The historic cache of more than 30 post-war diaries of Hitler's death camp doctor Josef Mengele could fetch up to $1 million at auction Thursday in part because new and shocking translations of the "Angel of Death" reveal his continued hatred of Jews as well as disdain for former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, his own homeland after World War II, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, and even the children in his new South American home.
"I heard the anecdote about the old Jew, who, before his death, told his son to climb onto the table and fall backwards into the arms of his father. The moral of the story is the advice: Don't trust anybody, not even your own father. Without going into specifics, such human behavior (in the figurative sense) seems to be typical for and between Jews. But I am not one and I hope that my son doesn't have Jewish blood either," Mengele wrote in the diaries that cover over 3,000 pages.
The historic collection will be auctioned off Thursday by Alexander Historic Auctions. The sale is done at the company's Connecticut headquarters and online.
Firm President Bill Panagopulos told Whispers today that early interest in the collection of the fiend of the Auschwitz death camp has been high and the earlier estimated price of $400,000 could surge to $1 million.
His hope is to sell the collection to a Holocaust collector or museum. "Although by law I cannot exclude legitimate buyers from bidding on this, or any other lot, I am endeavoring to see that these journals are placed with a Holocaust-related institution for preservation," he told Whispers. And he has personal reasons for that: "I've seen a number of comments concerning the sale of these journals: they should be burned, and they should be preserved. If my late father had remained in his home town of Kalavryta, Greece, he too would have been a victim of Nazi murderers. I know he would have wanted a record of Nazi atrocities preserved, because once the survivors are gone, a physical record must exist for future generations."
Questions have been raised by Holocaust groups over who will profit from the auction sale, though Panagopulos says that the consigner isn't related to the Mengele family.
The collection was apparently recovered after Mengele's death in Brazil, one of the countries he fled to after escaping from Germany at the end of World War II. He was among the most sought after war criminals for his part in choosing who lived and died at Auschwitz and for his inhumane experiments on prison inmates, especially twin children.
In his writings, he discusses his escape from Germany, his experiences in South America, his view of life and death and the politics of the day. Below are some of those translated from the diaries and provided to Whispers by Panagopulos.
— "The mudslinging in the 'German' magazines is unbelievable. The magazines and the pictures proves the spinelessness of the current German rulers, who tolerate and even encourage this act of undignified self-defilement. Politicians lie and contemporary history is being twisted and warped. It's dripping of humanity and Christianity and our dear God is the most quoted. Behind all this is only the old hatred against everything Germanic, heroic, and human supremacy."
— "Noteworthy is that some of the aristocracy, which already had made life difficult for the landowners because they didn't want to relinquish their privileges (street robbery, freedom from taxes, etc.), reappear again in modern history (20 July 1944). [The date of the bomb attempt on Hitler's life]. However, despite this statement, I appreciate the great merits of the distinguished aristocratic soldier families throughout the centuries."
— While observing native South American kids playing with marbles he writes, "They are too lazy to wash themselves and glare of dirt... For our boys it would be unreasonable to play with them, just because of the uninterrupted spitting."
— "Do people like Khrushchev with his petty bourgeois brutality, or Eisenhower, in his timid mediocrity, guarantee that one day, when they are at their wit's end with their basic political and economic beliefs, will not just take the atomic bomb and eventually eradicate mankind on this planet. But even that--as mentioned earlier--would not matter in the bigger picture."
— "Occasionally I dream about a double-bladed guillotine, adventurous encounters with old acquaintances or similar things."
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