Dwarves Of Auschwitz (drive-by)

[T_R_Oglodyte]

Dwarves Of Auschwitz

from The Guardian.

We embarked on the trail of the seven dwarves of Auschwitz with the notion that we would subject their story to the same rigorous examination that would be applied to any other historical source. So we not only collected their testimonies, but crosschecked them with those of dozens of other survivors, inmates and doctors, either first-hand or in archives and libraries. We unearthed medical documents in Poland and Germany. Still, we followed the advice of Professor Yehuda Bauer, a Holocaust historian and himself a survivor, that "one must never argue with a survivor".

Descending the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the seven dwarves and their five average-height family members were immediately separated from the others in the transport. They were told to wait for the arrival of Mengele. In rotation with other physicians, he was sending the multitudes to their immediate death, and selecting the few fit enough for slave labour. He was also using his long shifts on the ramp to pluck out twins, as well as hunchbacks, hermaphrodites, giants, dwarves, obese men and corpulent women – in general, anyone suffering from a growth disorder.

On the night the Ovitzs arrived, Mengele was asleep in his room at the nearby SS headquarters. All the troopers on duty at the ramp, however, knew well of his passion, of his collector's mentality. To gain favour with the freak-hunter, they were always on the lookout for new specimens to enrich his "human circus". While a lone dwarf did not provide reason enough to knock on Mengele's door in the middle of the night, seven dwarves, along with their tall siblings, seemed good cause for disturbance.