experiments at Dah.
Carl Clowberg, a gynecologist at Avitz
who used hundreds of female prisoners to
conduct artificial insemination and mass
sterilization.
And Carl Vinett who was involved in
hormone research and was particularly
interested in experimenting on
homosexual men to see if he could cure
them.
Today there are a lot of people who who
regard, you know, frankly, experiments
on animals, you know, morally
objectionable. Well, how about if you
were kind of experimenting on living
human beings and that is what takes
place in so many concentration and
extermination camps all over the Third
Reich.
One of the things that Rashid does is
that he puts people in in pressure
chambers and he either increases or
decreases the pressure to simulate
different altitudes uh in which you
might not have any oxygen to see what
pilots could cope with. A and there is
footage you can see these poor men
usually in the and they're in agony
because the pressure is either too
little or too much in these chambers and
their their their bodies are screaming
out. They're literally screaming out or
they're put into freezing water and
they're basically made to get
hypothermia. And you know what is this
teaching anybody? If you get into
freezing water, you're going to get very
cold and then you're going to die.
Everybody knew that before Sigman Rash
is doing it in Dow. H how can this be
medically acceptable? What with a
stopwatch? You're just going to murder
someone and that's going to teach you
about what the human body can endure.
Where does that end? You're murdering
someone. And the whole idea, Rasher
would turn around and go, "This person's
not important. This person's unworthy of
life anyway, so we might as well use his
living body to gain some more data for
our wonderful Nazi medical experiments."
And you know, he kills about 300 people
of hypothermia alone. You know, how is
that medically useful? That's just
sadism.
Although we think we know quite a lot
about all the sinister and extreme
policies and brutalities of the Nazi
regime,
perhaps we understand less and know less
really about the extent and the
parameters and the scale of the human
medical experimentation that went on in
the Nazi camps.
We can take a figure of about 15,000,
20% of whom were Jewish and we know that
also a lot of the other experiments were
on the Cintian Roma and on prisoners of
war and other political prisoners.
In terms of the scale of the
experimentation though, if we take into
account large-scale nutritional project
at Mount Housen concentration camp as
well as other anthropological
experiments, the number can go up to an
estimate of around 90,000.
There was a sense that the sinister side
and the brutal side perhaps would never
be discovered.
The doctors and the scientists engaged
in carrying out the research did so with
callousness, very much coldheartedness,
brutality, but also especially with
impunity.
The truth is I witness I witness
hanging. I witness shooting. I witness
terrible beatings. I witness in Bhenwald
where they had a hose with a regulator
and had women out there by the wall
pregnant tried to see how much pressure
it takes to make a hole.
[Music]
I saw a pit in a where they made soap
from people.
You throw in people and took the fat and
make soap for the German military,
boiling water,
big pool.
I mean, there's a lot of things. Sure,
you you know, you don't want to talk
about it because it's, you know, I choke
or I start crying or something like
that. And besides, I tell you this is
except people they've been in there,
they saw it and witness this, it's very
hard for people even to imagine that
that this was there that this happened,
you know, taking people and throwing
them in and boiling water making soap
for the German army. a minute. There's
no one in the pictures that you know.
>> Mangala in my case never ever talked to
me. He talked about me. He talked at me.
You have to realize Mangala did not
treat us as human beings.
with just his treasured
experiment subjects.
>> Now, we shouldn't really even give him
the title doctor because what he did was
so anti-medical and actually the
university that gave him his degree took
away that degree when it discovered what
he had been doing.
>> He became very well known on the
arrivals ramp at Ashvitz. So when the
train loads of new prisoners arrived, he
could be seen there in a very callous
and matter-of-act manner directing um
the new arrivals straight to the gas
chambers or to work duties.
We arrived at Awitz and um there was
some Jewish people came up the train. He
said to us whatever we do don't say that
we are sick and we stand in the line and
Mangala was sitting there Dr. Mangala
they called them
and u
left right you know older the older
indeed they announced
every uh young woman should take the
baby give the children to the elderly to
the mothers to the elderly people.
Then when we came in the line you know
Mangala
he said uh he said on Germany he talked
us if we are healthy we are sick or
something is hurting us. He talked so
nice so soft you know things.
It seems that he sometimes spent time
there in an offduty capacity because he
was interested particularly in twins and
in people with dwarfism. So it seemed
that he would just turn up and sort of
have a look and see if he could pull any
people out of the line who were of
interest to him. Families would be
separated, children would be separated
from their parents and and the loss they
would see of their parents, you know,
would would be them going off to this
this weird sort of building with a
chimney coming out of it.
What Mangala was also looking out for,
and why he was particularly keen on
being there to receive these new
prisoners, he wanted to find twins. He
was obsessed with twins.
Why was he obsessed with twins? Because
what you can do with twins, if you are
basically an evil Nazi doctor, which is
what Mingala was, is that you can
experiment on one twin and then see, you
know, what goes on with that twin and
compare it to the still healthy twin.
So, you've got to kind of control as as
as medics call it.
>> I thought I was the only one.
In fact, it's interesting when in 1985
when we first found out there were other
twins who survived Ashitz, I said to
Renee, I said I thought we were the only
kids who survived. How could there be
anybody else? What do you mean there are
twins?
So, no, I
had no idea that anybody else was having
anything done to them.
We would stand by our bunk beds with our
hands behind our back like little
soldiers for mangalis inspection.
There was two we had three supervisor in
our back block
and one of them would stand at the front
and say mangala is coming
and everybody would just it's like like
some kind of a horror was entering. He
would come very elegantly with his hands
behind his back. He had his stick in his
hand. He would hit it sometime against
his riding boots and start counting. He
always had at least six people with him
many times, as many as eight or 10. Was
a big entourage.
>> What Alitz represented to Mangalow was
an absolutely unparalleled opportunity
to experiment on live human beings in a
way that you simply couldn't do outside
a place like Achvitz. You got to
remember that what mangallay symbolizes
is the ultimate embodiment of Nazi
medicine if you like.
Unfortunately, a lot of memories of um
the hospital and um the doctor's office,
it I seem to recall spending a great
deal of time
um there. also being in the hospital
and being very sick.
I know one time when I went to the
doctor's office, they took blood from me
and it was extremely painful because it
was from the left side of my neck.
That's a strange thing to remember.
I also remember having blood taken out
of my finger, but that wasn't quite so
bad.
And
I also remember having to sit um very
still for long periods to be measured
and
or weigh or and x-rays. I I remember
x-rays. X-rays
and injections. I remember injections.
And then I'd be sick because then I I'd
be in this hospital
and I remember having a high fever
because I know they were taking my
temperature. Somebody was
um
I really got to hate doctors.
>> I was with other I had to think were
twins. My visits to the um hospital I
don't think were anywhere near as
frequent as Irene's
and I don't remember ever being
invaded into my body. The only thing I
remember them doing to me is measuring.
And I do remember uh the runin the x-ray
I guess it was runken. I remember that
name. They used runin a lot and had to
stand still or sit still for a very long
time for this process to take place. It
was cold wherever you were.
Uh but that that was just about the
experience with the hospital. Very
minimal compared to Irene's.
One of the most horrific experiments the
Mangala did was to try and change the
color of people's eyes by injecting dye
into their eyes without any anesthetic.
You can imagine the pain on that. Why?
Because he thought that people with blue
eyes were racially more pure than people
who didn't have blue eyes. Well, the
idea that you just inject someone with
blue dye into their eyes and that's
going to kind of make them better is
clearly insane and it has to be seen as
sadism rather than anything, you know,
medically useful.
What he would also do would carry out
sterilizations, often without anesthetic
because he just wanted to try and see
what was the quickest way of sterilizing
women who were racially impure. If you
could make lots and lots of women
sterile very very quickly, that was
going to be a really good thing for the
Nazis to do to stop all these people
from reproducing.
We saw the the children in the camps for
mangala used to experime
in in the barracks not very long maybe
four weeks or six weeks I forgot
uh where I used to clean the bar. So
this was visible within the camp, but
again, I don't think a lot of people
took notice of it because everybody
tried to survive. So you didn't worry
about somebody else's problems.
And besides, you couldn't do nothing
about it anyway. You know, you lived on
the dictatorship.
You were just a number, not a not not a
person.
You know, I remember times when that was
a luxury which literally you envy the
people that were dead. You envy them. I
done it many times. Many times.
Cuz he no longer has to go through this
ordeal. He doesn't have to suffer. He's
finished.
So dying was a luxury
>> in a very grim way. You know what
Mangala thought he was doing was was
completely correct. And what he has in a
place like Ashvitz is living human
material he can experiment on. Under
normal circumstances, no, you're not
experimenting on living human beings.
But these people are largely Jews.
They're not worthy of life. And so if
you no longer see these beings as human
beings, it becomes very easy for someone
like Mangallay just to think of them as,
you know, like kind of lab rats.
One day I couldn't take anymore the pain
in my mouth. I had a very sore mouth. My
tongue was hanging out. I couldn't even
keep my tongue in my mouth. And there
was uh medical help, so-called medical
help. They said I should if anybody
wants a little treatment or help, but
you took a chance because that could
have mean that you going to the gas
chambers. But I couldn't take it any
longer. I said my mouth is very I have
very much pain. So they took us in
another room
and there was a lady who was a doctor
and she smeared something in my mouth.
As I was in that room there was Dr.
Mangala.
There were a few ladies on the floor.
They just gave birth. You see they come
to they came to Ashitz just in the
beginning of their pregnancy. Nobody
knew they were pregnant otherwise they
would have put them in the gas chambers.
But as they get they stayed there, the
baby developed and had to be born. So
the ladies were on the floor in that
room and there was about 10 babies on a
wooden bench wrapped in paper crying
and the mothers were were on the floor
all exhausted from giving birth.
I looked at Mangala. He was going to
each baby. Gave a needle for each baby
right in front of my eyes. So help me
God.
And those babies never cried again.
Right there. He killed one after
another.
And the mothers were so exhausted they
were half asleep from giving birth.
And then another thing happened. One
night a woman was very very sick in our
block
some she was in terrible pain and she
had about a 14 year old daughter with
her. So the daughter was running to the
block. Please help my mother help my
mother. So that was at night. So all of
a sudden we heard that meant everybody
got so quiet you could hear a pin
falling on the floor when Mangala walked
in. And he went up to the lady he looked
at her. He gave her a needle.
The woman was quiet forever. I suppose
they took her out. She looked dead and
I'm sure she was there.
>> One of the reasons why Mangallay becomes
this really kind of notorious figure is
because he does manage to escape after
the war. You know, when the Russians
come to outfits in January 1945, yes,
they find a load of kind of living
skeletons, if you like, but what they
don't do is find people like Joseph
Mangallay because he's got out. He knows
what he's done is wrong. Otherwise, why
would he want to escape?
So, he lives in hiding in Germany until
1949. And then he eventually escapes to
South America where he spends, you know,
the rest of his days until 1979 when he
drowns, probably has a stroke off a
beach in Brazil. He never faces justice.
What's really chilling about Mangallay
is that throughout the rest of his life,
he always would justify what he had done
in Achvitz. He had always thought he had
done the morally correct thing. And in
fact, he meets his son Rolf in 1977.
This is two years now before Mangala
dies and he's in his late 60s. And Rol
starts asking questions. Look, you know,
dad, you know, why did you do this in
Avitz? Why did you experiment with
people? Why did you kill people? A and
Mangallay would go through to two
different stages. First of all, he would
kind of deny that he had done many of
the things that the people said he had
done. Um, you know, and frankly, there
may have been slightly an element of
truth to that because there was an
enormous amount of mythologizing of what
Mangala did. But when he would admit to
doing some of the things, he said to
Rol, his son, you know, I've done
nothing wrong. I was saving lives and
out of it. I wasn't ending them. and and
he would see his work on the selection
ramps for starters saying to people,
well, you're going to live and you're
going to die. You know, we see that as
sending people to their deaths. Megalith
saw that as sending people to their
continued life because he had this
attitude that everybody there was going
to die anyway. So, in fact, he was, you
know, kind of delaying their deaths. He
was being the nice guy. And he also
would say that the experiments he did
were for the good of humanity that this
was an an essential role of medicine was
to experiment on people. It is totally
possible of course that Mangala deep
down in his you know deep dark heart
knew what he had done was completely
amoral and completely wrong and perhaps
he could never admit it to himself. If
that's the case it showed an enormous
amount of moral cowardice.
4 million people lost their lives at
Awitz.
The 620 barracks housed from 180 to
200,000 inmates.
Fascist builders had designed a singular
architecture
for people condemned to death.
There is no support. There's people just
absolutely full with their own misery
and pain.
There is no support. There is nobody.
You're on your own. You're on your own
with your thoughts and your pain and
your misery. There you're totally on
your own.
[Music]
Unbelievable that human beings cultivate
intelligent
human beings can treat other innocent
people like well worse than cattle.
One of the most kind of brutal,
pointless, sadistic uh Nazi experiments
was carried out in Saxonhousen
concentration camp on what was ominously
called the shoe testing track.
Prisoners were made to walk along like
25 30 miles a day, endlessly testing
various shoes until the shoes, you know,
were were completely worn out. And the
track had lots of different types of
surfaces on it. And of course, you know,
it it was barbaric because what you're
doing is you're making them walk or run
for hours at a time until these people
collapse. Doesn't matter how hot it is.
And of course, you know, the shoes would
wear thin. It didn't matter cuz their
feet would end up sort of bloodied. And
people would just be kind of almost walk
to their deaths or made to run to their
deaths just to test shoes.
[Music]
In the wounding experiments, the doctors
took perfectly healthy human beings and
inflicted injuries upon them that were
supposed to replicate war wounds and
they deliberately introduced foreign
objects like
of wood as well as deliberately
introducing infection um and bacteria to
the rooms as well.
As far as the practitioners were
concerned and the perpetrators,
they could somehow justify to themselves
the viciousness and the callousness and
brutality of these experiments by
somehow arguing that they were vital and
important for the future, for the future
of the Aryan race, for the future of
science. Even the Nazis had enough of a
moral compass to know that what they
were doing ultimately was wrong. other
cultures, other societies, you know,
wouldn't do it. And Himmler makes this
very famous speech in a place called
Posen in which he tells the assembled
kind of SS there, that look, what we've
got to do, what our generation's got to
do, it's distasteful. It's horrible. You
know, it, you know, killing all these
people is is is going to be a really
hard and tough thing to do. But
actually, humanity is going to thank us,
you know, in centuries and millennia to
come that we've got rid of these people.
[Music]
I'm
sorry.
[Music]
Foreign
speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech.
[Music]
on
your hard
and hard in
[Music]
today. In the waning weeks of the
European War, the world sees proof of
acts of savagery unparalleled in
history. The Supreme Allied commander
himself views the Nazi murder mills with
his generals. Fearing that word of these
nameless horrors might not be believed
at home, he summons lawmakers and
editors to see for themselves, then
report to America.
At this fish gallows, men died in drawn
out agony. In the new light of this
camera record, the last war's atrocity
stories, once thought propaganda, gain
new credence.
The international community had a very
good idea from the word go that the
Nazis were anti-Semitic. But I don't
think anybody believed that Jews were
going to be killed on an industrial
scale. Uh it was a fullyfledged
industrial genocide. The Jews were
murdered in thousands at a time in gas
chambers and then their bodies were
subsequently cremated. When the Allied
forces turned up at the camps, places
like Bellson, uh the world was horrified
when they saw the footage that emerged,
you know, corpses piled up having to be
bulldozed into pits. And the Allied
forces when they saw what had been done
to all these people in the camps, they
often got local Germans in to come and
see what had been done in their name.
And and obviously they also made, you
know, some of the people running the
camps, the SS not only help, you know,
clean up the camps and and, you know,
dispose of the bodies, but obviously
there was also summary justice. Uh even
though it's not kind of officially
recorded, there are many stories of
troops getting absolutely livid with um
some of the SS who you know ran the
camps and just shooting them out of
hand.
The question of how much the Germans
knew about what had happened to the
Jewish population is very complex. So
certainly they knew that their Jewish
compatriots were disappearing, being
taken away. They were being taken away.
They believed as indeed some of the
Jewish people themselves believed they
were taken away to work um in the east.
You know during the war leaked out from
people who had escaped some camps. There
were aerial pictures uh taken of places
like Achvitz. So you know by the middle
of the war uh the world at large had a
very good idea that this slaughter was
being carried out on an industrial
scale. Yes, some rumors did circulate
back um from soldiers on leave and um
other information did filter back to the
Reich, but the the German population was
busy with facing its own war, dealing on
a day-to-day basis with the course of
the war, Allied bombings, rationing,
food shortages.
It took a long time for the German
people to really come to terms with what
had been done in their name. I think a
lot of German people throughout the war
had had more than an inkling, but I
don't think they knew the extent of the
savagery of what went on, you know,
behind those miles upon miles of barbed
wire.
>> There was a deliberate policy on the
part of the Nazis that this
extermination should take place not on
German soil. So these death camps were
all in Poland. So they were out of the
direct line of vision of the German
population,
>> you know, as as well as places like
Achvitz, which were relatively easy to
keep quite secret. What people also knew
about from troops returning from the
front and especially from the eastern
front was the Inats group and the mobile
killing squads that went behind the
German lines, killing anybody they
regarded as being an enemy of the Third
Reich, such as Jews and communists and
so on. a and these group had killed
millions of people and it was impossible
to keep that quiet.
>> So once again there had been some
knowledge but limited knowledge about
the extent of what the Nazi regime was
putting into place in terms of um this
genocide that was taking place in in the
death camps.
>> When when the Germans fully appreciated
what had been done in their name by the
Nazis, it took a very long time for that
to sink in. If you look at public
opinion polls carried out in the 40s and
the 50s in Germany, there was still a
lot of residual affection for Nazism. It
was felt that this was something that
had made Germany great again. It was
something that had got things moving and
done. Yes, there had been excesses, the
small matter of the Holocaust clearly,
but people some people in Germany were
willing just to say if we can divorce
the kind of genocide bit from Nazism,
you know, is Nazism so bad? So there was
still this sort of kind of I'm not
saying all Germans I mean but a minority
of Germans were still you know
affectionate uh towards Nazism and
towards Hitler but I think yes
ultimately when it was shown quite how
evil Nazism was and the German people
fully appreciated it then yes uh the
opinion of Hitler was not quite so
positive.
Well, as you get older, I taught as
older you get, you forget what happens.
And it worked quite different. The older
you get, the more it works on you. The
more guilty you feel that you alive or
how did you really survive or your
family becomes more important to you
generates the feelings of revulsion.
Something you just cannot imagine or
take in.
But the will to live is extraordinarily
strong even under these conditions.
And the way I went through my period in
the camps was
each morning trying to do my best to
still be alive that evening.
[Music]
It's very disturbing. Of course, it's
very painful. You know, I live today
with
nights that I don't sleep, wondering
what went through their mind before
they're dead, what they felt, what they
were thinking of. Cuz it didn't take
very long to know. You know, you go into
the gas chamber. Took a minute and a
half, 2 minutes. You start choking.
You're still a little bit conscious
till you're dead. And this is a very
pretty fast process, but a very slow
one. When you suffer 30 seconds is a is
is a year. And the screaming and the
hollering is still ringing in my ears.
Doesn't go away. Does never go away.
[Music]
[Music]
Quite frankly, I don't think that any
human being can ever be prepared for a
place like oh No matter how much
persecution before the
[Music]
I thought for a while it seemed like I
am watching
something that it's not really relating
to me. I was numb.
I closed my eyes and I thought maybe
this is a nightmare and if I close them
and open them up again maybe the whole
thing will disappear.
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]

Key Vocabulary

Start Practicing
Vocabulary Meanings

experiment

/ɪkˈspɛrɪmənt/

B1
  • noun
  • - a scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact
  • verb
  • - perform a scientific procedure, especially in a laboratory, to determine something

condemn

/kənˈdɛm/

B2
  • verb
  • - express complete disapproval of, typically in public

punish

/ˈpʌnɪʃ/

B1
  • verb
  • - inflict a penalty or sanction on (someone) as retribution for an offense, crime, or mistake

calculated

/ˈkælkjʊleɪtɪd/

B2
  • adjective
  • - carefully planned or intended; not accidental

appalling

/əˈpɔːlɪŋ/

B2
  • adjective
  • - causing shock or dismay; horrifying

human

/ˈhjuːmən/

A2
  • adjective
  • - relating to or characteristic of people or human beings
  • noun
  • - a human being

kill

/kɪl/

A2
  • verb
  • - cause the death of (a person, animal, or plant)

survive

/sərˈvaɪv/

B1
  • verb
  • - continue to live or exist, especially in spite of danger or hardship

pain

/peɪn/

A2
  • noun
  • - highly unpleasant physical sensation caused by illness or injury

camp

/kæmp/

A2
  • noun
  • - a place with temporary accommodation of huts, tents, or other structures, typically used by soldiers, refugees, etc.

doctor

/ˈdɒktər/

A1
  • noun
  • - a qualified practitioner of medicine; a physician

law

/lɔː/

A2
  • noun
  • - the system of rules which a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members

race

/reɪs/

B1
  • noun
  • - each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics

pure

/pjʊər/

B1
  • adjective
  • - not mixed or adulterated with any other substance or material

prohibit

/prəˈhɪbɪt/

B2
  • verb
  • - formally forbid (something) by law, rule, or other authority

marry

/ˈmæri/

A2
  • verb
  • - join in wedlock

friend

/frɛnd/

A1
  • noun
  • - a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations

death

/dɛθ/

B1
  • noun
  • - the action or fact of dying or being killed; the end of the life of a person or organism

💡 Which new word in “” caught your eye?

📱 Open the app to check meanings, build sentences, and try them out in real convos!

Key Grammar Structures

Coming Soon!

We're updating this section. Stay tuned!

Related Songs