Auschwitz_ A Doctor's Eyewitness Account - Miklos Nyiszli [27]
During the afternoon Dr. Mengele paid me a visit. I gave him a detailed account of my morning’s work and handed him my report. He sat down and began to read each case carefully. He was greatly interested by the heterochromatic condition of the eyes, but even more so by the discovery of DuBois’ tumor. He gave me instructions to have the organs mailed and told me to include my report in the package. He also instructed me to fill out the “Cause of Death” column hitherto left blank. The choice of causes was left to my own judgment and discretion; the only stipulation was that each cause be different. Almost apologetically he remarked that, as I could see for myself, these children were syphilitic and tubercular, and consequently would not have lived in any case . . . He said no more about it. With that he had said enough. He had explained the reason for these children’s death. I had refrained from making any comment. But I had learned that here tuberculosis and syphilis were not treated with medicines and drugs, but with chloroform injections.
I shuddered to think of all I had learned during my short stay here, and of all I should yet have to witness without protesting, until my own appointed hour arrived. The minute I entered this place I had the feeling I was already one of the living-dead. But now, in possession of all these fantastic secrets, I was certain I would never get out alive. Was it conceivable that Dr. Mengele, or the Berlin-Dahlem Institute, would ever allow me to leave this place alive?
IX
IT WAS ALREADY LATE, AND GROWING dark. Dr. Mengele had left and I was alone with my thoughts. Mechanically I arranged the instruments used for the autopsy and, after washing my hands, went into the work room and lighted a cigarette, hoping to find a minute’s peace. Suddenly I heard a scream that sent chills up and down my spine. Then, immediately afterwards, a thud that sounded like a falling body. I listened, my nerves taut, for what the following minutes would bring. Before another minute had passed I heard another scream, a click and the fall of a body. I counted seventy screams, clicks, thuds. Heavy footsteps retreated and all grew quiet.
The scene of the bloody tragedy that had just been enacted was the room adjoining the dissecting room. The hall led directly into it. It was a half-darkened place, with a concrete floor and barred windows that looked out onto the back courtyard. I used it as a storeroom for corpses, keeping them there till it was their turn for dissection, then returning them there after the autopsy till they were sent to be burned. Used, dirty women’s clothes; battered wooden shoes; glasses; pieces of stale bread—the normal run of KZ women’s articles—lay piled before the entrance to the room. After what I had heard I was prepared for something extraordinary. I entered the room and glanced quickly around. A terrifying scene gradually unfolded: before me were sprawled the naked bodies of seventy women; curled up, bathed in their own blood and in the blood of their neighbors, they lay in utter disarray about the room.
As my eyes grew more accustomed to the dim light I discovered to my horror that not all the victims were dead. Some were still breathing, moving their arms or legs slowly; with glazed eyes, they tried to raise their bloody heads. I lifted two, three heads of those still alive, and suddenly realized that, besides death by gas and chloroform injections, there was a third way of killing here: a bullet in the back of the neck. The wound revealed that a six-millimeter bullet had been used: there was no exit hole. From these cursory observations, I concluded that it had been a soft lead bullet, because only this type bullet will imbed itself in the skull structure. Unfortunately I knew something of such matters and was able to size up the situation quickly in all its horror. There was nothing surprising