Where's the real info, the real description of Mengele's experiments, even a picture of the man??!! Not in this book.

Let's get some things straight here: German Nazi scientists were extremely well trained, meticulous, and the creme of the creme for most of the 20th century. Mengele was no different. He was not sloppy, or random, or "insane" (in the conventional sense), or simply tortured kids for his entertainment. He was (from the 1940s to the 1960s at least) the World's premier expert on creating mind controlled people based on extreme trauma. Various types of trauma were inflicted on people to such an extent that their minds "fractured" (he also developed the best drugs to give them to prevent them from passing out, such that their conscious minds had to "deal" with the enormous pain, etc.). He controlled the "fracturing" process and created many different "alters" for different purposes within these people, essentially multiple personalities all within the same person, but completely unaware of the other. In other words, he perfected the manufacture of what has now been coined, The Manchurian Candidate, through trauma based mind control techniques. He did not originate the premise (as it was used in Egyptian times and perhaps earlier), but he greatly advanced the "science" of it.

With this in mind, he used very young twins for a number of practical reasons: 1) twins represent the perfect control for experiments, 2) he found it was easier to fracture and "cement" the process in children under the age of 5. In fact, he knew that if a pregnant mother was traumatised and delivered a premature infant, it was even better. He also experimented on physically traumatising the fetus directly, 3) due to the Nazis great essoteric and occult interest, he was fascinated by the "etheric connection" twins have and was interested in quantifying it for military communication, 4) he realised that memories and emotions are carried within the blood, so he was also involved in blood transfusions and primitive organ transplants to test his hypotheses, and 5) it was even rumoured he was also interested in and advancing human cloning. In short, the discoveries that Mengele made and the results he was getting interested every government and military entitiy in the World, and they all bidded for his services at the end of WW2, irregardless of any morality or ethical questions. This is why the real documentation of what he was doing was not publicly admitted to. Instead, we were told he was just insane and wanted to dye all the chidren's eyes blue and convert them to Aryans.

As it turned out, the Americans won the bidding, and Mengele was transferred along with THOUSANDS of other Nazi scientists in what was termed, "Operation Paperclip". Some of these Nazis joined the OSS (which later became the CIA), some formed what became known as NASA, others formed what became known as the NSA, but Mengele and his ilk continued with their mind control stuff within military facilites in Arizona, Nevada, California, Colorado, and possibly even Canada for MANY YEARS. In fact, he trained many other "programmers" in his techniques. Marilyn Monroe was what was termed a "Presidential Model" of mind control slave and many others have followed within Hollywood and the music business. In fact, Britney Spears is the best modern example of a mind control slave who is losing her programming.

Mengele may have made appearances in South America from time to time, or maybe it was a body double, but he carried right where he left off in the dark days of WW2. And his program carries on TODAY. So, this book talks about some poor twins and its a sad and horrific story, but completely misses the point as to what Mengele was, where he went, and what became of him. He, along with the other Paperclip scientists, infiltrated the US and formed a 4th Reich of sorts...

Where's the real info, the real description of Mengele's experiments, even a picture of the man??!! Not in this book.

Let's get some things straight here: German Nazi scientists were extremely well trained, meticulous, and the creme of the creme for most of the 20th century. Mengele was no different. He was not sloppy, or random, or "insane" (in the conventional sense), or simply tortured kids for his entertainment. He was (from the 1940s to the 1960s at least) the World's premier expert on creating mind controlled people based on extreme trauma. Various types of trauma were inflicted on people to such an extent that their minds "fractured" (he also developed the best drugs to give them to prevent them from passing out, such that their conscious minds had to "deal" with the enormous pain, etc.). He controlled the "fracturing" process and created many different "alters" for different purposes within these people, essentially multiple personalities all within the same person, but completely unaware of the other. In other words, he perfected the manufacture of what has now been coined, The Manchurian Candidate, through trauma based mind control techniques. He did not originate the premise (as it was used in Egyptian times and perhaps earlier), but he greatly advanced the "science" of it.

With this in mind, he used very young twins for a number of practical reasons: 1) twins represent the perfect control for experiments, 2) he found it was easier to fracture and "cement" the process in children under the age of 5. In fact, he knew that if a pregnant mother was traumatised and delivered a premature infant, it was even better. He also experimented on physically traumatising the fetus directly, 3) due to the Nazis great essoteric and occult interest, he was fascinated by the "etheric connection" twins have and was interested in quantifying it for military communication, 4) he realised that memories and emotions are carried within the blood, so he was also involved in blood transfusions and primitive organ transplants to test his hypotheses, and 5) it was even rumoured he was also interested in and advancing human cloning. In short, the discoveries that Mengele made and the results he was getting interested every government and military entitiy in the World, and they all bidded for his services at the end of WW2, irregardless of any morality or ethical questions. This is why the real documentation of what he was doing was not publicly admitted to. Instead, we were told he was just insane and wanted to dye all the chidren's eyes blue and convert them to Aryans.

As it turned out, the Americans won the bidding, and Mengele was transferred along with THOUSANDS of other Nazi scientists in what was termed, "Operation Paperclip".

Where's the real info, the real description of Mengele's experiments, even a picture of the man??!! Not in this book.

Let's get some things straight here: German Nazi scientists were extremely well trained, meticulous, and the creme of the creme for most of the 20th century. Mengele was no different. He was not sloppy, or random, or "insane", or simply tortured kids for his entertainment. He was (from the 1940s to the 1960s at least) the World's premier expert on creating mind controlled people based on extreme trauma. Various types of trauma were inflicted on people to such an extent that their minds fractured (he also found the best drugs to give them to prevent them from passing out, such that their minds had to "deal" with the enormous pain, etc.). He controlled the "fracturing" and created many different "alters" for different purposes within these people, essentially multiple personalities all within the same person, but completely unaware of the other. In other words, he perfected the manufacture of what has now been coined, The Manchurian Candidate.

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Where's the real info, the real description of Mengele's experiments, even a picture of the man??!! Not in this book.

Let's get some things straight here: German Nazi scientists were extremely well trained, meticulous, and the creme of the creme for most of the 20th century. Mengele was no different. He was not sloppy, or random, or "insane", or simply tortured kids for his entertainment. He was (from the 1940s to the 1960s at least) the World's premier expert on creating mind controlled people based on extreme trauma. Various types of trauma were inflicted on people to such an extent that their minds fractured (he also found the best drugs to give them to prevent them from passing out, such that their minds had to "deal" with the enormous pain, etc.). He controlled the "fracturing" and created many different "alters" for different purposes within these people, essentially multiple personalities all within the same person, but completely unaware of the other. In other words, he perfected the manufacture of what has now been coined, The Manchurian Candidate.

njjnjknjknjk

This book takes us from the youths of of Josef Mengele and his victims (briefly) to Auschwitz to the Nazi-hunting of the post-war period to the late 1980s. It tells these stories in alternating voices, stressing how necessary it is to do so: these stories are inextricably linked.

The title is a bit misleading; this is perhaps weighed more on the side of a brief biography of Mengele, with emphasis on postwar activities. The stories of a group of twins break into the narrative in italicized bursts, fracturing it-- and thus reminding us all of how the horrific events of World War II fractured individuals, families, communities, nations.

The book is an oral history of Auschwitz, told by those who survived it. Certainly, it is well researched (especially when it comes to the information about Nazi hunting and war tribunals), but the information in the "spotlight," so to speak, are the unsilenced voices of the twins. Do not expect pages of historical detail about what types of experiments were performed, reviews of medical cases, lengthy discussions of what occured in labs; that information is not there. This is a book about a handful of people and their stories, and while the book tells Mengele's for him, the twins tell their own. Particularly on the part of the twins, it is more a psychological study than a historical one (we could go into how psychology and history are intertwined, but it would be best for the reader to reach his or her own conclusions after reading the book).

The text is deeply moving, often shattering. The voices that shatter the narrative of Mengele's life, denying the murderer any seamless biography, are vivid and alive. The authors picked a unique and, ultimately, extremely effective way to deliver biographies of oppresser and oppressed.

This book exceeded my expectations. The way the author goes back and forth between survivors' accounts and factual information about Mengele was a great way to keep the book interesting. I was intrigued from beginning to end. A lot of books that just rehash the past can be boring but this book was truely great. I learned a lot of factual information but also was deeply drawn to the survivors' stories. Highly recommended!

This is a very good book with factual accounts from some of the youngest twins. What I found confusing is the way the author wrote the book. There seems to be some jumping around, comparisons of sorts. This book thoroughly explains how the surviving twins got together and met with the author, as well as the founding of their organization. This book does not go into great detail as to what specific types of horrific experiments were done, as most of the survivors able to tell their stories were very young at the time, and/or they have repressed their memories of the horror. It does give second-hand accounts of the 'goings-on' of Mengele by those that survived.

This harrowing book traces both the life of 'the angel of death', the psycopathic monster, Dr Josef Mengele, and his victims who survived.
Mengele carried out a range of horrific experiments on a range of people, mainly twins. particularly Jewish and Gipsey children, and various others.
As Mengele's life is described, so is the life of the survivors, the horrors that they experienced at Auschwitz and how they lived in the decades afterwards.
"Most of the twins began their descent into Auschwitz by witnessing their entire families being led away from them to be killed. In their special barracks, located just yards away from the crematoriums, they observed the Nazis' extermination of Jews at close range. Twins as young as five and six years of age endured torture, daily blood tests and starvation diets, as well as facing exposure to epidemics of cholera, tuberculosis and other deadly diseases that were rampant because of unsanitary conditions. Worst of all, of course, were the Mengele's barbaric pseudoscientific experiments. But as horrific as their lives were the twins enjoyed a special privileged status, for they were regarded as "Mengele's children". And as such they were spared the random selections and march to the gas chambers that threatened every other Auschwitz inmate'.

The testimony of a handful of survivors illustrates the horror of Mengele and Auschwitz, and the scars of the experiences suffered by his victims, and how they experienced them through their lives.
In the testimony of Moshe Offer, who was twelve years old at the time: 'When they opened the doors to our cattle cars, there were lots of dead children. During the trip, some mothers couldn't bare to hear the sound of their hungry babies-and so they killed them. I remember two blond, very beautiful children in my car, whose mother had choked them to death because she could not stand to watch them suffer'.

Eva Mozes, who was nine years old at the time, recounts how, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she and her twin sister were packed into filthy, rat infested barracks, together with hundreds of other little girls.
She remembers seeing three dead children on the ground. Later they would always be finding dead children on the floor of the latrines.
From their barracks they could see huge, smoking chimneys rising high above the camp. There were glowing flames rising above them. ' " Why are they burning so late in the evening?" I asked the other children. "The Germans are burning people they answered".
Twins Hedvah and Leah Stern. who were thirteen years old at the time, recount how Mengele tried to change the colour of their eyes:' One day we were given eye drops. Afterwards, we could not see for several days. We though the Nazis had made us blind.
We were very frightened of the experiments. They took a lot of blood from us. We fainted several times, and the SS guards were very amused.
We were not very developed. The Nazis made us remove our clothes and they took photographs of us.
The SS guards would point to us and laugh. We stood naked in front of these young Nazi thugs, shaking from cold and fear, and they laughed."
The first few chapters of the book deal with Mengele's role in Auschwitz itself, and the rest of the book relates Eichmann's experience in hiding in South America, and the way the surviving twins built up lives and families for themselves, most of them in Israel, while the nightmare of Auschwitz would scar and effect them forever.Most of the twins longed to emigrate to the Land of Israel, then the British Colony of Palestine.
They soon found that the Communist rulers of their former homes in lands like Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, were hostile to the Jewish people too, and pesecuted those who wanted to go to Israel and those who wanted to hold onto their Jewish faith, as 'Zionists'. Thus developed that form of Leftist anti-Semitism known as anti-Zionism, which was incubated by the Soviet Union, and is endemic among the international left today.
The rest of the book deals with how Mengele dwindled in exile into a neurotic and bitter non-being. The surivors describe their lives in Israel and elsewhere, after the war, their often fearful behaviour, their nightmares and their treatment, and also how they built up new lives and families, which live on in the Jewish homeland.
Mengele died after suffering a stroke and drowning in 1979, in Brazil.

Dr.Mengele's actual history has been full of inaccuracies and speculations. This book attempts to clarify many issues. It is a must reading for anybody doing reseach about the holocaust.

Dr.Mengele's actual history has been full of inaccuracies and speculations. This book attempts to clarify many issues. It is a must reading for anybody doing reseach about the holocaust.

What these 2 authors have done is brilliant, elegant and spellbinding. They have woven together a historical timeline based on best available sources and featuring first-hand testimony from Dr. Mengele's twins, to shed light on Mengele's medical "experiments" -- some of the deepest sociopathy ever known to mankind -- as well as the many profiles in courage spawned by the tragic events covered. The book comes across as a labor of love, in which the authors relate as 2 civil human beings to another, engaging the best in the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Rarely do I view a nonfiction work, however worthwhile, as one that I cannot put down, but this book is an exception. Scholars of the WWII/Holocaust era cannot consider that their library or education are complete without this work.

The overall impressions I have, from the many and tragically ironic story lines in this volume, leave me disturbed. This strikes me as not just a case of one individual's sociopathy translating to the ruin of countless lives and inflicting of infinite suffering. It is also a case of too many forces for good proving indecisive, apathetic and quarrelsome, so that justice, in the end, was not fully served, nor was the correct message transmitted to future generations. In far too many respects, the victims were left to find their own solace. This grossly compounds the damage, both to them and to any of us who are trying hard to find civility in the societies in which we live.

I first read this book several years ago, having gained it through chance really. (random bookclub selection) However, by the time I reached the middle of the book, I was completely in awe of the survivors as well as those poor souls who perished. The author is unbiased and thorough. The survivor accounts are invaluable. This is a book I intend to share with my children someday AND my grandhchildren. Lessons we simply cannot allow to slip through the cracks of history.

This book is written very differently but is a moving testimonial of outstanding children and a witness to their determined spirit to survive. I find it hard to imagine that anyone would put these precious innocent children through such unimaginable horrors.
I think it is a tragedy that this Dr was never caught or punished for his crimes.
For all those that say they do not believe in the holocaust should have to meet up with a few of these survivors.
I have read many books on the holocaust and I will never cease to be amazed with those that lived to tell their story. God Bless them.

Comprised of the memories of some of the surviving twins, this book also includes photographs of them before and after the war -- totally eye-opening.

Obviously, this book is incredibly depressing, and for that reason very difficult to get through. However, it was an aspect of World War II about which I hadn't known much before, and suspect that others don't, as well.

No matter how much you might hate some ethnic group, I don't see how anyone could be so inhumane as to torture and dismember this way. People are people, no matter what.

I always marvel at how these people can go on to live regular lives. I'm sure that once a person experiences such horrifying ordeals, the scars will never go away emotionally -- but even to give the outward appearance of going on? Takes an incredibly brave person.

"Children of the Flames...: ", Penquin Books, NY, 1992 (PB), 320 (262) pgs.; 40 pg. Notes; 4 pg. Biblio.; 8 pg. Index; 6 pg. Ack.; & 23 B/W photos. 5" x 7 3/4"

The Lagnado & Dekel "Children of the Flames" (COTF) indicts Dr. Josef Mengele as Nazi physician who specifically subjected c. 3,000 twins to "unspeakable horror" & "160 survived" (c. 5%) in Auschwitz (actually it was Birkenau). Personae in book, Dr. Mengele aside, include 18 informant survivors: -- 5 twin pair, 7 single twins & 1 non-twin, traced through CANDLES, Internat. Soc. of Auschwitz twins.

Detailed biograph. is given of Dr. Mengele, notably as he leaves Auschwitz for sanctuary in So. America, & particulars relating to his odds-on death, patent disinterest vs. "falling through the cracks" seen in his failure to be both sought & indicted by the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg.

Style & format of COTF makes painful reading:--We hear 18 voices, relunctantly for first time in 40 years expressing their repressed memories with mixed remorse & gladness! Voices detract & inhibit, page after page, rhetoric on Dr. Mengele, & consist of mainly 'de minimus' thoughts. In essence the authors made a poor marriage of two books: one book on repressed thoughts & one book on Mengele. Merging of text with "Greek Chorus" of twins' ideas attributed to Judy Marwell, credentials unstated; Dekel's sole contribution was publishing deceased husband's researches on Mengele. (Shouldn't he be listed as an author?)

I also have medical concerns over this book: -- evoking repressed early childhood memories is fraught with gross discrepancies in/of recall & of the inherent dangers in recruiting repressed memories: -- it's not a useful nor safe or welcomed catharsis but a provocative psychological invitation not justified except for psycho-social benefits & when done by trained specialists. Perhaps even re-uniting as many twin survivors as possible is of questionable value, some motives however appear obvious. I'm also troubled by those interviews of personae done in Israel where the author utilized Vera Grossman, an Auschwitz twin who had vivid memories (her twin had no recall), for all Hebrew language interviews with Auschwitz twins. Again, veracity of elicited information now has one or more new obstacles to traverse. That the author has no credible psycho-psychiatric experience is revealed as she relates she "often found...(herself) crying with them."

Overall, there is no reason to suspect the main theme of COTF is untrue, but is is certainly & obviously flawed, & it is well neigh possible more harm than good was done by aggressive impositions, but this is what some journalist's do. I'm a twin myself & thusly found the book 'interesting.'

I think this book aptly showed the flames without having to resort to hideous details for the most part. I also thought that alternating text of the twins and Mengele himself made this book much more effective than it might have been, if an alternate approach was used. This is in short a very tastefully done book
of probably the most distasteful material in the history of the human race. All the twins deserve a special place in the hearts
of humanity forever.

This book confused me at first, I am afraid. It took me a while to figure out what the authors were doing in jumping from information about Mengele at particular times in his life, to the words (spoken or written) of the children who suffered so much under his hands (also at that particular point in their lives). By the middle of the book, I figured out the author's use of comparison between Mengele and the children's groups to illustrate the great differences between the children growing up as adults and overcoming their past/dealing with it, while Mengele dwindled into the nothing that he really was in South America.

Of course, I'd heard or read some things about Mengele, but it was in the process of reading information about bioethics that I was introduced to this book, and decided I should read it for background on some work I'm doing, as per science and medicine and those least able to protect themselves against unethical practitioners of these 'arts'. The book does not dwell on the horrors that Mengele practiced on these children, and also on dwarves and giants and any other 'misfits' he was interested in. What information there is in the book (it was in story form, rather than professional paper format with numbers marking footnotes or endnotes...but there was additional information at the back of the book based on pages), indicates that Mengele was less of a scientist or a doctor, and more of a technician. His ideas for the experiments were quite often not his own, and he was extremely sloppy in keeping records that even had Germany won the war, would have provided genetic information of use to anyone else. I doubt sincerely any other scientist/physician could have copied his work and gotten the same results...and this is an absolute law in science now. Most often Mengele's work seemed to be done to satisfy his own curiosity as well as his obvious need to be in control and to hurt others.

The story of Mengele's exile is an living record of the book "The Picture of DOrian Grey." Though Mengele did not lose his good looks or his vanity, he did suffer from problems of his own making, both familial and psychological and physical. I am sure it is of no relief to those families and children who suffered at his hands that he was never brought to account (and I suspect the U.S. as well as other countries are all a bit guilty of blinding themselves), but the man did spend the rest of his life undergoing demeaning circumstances, losing his degrees, total alienation from his family, and numerous real and hypochondrial diseases/pains.

Perhaps the most outstanding thing about the book, other than the need to remind the world of the story of these children, is how many of them went on to create lives for themselves that were of great worth, in spite of never forgetting their deceased twins and families, or the horror of what was done to them. My heart broke for the girls who became mothers in their own right, only to suffer from extreme panic and anxiety due to their own past concerning their children. It was and is totally understandable that they should fear constantly, yet so many were able to overcome and be successful in their lives. A story of courage on their parts, a story to be remembered and not forgotten on our part.

For once again, the specter of eugenics and genetic manipulation is raising it's head throughout the world, with the passage of laws that allow others to make decisions for the individual concerning what constitutes a life of worth, what defines brain death, and even what type of children people should be able to bear...for the good of society of course. Those same words were spoken and used by Hitler, his cronies, and the physicians and scientists who so willingly followed his orders...all in the name of genetics and science. Those who forget (or do not read about their history), will be condemned to repeat it...

Karen Sadler,
Science Education,
University of Pittsburgh