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layout: transcript |
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interviewee: stephen none dachi |
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rg_number: rg-50.030.0057 |
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pdf_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/rg-50.030.0057_trs_en.pdf |
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ushmm_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504554 |
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gender: m |
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birth_date: none |
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birth_year: 1933.0 |
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place_of_birth: budapest |
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country: hungary |
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experience_group: survivor |
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ghetto(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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ghetto: none |
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camp(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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camp: none |
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non_ss_camp: none |
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region: east |
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needs_research: none |
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data_entry: cl |
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accession: none |
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revisit: none |
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tags: transcripts |
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--- |
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--- |
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layout: transcript |
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interviewee: stephen none dachi |
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rg_number: rg-50.030.0057 |
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pdf_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/rg-50.030.0057_trs_en.pdf |
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ushmm_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504554 |
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gender: m |
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birth_date: none |
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birth_year: 1933.0 |
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place_of_birth: budapest |
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country: hungary |
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experience_group: survivor |
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ghetto(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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ghetto: none |
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camp(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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camp: none |
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non_ss_camp: none |
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region: east |
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needs_research: none |
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data_entry: cl |
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accession: none |
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revisit: none |
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tags: transcripts |
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--- |
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<body><dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="1">STEPHEN DACHI November 19, 1990</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3">Q: Would you tell me your full name please?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="5">A: My name is Stephen Frank Dachi.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="7">Q: Where were you born?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="9">A: I was born in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.497778" long="19.039722">Budapest</span>, <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span>, in April of 1933.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="11">Q: Uh, tell me about your your early childhood.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="13">A: Well, I was a child of a couple of doctors.</sentence><sentence id="14">My father was a dentist and my mother was a pediatrician and uh in 1936, when I was not quite three years old, my father passed away in a sort of a medical uh mishap and uh then my mother died shortly thereafter, so I was left to be raised by my grandparents, uh just before the war started, and my grandparents were living in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Timisoara</span>, in <span class="COUNTRY">Romania</span>, so that from <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.497778" long="19.039722">Budapest</span> uh I ended up uh going to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Timisoara</span> and that's where I went to <span class="BUILDING">school</span> and lived until uh after the war in 1948 when we left.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="17">Q: What was <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Timisoara</span> like for a young child?</sentence><sentence id="18">What was your family life like, friends, that sort of a thing?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="21">A: Well, uh that small <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">city</span> of about a hundred thousand people was a little bit out of the mainstream of the worst of the war and uh life was uh was fairly uh fairly quiet, but uh there were plenty of periods of danger and excitement uh during the war that is, when uh...there were uh lots of bombing raids because <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Timisoara</span> was on the <span class="DLF">railway line</span> and uh when the Allies were bombing the <span class="DLF">Ploesti oil fields</span> in <span class="COUNTRY">Romania</span>, they were also bombing the uh <span class="DLF">railway tracks</span> that were leading the oil away from the <span class="REGION">area</span>.</sentence><sentence id="22">And then uh once in a while uh German troops would come through.</sentence><sentence id="23">Uh there weren't any occupying forces there normally.</sentence><sentence id="24">Of course, <span class="COUNTRY">Romania</span> was fighting on the side of the Axis uh powers during the war, but occasionally uh some Nazi contingent would come through and uh uh come into <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span>.</sentence><sentence id="25">I remember once uh one of their commanders made a speech from the main <span class="BUILDING">theater</span> saying that that night there was going to be a Jew hanging from every second <span class="DLF">window</span> on the main square, and uh they did round up and take people away.</sentence><sentence id="26">I, I remember in uh going to <span class="BUILDING">school</span> in the morning sometimes and having my classmates tell about how their fathers were taken away in the middle of the night uh almost always never to be seen again.</sentence><sentence id="27">So there was plenty of tragedy, plenty of stress and excitement.</sentence><sentence id="28">Uh we...our family was not Jewish but we were nevertheless uh uh always in danger anyway.</sentence><sentence id="29">My grandparents uh were very conscious of having this small boy to raise and my grandmother was always talking about how she had to somehow live uh until I was twenty- one to uh fulfill her responsibility that she assumed when my parents passed away, but I know uh because they told me that uh, you know, they lived in dread of that knock on the <span class="DLF">door</span> in the middle of the night also, and they kept a couple of vials of poison on their <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bedstands</span>, because they told me that they were not going to be taken away, that if the Germans came to take them away, they would commit suicide.</sentence><sentence id="30">Uh I don't know what would have happened to me uh but in any case that did not happen.</sentence><sentence id="31">Uh and we uh we lived with that until finally the Russian troops came through in uh in...sometime in the spring or summer of 1944.</sentence><sentence id="32">The Germans were pushed back and uh then we had to start worrying about about the Russians.</sentence><sentence id="33">Uh I was uh I was a Hungarian citizen living in <span class="COUNTRY">Romania</span> and at the time <span class="COUNTRY">Romania</span> had switched sides and was now fighting on the side of the Russians.</sentence><sentence id="34">Now they switched sides just as the Russians reached the <span class="DLF">Romanian border</span>, so uh there was not that much destruction in <span class="COUNTRY">Romania</span>.</sentence><sentence id="35">Uh but <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span> put up very stiff resistance because the Hun...uh the Hungarian Nazi uh government was one of uh Hitler's firmest allies.</sentence><sentence id="36">Admiral Horthy...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="53">Q: Excuse me...if we can save some of that and let the historians give that kind of a background...I'd like to stick with your story...you have a particularly interesting one at this point.</sentence><sentence id="54">Uh what happened to you when the Russians came in?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="57">A: Well, because I was a Hungarian citizen and the Hungarians were still fighting on the side of the Nazis, uh the Russians were rounding up Hungarians to take them away uh and so one day a Russian soldier came to our <span class="BUILDING">house</span> and uh said that I was going to go with him, and my grandmother uh who was a Romanian citizen and was not involved in this so they didn't uh ask any questions of her...uh said "Well, you're not taking him away" and he said "Well, we are, so you better give him a winter coat because he's going far away where it's going to be cold."</sentence><sentence id="58">So my grandmother, bless her soul, she thought that if she refused to give me a coat that they wouldn't take me away uh but of course they did.</sentence><sentence id="59">So then uh we uh...I was taken to this <span class="INT_SPACE">basement</span> of a <span class="BUILDING">police station</span> where the people on that particular day where being rounded up, and I recognized some of them and I know that subsequently uh, you know, none of those people that I saw there were ever seen again because we were uh scheduled to be taken away uh to <span class="REGION">Siberia</span>, but just as uh this round-up was in the...going on and we were in there in the <span class="INT_SPACE">basement</span>, the German bombing raid came and there were bombs flying around all over the <span class="NPIP">place</span>, exploding right around us and uh glass shattering and uh door frames cracking and people...guards, prisoners, everyone was uh was uh lying down on the <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span> with their heads...hands covering their head and uh, you know, I was eleven years old, so I thought this was the time for me to make a getaway so I just climbed out the <span class="DLF">window</span> and ran down the <span class="DLF">street</span> without worrying about my safety or life...1 mean there were bombs falling right on the <span class="DLF">street</span> where I was running.</sentence><sentence id="60">Craters would open up in front of me and I had to get around, but I managed to somehow uh get away from there and then I ran to a <span class="BUILDING">synagogue</span> uh some distance away and there uh a rabbi took me in and hid me in the <span class="INT_SPACE">basement</span> for several days until uh the the round-up seemed to abate and uh he told me that because during the war so many people had helped save Jewish lives by hiding people...that was done somewhat more in <span class="COUNTRY">Romania</span> maybe than in <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span>...uh that he was uh reciprocating a little bit, taking some people in now that uh the tide had turned and uh so he he kept me there for a few days and then eventually I went back <span class="BUILDING">home</span> uh but decided no one will ever get me again, and uh uh, you know, we always uh slept and sat, whatever, with with a <span class="DLF">getaway path</span> in mind in case someone came in to get us.</sentence><sentence id="61">To this day, in in any <span class="BUILDING">restaurant</span> I go to, I always sit with my back to the <span class="DLF">wall</span> and facing the <span class="DLF">door</span>, because deep in my subconscious I'm still on the alert for somebody coming in to to get me, so these things stay with you forever.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="67">Q: You are...you had escaped.</sentence><sentence id="68">You're now with your grandparents.</sentence><sentence id="69">Tell us what happened.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="73">A: Well, uh afterwards uh ...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="75">Q: You were liberated or...the Russians had come in.</sentence><sentence id="76">Did they leave you alone after this or...?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="79">A: Yes, they uh...the Russians uh didn't come around again to get me, at least, and then the war ended in "45.</sentence><sentence id="80">I had uh [had a uh an aunt who with her husband had moved to <span class="COUNTRY">Canada</span> before the war, and so in 1948 we managed to get papers and uh uh got out of there, uh bribing the authorities and having all of our earthly goods taken away from us in exchange for a passport and an exit uh visa.</sentence><sentence id="81">Uh we couldn't get our papers at the same time, so I had to uh travel...1 went first.</sentence><sentence id="82">I went by myself from <span class="COUNTRY">Romania</span> all the way to <span class="COUNTRY">Canada</span> and then later uh my uh my grandmother followed.</sentence><sentence id="83">My grandfather had already died.</sentence><sentence id="84">In those three years, from the end of the war until 1948, uh we found out how a few of our family members had perished.</sentence><sentence id="85">Uh almost all the members of my family died during the war, one way or another.</sentence><sentence id="86">Uh my sister...I had a sister who was eight years older than I was who when my parents died chose to remain in in <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span> and went to live in a <span class="BUILDING">convent</span>, and uh during the war the Nazis sort of seized this <span class="BUILDING">convent</span> and used the women for housework and uh whatever else...sewing and Lord knows what what else...and then when uh during the siege of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.497778" long="19.039722">Budapest</span>, they uh...when the Nazis were fleeing <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.497778" long="19.039722">Budapest</span> eventually...this was in the winter...uh they took my sister and all the other women in the <span class="BUILDING">convent</span> with them.</sentence><sentence id="87">My sister already had uh an advanced case of TB they call galloping consumption and so on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">truck</span> uh when she got too sick uh on the <span class="DLF">road</span> to <span class="COUNTRY">Austria</span>, they just threw her out on the <span class="DLF">roadside</span> and left her there to to die in in uh the snow, and we found out about this because uh another woman who was on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">truck</span> with her who survived came to visit us sometime later to tell us the story, and, you know, that was a common thing that uh many people who survived the Holocaust or the war in some way...at the end of the war they made a special effort to go and visit whenever they could the families of people that that died next to them or that they saw, so that they could recount the circumstances.</sentence><sentence id="88">That happened a lot and we had two or three such visits about other relatives as well as my sister.</sentence><sentence id="89">So that was one act of human solidarity that the few survivors tried to to do as a good turn for the relatives of those who had perished.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="101">Q: How did you then...you were in <span class="COUNTRY">Canada</span>...you got to <span class="COUNTRY">Canada</span>...what what did you do then as a young child.</sentence><sentence id="102">You were now thirteen, fourteen...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="105">A: Fifteen...yes.</sentence><sentence id="106">I was fifteen.</sentence><sentence id="107">Well, when I got to <span class="COUNTRY">Canada</span> I finished <span class="BUILDING">high school</span> and my uncle and aunt had helped me get there, and then I went to <span class="BUILDING">university</span> and eventually in the "50's uh I studied dentistry in at the <span class="BUILDING">University of Oregon</span>.</sentence><sentence id="108">That's how I first came to the <span class="COUNTRY">United States</span>.</sentence><sentence id="109">And then when I got my dental degree in 1956, I did some advanced uh work, graduate work and I got a graduate degree in uh oral pathology, uh specializing in diseases of the mouth and the face and the neck, and then uh I went into uh academic life and was one of the founders of a new college of dentistry at the <span class="BUILDING">University of Kentucky</span> in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Lexington</span>, where five of us started a new <span class="BUILDING">school</span>, really from a from an empty <span class="DLF">cornfield</span> and at the end of that period when the first class graduated from there in 1966, I decided to uh to look for let's say new horizons and like so many people uh looked toward a second career.</sentence><sentence id="110">So in 1967 I left the <span class="BUILDING">school</span>, left the <span class="BUILDING">university</span> and uh initially took a leave of absence and uh joined the staff of the Peace Corps and I uh worked as a Peace Corps Deputy Director and then eventually as a Country Director of the Peace Corps, first in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Columbia</span>, then in <span class="COUNTRY">Venezuela</span> and finally in <span class="COUNTRY">Brazil</span> and uh that turned out to be a very good and uh wonderful learning experience and so I, uh resigned my professorship...can't stay on a leave of absence for ever ..and uh then I was recruited into the Foreign Service and I became a Foreign Service officer with the United States Information Agency, USIA, which uh has the press and cultural sections of <span class="BUILDING">American embassies</span> around the world, and they call it USIS...so I worked and stayed with them from 1972 until now and I've had a series of assignments around the world including being uh Cultural Attache in <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span> in uh in the "70's, and then on loan to the Department of State as Consul General in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sao Paulo</span>, <span class="COUNTRY">Brazil</span> in the mid-"80's.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="118">Q: So you were in <span class="COUNTRY">Brazil</span> in the mid "80's and something rather extraordinary happened.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="120">A: Yes.</sentence><sentence id="121">Something...something very extraordinary happened.</sentence><sentence id="122">Uh I remember the day it all began very clearly.</sentence><sentence id="123">On June the 6th 1985...it was only about three months after Lee and I, my wife and I, had arrived to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sao Paulo</span> to take up my duties as Consul General and uh the phone rang in the morning and it was my press attache, Jim Dandridge, who was calling me to tell me that he had heard on the radio and was watching on television at that very time, that there was an exhumation going on uh for the alleged remains of Josef Mengele and that he thought I should uh know about that.</sentence><sentence id="124">And that was quite a...quite a startling way to start a day which was the first day off, the first holiday that I'd had since I'd arrived, and all of a sudden all of these dim memories came into my mind because I, I really hadn't followed the story of Josef Mengele as closely as perhaps many others had, but it all came back to me in a ina flash about a half a million people whose death he was involved with and uh all of the many times that he had been sighted or thought to have been found before.</sentence><sentence id="125">Uh but I didn't have too much time to to think uh you know, long thoughts because uh things, events began to cascade uh you know, at a very rapid pace.</sentence><sentence id="126">UhI started getting uh phone calls from the <span class="BUILDING">Embassy</span> in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Brasilia</span>, the capital, from the State Department in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Washington</span>, from television, from networks, from newspapers, uh from everywhere because uh, you know, there had been so many times when Mengele had been found and it turned out to be a hoax or false news that uh, you know, if this if this was going to be the real thing, there was tremendous interest everywhere, and more specifically as far as our government and the Department of State and the Justice Department were concerned.</sentence><sentence id="127">Uh there had been an agreement signed only recently between the German, Israeli and American governments that we would coordinate and cooperate on any further Nazi hunts and here uh there was this going on and the U.S. government knew nothing about it, so they were anxious to find out very quickly.</sentence><sentence id="128">And so I began uh right away to to look for my German counterpart, the German Consul there who was very busy uh with all the events going on, but I insisted that he meet me and uh he uh he was not anxious to do it, but eventually uh I didn't...I didn't uh let up and so about midnight that night in a <span class="BUILDING">restaurant</span> we finally met and he told me the first part of the story, that a few days earlier German uh police had raided the <span class="BUILDING">home</span> of Hans Seidlmeier, who was a manager of the Mengele family enterprises in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Ginzburg</span> what was then <span class="REGION">West Germany</span>, and uh had found some papers, notes, letters with some addresses on them indicating that uh uh where Mengele either was or had been, so without any knowledge as to whether he was alive or dead, the German authorities immediately came to <span class="COUNTRY">Brazil</span>, contacted the Federal police and had staked out this <span class="BUILDING">house</span> uh whose address they they gleaned from this information, but after a few days of staking the <span class="BUILDING">house</span> out and not seeing any any old man who looked uh he would possibly in uh Josef Mengele's category of age group or whatever, they raided the <span class="BUILDING">house</span> and uh and uh came upon this couple, Wolfgang and Lisalotte Brossert, uh who were German Brazilians and who uh quickly admitted that they had had a role in in uh sheltering and protecting Josef Mengele for the last few years of his life according to the story they told and that when he died by drowning on the <span class="DLF">beach</span>...he was with them at this <span class="DLF">beach</span>...that he had had a stroke while he was uh...this is what she said...that he had had a stroke while he was swimming there in this <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">beach town</span> of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Bertioga</span>, and uh that uh he therefore drowned because he couldn't get out of the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">water</span>, and Mrs. Brossert uh decided right there that she didn't want to expose and reveal the whole story of of Mengele's hiding and so on and their role in it most importantly, so she went to some length to bury him under a false name and by bending some rules about the identification of the dead and so on, buried him there some uh five or six years before and uh now took the authorities there for the exhumation and was quite uh forthcoming with information.</sentence><sentence id="129">Uh...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="141">Q: Who persuaded her to take the authorities?</sentence><sentence id="142">How did they convince her that she had to do this?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="145">A: You mean to to give the information now?...Well, I think she thought the game was up.</sentence><sentence id="146">I think that uh it was uh...she had to make a choice as to whether she was going to try to uh keep up with a whole new package of lies and deception, and I think she probably decided right away that that would be impossible and it would be too complicated and that uh that she couldn't get away with it so I think uh from the beginning she decided uh to cooperate.</sentence><sentence id="147">In other words, she made a decision to bury him under false name, hoping that somehow uh that would do it, but once once she saw that the game was up, one one of the things uh she said when they first raided her <span class="BUILDING">house</span> apparently by...according to press reports, was uh "I didn't think it would take you this long to uh to get here."</sentence><sentence id="148">So uh...but in in the <span class="BUILDING">house</span> there, aside from the various uh uh stories that she told, they also found some photographs.</sentence><sentence id="149">They found a diary that was allegedly that of Mengele that was taken away by hand-writing experts, and uh and some other memorabilia and then she told many stories about Mengele's son having come to visit both when Mengele was still alive and after he died, he came to retrieve some of his possessions, including part of the diary, but she didn't tell him about another part that she kept, so the diary ended up being divided into two two parts.</sentence><sentence id="150">Uh in any event, uh when they exhumed these what were essentially were just bones, then the big project began.</sentence><sentence id="151">Is it him, or isn't it him?</sentence><sentence id="152">And how do you, how do you identify a set of bones that have been buried not too many years ago archaeologically speaking, but quite a few years ago, five or six years.</sentence><sentence id="153">So uh there there were a lot of a lot of sensitive factors involved.</sentence><sentence id="154">First of all, this exhumation took place in <span class="COUNTRY">Brazil</span> and the Brazilian government and, to some extent, the Brazilian medical experts were very eager to prove that they were fully competent to do such an examination and uh and the Brazilian government was very eager to prove that they didn't need any foreigners interfering in their internal business, so at first they said that they wouldn't give any visas to foreign specialists to participate in the identification and I received a call from <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Washington</span> that day telling me that I'd better go in quickly and speak to the Chief of Police uh to to see if we could persuade him to change his mind, because uh these people had to come in, so I went uh the very next morning to call on uh a man who now is has a very widely-known name around the world....Romeu Tuma, who at that time was the Chief of the Sao Paulo Police.</sentence><sentence id="155">Now he's the chief of the Federal police for all of <span class="COUNTRY">Brazil</span>.</sentence><sentence id="156">And I had met him before.</sentence><sentence id="157">I didn't know him well.</sentence><sentence id="158">As I was riding down in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">car</span> to see him and I was thinking just what what would I say, you know, so I got there.</sentence><sentence id="159">He was a very...he's a very decent, nice man.</sentence><sentence id="160">Uha very unusual human being.</sentence><sentence id="161">A very unusual policeman, and I said to him, Dr. Tuma, I uh I was born and raised in <span class="REGION">eastern Europe</span> also and most of my family perished in the war and in the Holocaust, and this man that we're talking about here, uh is responsible for the death of at least 400,000 people.</sentence><sentence id="162">Four hundred thousand people.</sentence><sentence id="163">And I said that relatives and the survivors and all of their kin, all of the human beings who have shared this terrible historical tragedy, are scattered all over the world and their wounds in many, many, many cases haven't healed yet, and they never will until they know what happened to that man, and even then those wounds will only heal very superficially.</sentence><sentence id="164">But Dr. Tuma, all of those people around the world have a right to be present here when we go through this process.</sentence><sentence id="165">They have a right to be witnesses, to be present at the most important identification that we could do in our lifetimes, any one of us.</sentence><sentence id="166">They deserve to be here and these specialists coming from other <span class="COUNTRY">countries</span> are coming here on their behalf.</sentence><sentence id="167">They're coming here on behalf of all of mankind that suffered this horrible tragedy.</sentence><sentence id="168">And to Dr. Tuma's great credit, he immediately sensed and understood this, and he immediately said yes and the the little mini-crisis was over and the people came and we could begin a more thorough approach of international cooperation in solving this vitally important puzzle, So several groups came.</sentence><sentence id="169">There were quite a few specialists who came from <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span> to join those who had been there initially who were mostly policemen.</sentence><sentence id="170">And then there was a group of forensic specialists who were contracted by the Justice Department which uh in the last, in the previous few years had inaugurated an Office of Special Investigations, specializing in uh pursuing Nazi uh war criminals and Nazi questions.</sentence><sentence id="171">I think that <span class="BUILDING">office</span> was established during the presidency of Jimmy Carter.</sentence><sentence id="172">And uh the U.S. Marshall's Service and the Justice Department also sent uh fingerprint experts and hand-writing experts and other such specialists.</sentence><sentence id="173">And then the <span class="BUILDING">Simon Wiesenthal Center</span> in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Los Angeles</span> who retained the services of an independent, private group of forensic specialists, some of whom who had played very important roles in the identification of the disappeared Argentine citizens after the dirty war there in the "70's where several thousand people disappeared without a trace, and also the Justice Department specialists were very experienced in in these world famous cases, so these uh people all began to to arrive and showed up and the Israeli government sent an observer whose name was Menachem Russek", who I think worked for their Justice Department, to follow events, and I remember vividly the first meeting that Dr. Tuma had with all of these newly arrived specialists and their Brazilian counterparts, trying to organize and plan how this process would be done, and I had already met most of them but I hadn't met Mr. Russek, so at the end of the meeting as people were walking out, I followed Mr. Russek and I went up to him and he was a short man with with silver hair, very ruddy cheeks and quite a spring in his step and he was walking out the <span class="BUILDING">building</span> and I was sort of walking behind him, and I introduced myself.</sentence><sentence id="174">I told him who I was and I said to Mr. Russek, I said, "I hope that uh we can do this whole process well enough to reach a satisfactory and scientifically acceptable outcome.</sentence><sentence id="175">I know how much that means to you and how much it means to all of mankind."</sentence><sentence id="176">And up to then he'd been sort of walking along and when I said that, he stopped and he turned and looked me in the eye and he pondered the matter for a moment and then he said, "The first time I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Josef Mengele in person was in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span> in 1945 and I certainly hope to have the pleasure to meet him in person one more time," and with that he stopped and turned again and walked right out, but to me in those few words, the whole drama, the whole tragedy, the whole sensitivity of this case came to life in such a powerful way that uh, you know, that the feeling that people have, the need that people have that somehow justice should be done...now you can't do justice with a man who's killed 400,000 people, but you can do the close...closest thing to it no matter how distant.</sentence><sentence id="177">You can somehow close the circle, and if this man in fact died of a natural death without having been brought to justice, then at least let's be clear about the fact that he really is dead and close the circle in that small but very important way.</sentence><sentence id="178">Well, uh then the work began.</sentence><sentence id="179">Now I was still only an observer at the time, although uh people knew that I had been an oral pathologist uh at that time I was still the Consul General following events for the U.S. government as part of the agreement that existed.</sentence><sentence id="180">And the specialists went to work uh doing those things that can be done.</sentence><sentence id="181">Now the two basic ways in which remains can be identified are fingerprints, which of course don't exist when only bones remain, and dental x-rays, but in order to use dental x-rays to identify remains, you not only have to have x-rays taken from the skull of the remains but you have to have x-rays "Menachem Russek, an Israeli police superintendent charged by the Israeli government with the task of tracking war criminals.</sentence><sentence id="182">from the person known to be the one we're seeking to identify that were in some authentic file prior to his death, and by comparing the two you would have one of the most accurate and reliable ways of identifying remains that are currently known to medical science.</sentence><sentence id="183">Unfortunately, there were no such x-rays available in Mengele's Gestapo files or anywhere else.</sentence><sentence id="184">The only thing that was available in those files was a dental chart which uh from my standpoint as a dentist and with a with a knowledge in dental charting of of the 1980's was uh extremely incomplete.</sentence><sentence id="185">The only thing that chart had was an indication of which teeth that Mengele had examined at the time he entered the SS in uh 1939, which teeth were present and which teeth were absent.</sentence><sentence id="186">That was the only thing on that <span class="DLF">chart</span>.</sentence><sentence id="187">Now had a tooth in the skull...had there been a tooth in the skull that was present in the skull which was marked as missing in 1939, it would have been proof positive that this was not the skull of Josef Mengele, but there was no such tooth.</sentence><sentence id="188">Uh and other than that one feature, the chart was of no value because he obviously lost quite a number of teeth between 1939 and whenever he died or whenever this skull was being examined, but that was of no value in comparing it to the chart, so uh the specialists on these teams went ahead and did some various anthropological examinations that showed that these bones belonged to an old man, that he was a Caucasian male and not of some other racial origin, that his height was extremely close to the height that Mengele was known to have had, and uh there were a number of other examinations carried out on the bone bones, that were consistent with with Mengele.</sentence><sentence id="189">But the the really very important examination that was done was was a procedure called craniometry, in which which is a also very accurate procedure.</sentence><sentence id="190">It just hasn't been around long enough to hold up in <span class="BUILDING">court</span> the way dental x-rays would but nonetheless is very uh very accurate in which a number of features of the face, angles and sizes of ear lobes and the comer of the nose, the angle of the bridge of the nose and the lips, the chin and so on, are measured.</sentence><sentence id="191">And then with a scientific measurement can be compared to an overlap and uh this was done with great care there, and it was shown by comparing the photograph of the young Mengele from the SS files with the photograph of the old man that was found in Mrs. Brossert's <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, that all of these features matched perfectly and then by superimposing these same features on the skull, which is part of this technique, it was shown that all of these measurements and features coincided between the photograph of the young man and the old man and between both of these photographs and the skull.</sentence><sentence id="192">So between this very powerful positive identification evidence, the other things, the measurements that were taken on the bones and the fact that many things matched with what was known about Mengele, all of the specialists there uh agreed that there was more than ninety-five percent chance that these remains were definitely those of Josef Mengele and uh the American specialists in particular said that with their extensive experience in court testimony, that that evidence was completely sufficient in any American court of law, it would be considered conclusive proof that these remains were that of Josef Mengele.</sentence><sentence id="193">0 So based on that, they decided to call a press conference and announce the results and I remember very vividly a meeting that was held just before the press conference in which Dr.Tuma had gathered all of the people involved in this procedure, and at the end of this whole process and he said "Now I would like each of you individually to stand up and tell me what your findings are."</sentence><sentence id="194">And he went around the <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> and each individual stood up and said "Dr.Tuma, based on the examination that I've performed and the data that I have seen, I believe that these are the remains of Josef Mengele."</sentence><sentence id="195">And each one in turn stood up and said that in front of all the others, in front of Dr. Tuma, including the American specialists from the <span class="BUILDING">Simon Weisenthal Center</span> and the specialists from the U.S. Department of Justice.</sentence><sentence id="196">And I was sitting next to Menachan Russek again who was taking notes uh but was there as strictly an observer, and uh I didn't know what was going through his mind and I don't want to speak for what may have been going through his mind, but I did ask him, "How do you feel now at this moment, Mr. Ruseck, in light of what you said to me before," and he said with that wonderful Jewish sense of humor, he looked at me and he said "Well, better I should stand on his <span class="DLF">grave</span> than he on mine."</sentence><sentence id="197">And so at the end of this, the press conference was held.</sentence><sentence id="198">The results were announced and the news went out all over the world.</sentence><sentence id="199">And then there was a brief period of sort of silence on the <span class="BUILDING">world screen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="200">I mean a lot of people were very skeptical at first, who had to re-examine their their feelings in light of this powerful evidence that had come out, but there were...there were others who who had a hard time reaching that point.</sentence><sentence id="201">Frankly, uh, you know, I don't claim to have been through the Holocaust the way uh the survivors from the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camps</span> have because | don't think anyone can have that kind of a painful and unbelievably cruel experience that they've suffered but uh even from the little bit that I did, I can certainly see and understand how someone who went through that experience could never accept that in this life a man capable of perpetrating such unspeakable cruelties to their fellow human beings as well as to them, could somehow be allowed by by fate to die a natural death and not be brought to justice.</sentence><sentence id="202">That anyone who can't accept that because of what they've been through because they can't believe that such a thing could occur, I can certainly sympathize with.</sentence><sentence id="203">That's quite different from looking at the evidence and looking at the facts because there are many things in feelings that go beyond facts and conclusive evidence and so on.</sentence><sentence id="204">In any case, not too long after that, people started to file their reports from these teams of specialists and in those reports there was another item that occurred while these examinations were going on that I was involved in, because as we were looking there at the photographs and uh people were projecting on the <span class="DLF">wall</span> the drawings of all these features of Mengele's face from the photograph and the superimposition with the skull, I noticed in a photograph of the old man that there was a scar right here on the face, and I noticed on the skull that was also being projected on the <span class="DLF">wall</span>, there there was a <span class="DLF">hole</span> in the bone in roughly 1 the same <span class="REGION">area</span>, and I was reminded of the fact that the woman...there were two...you know there were two couples who had protected Mengele.</sentence><sentence id="205">The first one were the ones who hid him for something like fourteen years, because he was in <span class="COUNTRY">Brazil</span> from 1961 until 1979, and the first fourteen years of that he was hidden by this couple of Austro-Hungarians called Geza and Gitta Stammer, and then when finally they split up, that's when the Brosserts came into the picture as his second set of protectors and uh Mrs. Stammer had recounted that for many, many years, Mengele was afraid to leave the <span class="BUILDING">house</span> at all.</sentence><sentence id="206">He wouldn't go to any doctors or dentists, but that he had a number of times a badly swollen face from an abscessed tooth.</sentence><sentence id="207">And because Mengele had been a doctor, of course...uh, you know, I shudder to even say the word because, you know, a aa sub-human being like that shouldn't use the word doctor even if he earned such a degree in <span class="BUILDING">school</span>, but in any case he was a physician and so he lanced these boils inside of his mouth a number of times in order to to treat the abscess without having to go to a doctor, and because I'd been a professor of oral pathology and the head of the Department of Dental Diagnosis at the <span class="BUILDING">University of Kentucky</span> and <span class="REGION">Kentucky</span> is a a poor state in which in <span class="REGION">eastern Kentucky</span> particularly, and in the days that I was there in the "60's, there were hundreds of people who who suffered from a lack of dental treatment, even in emergencies, and who would who would have these infections that normally in this <span class="COUNTRY">country</span> nowadays are treated automatically, uh they let them go for months and years at a time and I saw many patients who who would have abscesses that came and went and they never even had the tooth pulled where eventually the infection would break through the bone and enter the sinus above the teeth, you know, the sinuses we have in our head, and uh set up an infection inside the sinuses and then through that <span class="DLF">hole</span> it would periodically drain, either inside the mouth or out, outside on the face, and so because Mrs. Stammer has said that he had several episodes of swollen jaws and face and I saw on this picture being projected on the <span class="DLF">wall</span> that there was a <span class="DLF">hole</span> in the bone in about that <span class="NPIP">place</span> and that there was a scar on the face on the spot where this what they call a fistulous track, the track where the infection drains out would have occurred and there was similar to what I had seen before with patients in <span class="REGION">Kentucky</span>, that uh that may be a an important link.</sentence><sentence id="208">And so the uh the American specialists said well, that's very interesting.</sentence><sentence id="209">Why don't you...why don't you come and uh take a look at the skull itself and see whether you, whether you still feel that way, so that's when I uh first went into the <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> where they had the bones and, you know, I held this skull in my hands to to to look at it, and holding that skull in my hands I was transfixed.</sentence><sentence id="210">I I drifted off into into another state of mind that uh, you know, I had never experienced before and all of a sudden I saw myself standing in a <span class="BUILDING">railway station</span> where 400,000 people were lined up on both sides of the <span class="DLF">track</span>, standing there with their tattered, torn clothes and their their badly beaten appearance, and I took that skull and I walked down those <span class="DLF">tracks</span> showing, showing it to everyone there and saying "Here, behold this skull."</sentence><sentence id="211">Here we are, all of us, from different <span class="NPIP">worlds</span> at this time, being present at a what...I don't know...this this vision didn't go beyond this.</sentence><sentence id="212">I didn't know the answer, but I showed that skull to everyone of those 400 people in the few seconds that it took, in my mind, and then the vision passed and I was back with the skull and I saw the <span class="DLF">hole</span> there and I suggested that this 2 was indeed very much like a maxillary sinus, a sinus of the upper jaw infection and that I thought this was consistent.</sentence><sentence id="213">Well, this was an interesting piece of evidence matching what someone said who had harbored Mengele, with the actual findings in the skull, so the Americans all thought this was very interesting.</sentence><sentence id="214">They all accepted this although none of them had really seen a case like this before.</sentence><sentence id="215">It's so rare nowadays to have people who will let something like that go for months and years, that uh even these forensic specialists really hadn't encountered it, and uh here I have to tell you another little story that uh uh was to me has been a very moving one.</sentence><sentence id="216">But that evening I went <span class="BUILDING">home</span> and I was talking to Lee about the fact that, you know, I have some cases, and I had some slides of people just like that of uh people who had sinus infections draining to the face and that these slides were part of my teaching slides that I had used at the <span class="BUILDING">University of Kentucky</span> and here it was almost twenty years since I've used them...eighteen years and wouldn't I love to have those slides so I could show the specialists that uh that uh, you know, there was some basis in fact of what I was talking about.</sentence><sentence id="217">Well, these slides were all...I had several thousand slides...six, eight, ten thousand...I don't know how many, and they were all stored in the <span class="INT_SPACE">basement</span> of my mother-in-law who lives in in the greater Washington area, or lived in the greater Washington area and I thought to myself, "How am I going to get these slides.</sentence><sentence id="218">How am I going to get the three or four slides I need from these ten thousand."</sentence><sentence id="219">So I called my dentist in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Washington</span>, a friend of mine, good friend of mine.</sentence><sentence id="220">His name is Jay Slotkin (ph).</sentence><sentence id="221">He's a periodontist.</sentence><sentence id="222">And he's Jewish and I called him up and I said "Jay, this is what's going on.</sentence><sentence id="223">I wonder if you would mind going to my mother- in-law's <span class="INT_SPACE">basement</span> and getting out these ten thousand slides and going through them and finding these slides that I need and sending them to me."</sentence><sentence id="224">I was calling him about seven thirty or eight o'clock in the evening, and he said "Well, I'll be glad to do that."</sentence><sentence id="225">He says, "When do you think you would need that."</sentence><sentence id="226">I said "Well, tomorrow morning is when I would need them."</sentence><sentence id="227">So he sort of sucked in his breathe for a moment and then he said, "Alright" and we made arrangements and he went out to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Springfield</span>, <span class="REGION">Virginia</span>, to the <span class="INT_SPACE">basement</span> of the <span class="BUILDING">house</span> where my mother-in-law lived and he got down from the top shelf all of these boxes of slides, and he got a colleague friend of his.</sentence><sentence id="228">The two of them went back to his <span class="BUILDING">office</span> and that entire night they went through all ten thousand slides that I had until they found the four or five that I needed and the next morning a courier picked them up, gave them to the Pan Am pilot and they flew them down the next day so that I could show them to the specialists as convincing that uh that uh you know, that I knew what I was talking about.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="320">Q: At this point we need to pause.</sentence><sentence id="321">We'll change tapes.</sentence><sentence id="322">3 Tape #2</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="326">TECHNICAL CONVERSATION</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="328">Q: OK.</sentence><sentence id="329">We're on.</sentence><sentence id="330">We're back on camera.</sentence><sentence id="331">Uh you're uh dentist friends and colleagues had found these, these slides that you needed...tell us what happened when you received the slides, and if you could repeat the question.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="336">A: Well, uh when uh...you know, what happened when I received the slides?</sentence><sentence id="337">Well, uh the slides by that point were just a very important sort of final detail that made the American specialists accept the validity of what I had said about the <span class="DLF">hole</span> in the skull.</sentence><sentence id="338">Uh but then that was just one more thing and the press conference went ahead as I said earlier and uh everything was closed, but I always felt that I wanted to be sure that Jay Slotkin knew and appreciated how important the role he had played in this case because I knew that it had meant a great deal to him.</sentence><sentence id="339">Uh but this was in 1985.</sentence><sentence id="340">I didn't get back to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Washington</span> until 1988, and uh during that time, very sadly Jay uh began to fall ill and has developed a uh this rare disease called A-myotropic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's Disease.</sentence><sentence id="341">It's the same condition that uh Senator Jacob Javits had not too many years ago.</sentence><sentence id="342">It's an awful thing because gradually all the muscles become paralyzed and a person eventually has to live in uh in uh what amounts to a total iron lung, and be uh be maintained on life support systems, and their mind of course stays perfectly clear, and uh this has happened to Jay and uh at the end of 1990 he is stabilized but in a condition wh...and he's being cared for with a wonderful uh group of professionals, but he is completely paralyzed, but when I came back in 1988 uh...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="350">Q: Let's let's stay with this if we can.</sentence><sentence id="351">I need to stay with the with the Mengele search sequence, if that's all right.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="354">A: Do you want me to finish the story about Jay or not?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="356">Q: All right.</sentence><sentence id="357">If if we could make it brief, yeah.</sentence><sentence id="358">Yeah.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="362">A: Well, I don't have to.</sentence><sentence id="363">It's up to you.</sentence><sentence id="364">Well, I was going to say when I came back through arrangements with his friends and family I went out to his <span class="BUILDING">home</span> and uh it was a very moving experience in telling him this story that I'm telling now as he sat there uh paralyzed and listening to this, so uh, you know, we were all in tears when we finished but I felt uh the satisfaction of knowing that I could at least tell him it first hand, the story of what role he had played in this case, and it was the first time that I learned the uh meaning of the Yiddish word uh mitzvah, which people were telling me that I had done and uh I felt very good about that.</sentence><sentence id="365">Uh but to get back to the sequence of events, uh by the fall or late summer of 1985, it uh started to become apparent that there was a discrepancy in what the German and Brazilian 4 doctors had written and what the American doctors had written about this <span class="DLF">hole</span> in the skull and about the about the possible sinus infection, because the uh the Americans were the ones who questioned me about it, and it was the Americans who who accepted uh what I had to say, but because it was marginal to the uh...back in June...to the process itself, the Germans and the Brazilians never really paid much attention to this little dialogue and in their report they simply wrote that there was an unexplained <span class="DLF">hole</span> there that uh must have been caused by something or other, possibly after the death of the individual, so when this discrepancy began to show up in the published reports, it was apparent that it had to be resolved right away.</sentence><sentence id="366">Otherwise it would forever leave a vast <span class="DLF">gap</span> for people to say that well, there's still unresolved questions and so on.</sentence><sentence id="367">So uh they called me from the Justice Department and they said that we'd better go ahead and do some pathological studies on this <span class="DLF">hole</span> to see whether it was something that was caused before death, or after death, and of course that can be done by pathological studies because you can prepare tissue from the bone to be examined under the microscope and any evidence of infection that obviously had to be there before death would still be seen in the bones, whereas if it was just a fracture or some other break that occurred after the bones were buried or the body was buried, then there would be no evidence on the microscope of any signs of infection or inflammation or any other healing process that might have occurred, so it's very easy to tell the difference.</sentence><sentence id="368">So I contacted the uh Brazilian pathologist who worked in uh association with the <span class="BUILDING">coroner's office</span> and uh then I put on my hat of the pathologist instead of the Consul General's hat, and then the two of us went ahead and in his <span class="INT_SPACE">laboratory</span> with his techniques and procedures, uh tissue was prepared from uh the skull in this particular <span class="REGION">area</span> around the <span class="DLF">hole</span>.</sentence><sentence id="369">It was examined under the microscope and it was quite clear that there was a lot of evidence of bone infection, of what some people call osteomyelitis uh that had occurred around this <span class="DLF">hole</span> and uh then we prepared the photographs and so on and I was able to to advise the Justice Department that indeed uh this was something from a dental infection and not something that occurred after death.</sentence><sentence id="370">Well, this was so important that the Justice Department then reconvened as many of the specialists that they could co...get, to come to the <span class="BUILDING">Smithsonian</span> and this was in about January of "86, the year following all of these events, and I came up and I put on a little seminar to the specialists who were there, showing the slides and all of the evidence that I had worked up together with my Brazilian colleague who had done the laboratory work and uh based on that, everyone who was present...the German specialists as well as the American...agreed that this was evidence of a bone infection of osteomyelitis in the in the jaw skull and that uh both the Brazilian and Germans then modified their report to show that.</sentence><sentence id="371">So that closed a small <span class="DLF">gap</span>, uh but it still left the big issue open.</sentence><sentence id="372">I said earlier that the specialists at the end of their first set of studies said that the probability was more than ninety-five percent, based on the evidence they gathered, that this was Josef Mengele.</sentence><sentence id="373">And that's good enough for courts of 5 law and it's good enough in almost all the cases, but Josef Mengele is not one of almost all the cases.</sentence><sentence id="374">Josef Mengele was very special, and if somehow that ninety-five plus percent could be moved to a hundred, we still had an obligation to try.</sentence><sentence id="375">And when I was up here at the at the Smithsonian conference, the people at the Justice Department, and the head of that <span class="BUILDING">office</span> is Neil Scher", uh pointed out to me that the diary which had been found in the <span class="BUILDING">home</span> of Mrs. Brossert when the original police raid occurred at the time in June of 1985 when Mrs. Brossert led people to the <span class="DLF">cemetery</span>* in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Embu</span> for the exhumation, that this diary was taken away and was examined by hand-writing specialists from the two <span class="COUNTRY">countries</span>, I presume, but that there was quite unanimous agreement by these specialists that this hand-writing in the diary was the hand-writing of Josef Mengele, because that could be compared with samples of his hand-writing that was available in the SS files, which had been guarded in safe-keeping by the Office of Special Investigation at the Justice Department, so we had an authenticated diary which hand-writing experts agreed about that.</sentence><sentence id="376">And in that authenticated diary, Mengele had many references to visits to both physicians and dentists and the one and and so they gave me uh the information about a number of visits to doctors that eventually after he dared come out of hiding at least on those occasions when he had to go to a doctor or a dentist which was in the second half of his eighteen years in <span class="COUNTRY">Brazil</span>, uh that he would make notes in this diary.</sentence><sentence id="377">His diary spoke nothing about the war or his personal views about the Holocaust or anything else.</sentence><sentence id="378">His diary was just a sort of a mechanical writing down of whatever happened to him on any given day to keep him...presumably to stave off boredom.</sentence><sentence id="379">There was no substance.</sentence><sentence id="380">There was no thought.</sentence><sentence id="381">There was no meaning in these diaries.</sentence><sentence id="382">It was just a little hour by hour log.</sentence><sentence id="383">So in uh...they asked me if I could, if I could ask the Brazilian federal police to track down the doctors and dentists to whom references were made in the diary and I did that and the police was very cooperative and they uh did find a number of these people, some of whom uh remembered having treated someone like Josef Mengele uh but of course had no x-rays to to go by it.</sentence><sentence id="384">Uh others didn't remember.</sentence><sentence id="385">Others had died or couldn't be found, but the most important key person was the man who according to the diary had done a root canal treatment on Mengele in uh 1968...excuse me...1978...right, in 1978...and about that degNeil M. Scher, Department of Justice, Director of the Office of Special Investigations, Criminal Division.</sentence><sentence id="386">His final report was published in 1992, entitled In the Matter of Josef Mengele: A Report to the Attorney General of the <span class="COUNTRY">United States</span>.</sentence><sentence id="387">>The remains of Josef Mengele's body was exhumed on 6 June 1985 from the Nossa Senhora do Rosario Cemetary in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Embu</span>.</sentence><sentence id="388">6 particular case, Mengele had written in his diary "...I went to see Dr. Gama" in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sama</span>" ...S - A -M-A....that was what he wrote. "</sentence><sentence id="389">I went to see Dr. Men...uh I went to see a dentist by the name of Dr. Gama in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sama</span> to have a root canal done and he did this root canal on my upper first molar, upper tooth and I paid him two thousand cruzieros on the first appointment on December uh December the 6th, and that uh I went back for a second appointment on December the 9th and paid another one thousand cruzieros for a second appointment."</sentence><sentence id="390">He kept close track of how much he was paying people.</sentence><sentence id="391">And so we asked the Brazilian police to find the Dr. Gama also because that might be a person who would have these dental x-rays because you have to take x-rays to do a <span class="DLF">root canal</span>.</sentence><sentence id="392">And if we could find an x-ray at...with a dentist whose name came from an authenticated diary on which everyone agreed was really that of Josef Mengele, then you would have solid, irrefutable evidence, a chain of evidence.</sentence><sentence id="393">Uh but the police interviewed a Dr. Gama and uh this Dr. Gama didn't remember anything whatsoever about the case, and that was as far as the police investigation went uh with these various doctors including this one.</sentence><sentence id="394">So then Neil Scher asked me if I could take this a little further, given that I was a dentist and I was down there and and go a little bit further with this Dr. Gama to see whether he might remember something, or maybe looking at his charts we could discover some evidence, so I went back and with the agreement and cooperation of the Brazilian federal police, uh I went to see Dr. Gama, who in fact was uh very cooperative, and he told me that uh he didn't think that he had anything to do with Mengele because for one thing he didn't do any root canals, but that he referred his root canal patients to another specialist whose name was totally different, but in any event he went to see his specialist friend and he retrieved from him all of the charts of patients that he had referred to him in 1978 and 1979 for <span class="DLF">root canals</span>, and he brought me the charts to look at and there were thirty-five, forty of these, so I went through those uh very quickly to se...and it was obvious that none of these uh remotely resembled anything that could have been Mengele.</sentence><sentence id="395">If you take forty charts of people who've had <span class="DLF">root canals</span>, first of all uh over half of them were women.</sentence><sentence id="396">Then of the remaining half uh, you know, half of them had root canals done on their lower teeth, not on their upper teeth, and then of the remaining few and many of them had root canals done on their front teeth, not on their back teeth, so we only had three charts left of people that this particular Dr. Gama had referred for root canal treatment during the time period in question that matched the diary, who had root canals done on their upper back teeth, and all three of those people were still alive and existed in that <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">community</span> and could be found and so that pretty well definitely tuled out this Dr. Gama on a variety of different <span class="DLF">grounds</span>.</sentence><sentence id="397">So then the question came up uh well, there must be other Dr. Gama's around, and this is "Dr. Hercy Gonzaga Gama Angelo.</sentence><sentence id="398">7 where I began to get really exercised about this case and seeing what I could do to to to take it a little bit further, so together with my assistant uh Vice Consul by the name of Fred Kaplan, we began to to...well, first of all, uh pour over the diary.</sentence><sentence id="399">It was in German and it was kind of hard reading.</sentence><sentence id="400">His hand-writing wasn't all that good, but I was trying to get more information out of there and at the same time trying to find out if there were other Dr.Gama's in the <span class="REGION">area</span>, and then we had the, really the top question was what does Sama stand for.</sentence><sentence id="401">He said he went to see Dr. Gama in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sama</span>, but there is no <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span> called <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sama</span> in the area of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sao Paulo</span> and uh there was abundant evidence to prove that Mengele didn't wander very far away from his <span class="INT_SPACE">hideout</span>, so he wouldn't have traveled two hundred miles to see a root canal specialist.</sentence><sentence id="402">He would have had it done somewhere close to where he lived, so we uh went to all of the different dental associations and uh so on and uh with the help of a dentist uh friend of mine in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sao Paulo</span>, we put together the most comprehensive list possible of Dr. Gama's in the state of Sao Paulo.</sentence><sentence id="403">The city of Sao Paulo has a population of about sixteen, seventeen million people, and the state of Sao Paulo has about thirty-two million people.</sentence><sentence id="404">We are talking about a big <span class="REGION">area</span>.</sentence><sentence id="405">So we put together this list and we came up with about eighteen dentists by the name of Gama, of whom one, of course, was the one I'd interviewed and already ruled out, but of the remaining Gama's, most of them had graduated from <span class="BUILDING">dental school</span> after 1979, at least a majority of them had.</sentence><sentence id="406">Uh one had died.</sentence><sentence id="407">One had moved away from <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sao Paulo</span> immediately upon graduation.</sentence><sentence id="408">Uh to make a long story short, there was no Gama left who could remotely fit the situation that uh we were trying to to clarify.</sentence><sentence id="409">So at the same time I was pouring over this diary and saying now what could Sama stand for.</sentence><sentence id="410">What could <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sama</span> stand for?</sentence><sentence id="411">It's obviously not the name of a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span>.</sentence><sentence id="412">There is no <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span> by the name of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sama</span>.</sentence><sentence id="413">And by reading the diary over and over again, I realized that when it came to names, Mengele was using a bit of a code.</sentence><sentence id="414">When he didn't want a possible reader of his diary to know who he was referring to, he would use an abbreviation of using initials.</sentence><sentence id="415">The first initial of the first name, and the first one or two letters of the second name.</sentence><sentence id="416">And so I noticed that there was a repetition of this pattern throughout the diary, and then I started to think of Sama in terms of how I could interpret that word as a possible abbreviation.</sentence><sentence id="417">And it finally came to me in a ina flash that Sama could very possibly stand for Santo Amaro, the name of a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">suburb</span> of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sao Paulo</span> where I was living, and where he was known to have lived with the Brosserts and the Stammers.</sentence><sentence id="418">And so I got very excited at this thought, so Fred Kaplan and I went back to the <span class="BUILDING">Consulate</span> and we picked up a phone book with yellow pages in it.</sentence><sentence id="419">Now in <span class="COUNTRY">Brazil</span>, the yellow pages are not used very extensively but it was the first thing that was in my way, so I picked it up.</sentence><sentence id="420">A lot of people have unlisted numbers and so on, but uh in any case we looked under dentists in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Santo Amaro</span> and there was the name of a Dr. Gama that hadn't turned up on any of our lists before.</sentence><sentence id="421">So we made a test phone call there to ask for an appointment and the assistant told us that Dr.Gama specialized in root canal treatment, so I immediately got back in touch with the 8 Brazilian federal police and they gave me an officer to come with me when we went out there.</sentence><sentence id="422">And we went to the <span class="BUILDING">office</span> of Dr. Gama who uh, you know, we told him why we were there, and he, of course, remembered the Mengele case from the press uh the year before, but he didn't remember having treated the man six years earlier and of course normally one would not expect him to remember that, because at the time he treated it, there was nothing unusual about the matter.</sentence><sentence id="423">The unusual thing was six years later, but that doesn't help you remember back to a routine case.</sentence><sentence id="424">He had no reason to dream that he might have been involved.</sentence><sentence id="425">So he said...well, he said he had eight thousand charts uh but we we said we would like to go through those charts right then and there.</sentence><sentence id="426">It was the police officer and Fred Kaplan and I. And I said to him, "Now we are looking for someone on whom you did a root canal on his upper first molar on December the 6th, 1978, and got two thousand cruzieros, and you had a second appointment and got a thousand cruzieros," and he said "Well, you're welcom to go through these charts."</sentence><sentence id="427">Now it was a lucky thing that he still had them.</sentence><sentence id="428">Uh in in modern medical and dental practice, of course, it's routine to keep complete records.</sentence><sentence id="429">But years ago it wasn't so routine and then less advanced <span class="COUNTRY">countries</span> as far as medical care is concerned, some people still don't keep records, particularly since there's a there's a tendency not to pay taxes and uh so it was a pleasant surprise to see that Dr. Gama had complete records for all of those years, and he had complete charts.</sentence><sentence id="430">So we started going through the charts and it was very easy to go through quickly because he happened to write the date when a first...when a patient first went to him in the upper left hand corner of this six by nine cardboard, uh you know, index card, so by looking just in in that corner, we could go through very quickly and eliminate all the people who went to him after January of 1979 when Mengele reportedly died and then we were looking for the other date.</sentence><sentence id="431">And after about thirty, forty minutes, we came across a card that had those entries... December the 6th, 1978, first molar, two thousand cruzieros...December the 9th, so on.</sentence><sentence id="432">And then we turned the card over on the other <span class="NPIP">side</span> and we saw that the name that was written in there was Pedro Hochbichler, which was the known alias that Mengele had had used when he was hiding in <span class="COUNTRY">Brazil</span> and the address on Estrada Varenga was the same one uh the <span class="BUILDING">house</span> where he lived by himself for a number of years when the Brosserts were helping him and protecting him but not harboring him in their own <span class="BUILDING">house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="433">As a matter of fact, I I ran into a lady when I gave a a talk in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sao Paulo</span> about Mengele who told me that she had lived in the <span class="BUILDING">house</span> next door with her parents and that they used to see this man going for walks every day in front of the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="434">It looked just like the pictures and so on and at that address, but he never spoke to them and he wouldn't greet them back when they said hello and the father wanted to invite him in for coffee or something as a neighbor, but he never accepted and would never speak to them.</sentence><sentence id="435">So here we found this chart.</sentence><sentence id="436">So then, uh he was flabbergasted, of course, and fascinated, but he still couldn't remember anything about the man except that the handwriting on the chart was clearly his and he said, "Yes, 9 that's my hand-writing so, you know, if that's what you wanted, I treated him."</sentence><sentence id="437">So we said, "What we really want is to see if you have any of the x-rays," and he said, "Well, no I don't because I always send the x-rays back to the dentist who referred a patient to me" and we said "Well, who referred this man to you."</sentence><sentence id="438">And he looked on his chart and he said, "Well, and that was Dr. Tutiya"."</sentence><sentence id="439">Now that's a Japanese name but there are over a million Japanese Brazilians living in the <span class="REGION">Sao Paulo area</span>.</sentence><sentence id="440">It's the largest Japanese community anywhere outside of <span class="COUNTRY">Japan</span>, and there are many, many professionals in the health professions and elsewhere who are second, third generation Japanese, born and living in <span class="COUNTRY">Brazil</span> as Brazilian citizens.</sentence><sentence id="441">And in questioning...this is a flashback...but in questioning Mrs. Stammer and Mrs. Brossert about whether they knew of who had been Mengele's dentist when he finally started going to one again, swore that they couldn't remember the name but that he was a Japanese dentist.</sentence><sentence id="442">Uh subsequently the Justice Department satisfied itself uh by way of its investigation that uh the women were indeed telling the truth and they did not remember the name, but uh definitely they remembered that Mengele was referring to a Japanese dentist and once said that he wanted to go to a Japanese dentist because since all Japanese look the same to him, he assumed that Japanese couldn't tell the difference between one Caucasian male and another, which is perfectly consistent with the kind of mentality the man had.</sentence><sentence id="443">So I asked Dr.Gama "Where is Dr. Tutiya" and he said "Well, he's just a block and a half down the <span class="DLF">street</span>."</sentence><sentence id="444">So we thanked him very much and the three of us walked out of there and crossed the <span class="DLF">street</span> and, you know, the adrenalin was just pumping like crazy and there was a <span class="BUILDING">record store</span> there that was playing, you know, loud music on a loud speaker for the <span class="DLF">street</span> and that sort of enhanced the sort of trance-like or movie-like atmosphere as we were, you know, brimming with excitement walking the <span class="DLF">block</span> and a half involved to get to the <span class="BUILDING">office</span> of Mr. Tutiya, Dr.Tutiya.</sentence><sentence id="445">So we got there.</sentence><sentence id="446">We knocked on the <span class="DLF">door</span> and uh yes, he was in.</sentence><sentence id="447">And he saw us and the police officer showed him the photograph of Mengele, one of the photographs that had been found in Mrs. Brassart's <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, and he said "Oh yes.</sentence><sentence id="448">That's the man with a hat."</sentence><sentence id="449">And the reason he said that is because in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sao Paulo</span>, it's extremely unusual to wear a hat.</sentence><sentence id="450">People don't wear hats in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sao Paulo</span>, but Mengele wore a hat because many years ago, his first wife still in <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span> who subsequently divorced him, but when he was leaving to flee <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span> and went to <span class="COUNTRY">Argentina</span>, she said "Oh, they're going to find you because you have such a high forehead that you're going to be easy to find all your life."</sentence><sentence id="451">And so in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Buenos Aires</span>, according to records that I read, he actually tried to have a hair implant done of the high part of his forehead, try to shrink that down, but of course that didn't work.</sentence><sentence id="452">You can't grow hair on the part of skin that never had hair, so then he started wearing a hat in order to to reduce the size of the visible part of his forehead, so he always wore a hat and these photographs were taken with him wearing a hat and this dentist immediately recognized that.</sentence><sentence id="453">degDr.</sentence><sentence id="454"><span class="BUILDING">Kasumasa Tutiya</span>.</sentence><sentence id="455">0 And we asked him if he remembered something about it, and he had a vague recollection but but uh we said "Well, do you have any records of Pedro Hochbichler."</sentence><sentence id="456">So he said "well, just a moment."</sentence><sentence id="457">And he went in a little <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> in the back and opened the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">drawer</span>. ...</sentence><sentence id="458">I could see him from the <span class="INT_SPACE">front room</span>...went through some envelopes and charts and pulled out a chart just like that and brought it out and showed us that he had done a great deal of dental treatment for this man, including two partial removable dentures and a lot of other dental treatment, and so we said, "Well, do you have any x-rays."</sentence><sentence id="459">And he said, "Well, let me go back and check" and then he went back in the <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> and opened another <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">drawer</span> and was in there for what seemed like an eternity but finally came out with a little brown envelope, opened it up and six or seven dental x-rays dropped out on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">table</span> and that was a very moving and very emotional moment and uh we uh took the x-rays and the other records with us.</sentence><sentence id="460">Of course, this was legally sanctioned by the police officer who was with us, and uh the dentist, of course, was also perfectly willing to cooperate and uh I immediately called Neil Scher in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Washington</span> and he had an associate who worked on this case for the whole time, a very fine professional called David Meyerwell (ph).</sentence><sentence id="461">I called them and told them what had happened.</sentence><sentence id="462">Of course, they knew that we were doing this, so they were very excited to hear the results and it was Neil Scher who started me on this process.</sentence><sentence id="463">Uh and then I also called Dr. Lowell Levine, who is an American dental forensic specialist who had been down on the original team in June in <span class="COUNTRY">Brazil</span> in "85 and did the dental specialty work, and he came back immediately and uh then we had these x-rays which were located only through the decoded information from an authenticated diary of Josef Mengele.</sentence><sentence id="464">There was no other way to find these x-rays.</sentence><sentence id="465">I I used the diary found there.</sentence><sentence id="466">It was authenticated by hand-writing experts from <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span> and the <span class="COUNTRY">United States</span>, used the information I gleaned from there, broke the code in which it was written, and using only and exclusively information from that authenticated diary, found the dentist and these x-rays.</sentence><sentence id="467">Therefore, these x-rays could be taken with absolute certainty as belonging to Josef Mengele.</sentence><sentence id="468">Then it was only a matter of Dr. Levine coming down and matching those x-rays with the x-rays taken of the skull which had been found in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Embu</span> at the time of the exhumation and when there was a hundred percent coincidence in all of the details of those x-rays, that allowed the case to be closed with a hundred percent certainty that should lay to rest in a scientific way the fact that Josef Mengele is dead.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="582">Q: Dr. Dachi, thank you very much.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="584">A: Thank you.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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