Saturday, July 4, 2020

A HOLOCAUST REMINDER

Holocaust survivor sisters tell how their cousin was led to his death on his seventh birthday after Josef Mengele tricked him into 'volunteering' for a monstrous experiment by saying he would be taken to visit his mother

By Monica Greep

Daily Mail
July 3, 2020

Holocaust survivors have recalled how Nazi officers would select which children to experiment on by asking which one of them wanted to visit their mothers and choosing whoever stepped forward. 

Italian-born Andrea and Tatiana Bucci were deported with their family in 1944, they were incarcerated Risiera di San Sabba, an Italian transit camp for Jews before being sent Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Appearing in Netflix documentary 'Anne Frank - Parallel Stories', the sisters told how after being mistakenly labelled as triplets with their cousin Sergio, they were approached by a man who they thought was Josef Mengele, also known as 'Dr Death'. 

Mengele was responsible for the camp's children, often carrying out experiments on twins, and Andrea told how he would trick children into volunteering to take part in trials on 'tuberculosis and lymph glands'. 

She told: 'I remember that this one person came, he might have been Menegle and he asked us if we wanted to go see mother. 

'A hack doctor from Neuengamme, who had carried out some experiments on tuberculosis and lymph glands on some adults, thought to experiment on children too and asked Mengele for these children.' 

The pair had been warned by a camp guardian who had grown fond of them not to step forward if he asked, however their cousin Sergio did not listen to their warning.  

Andrea went on: 'We warned Sergio not to step forward, but he did not listen to us and ten males and ten females stepped forward.' 

Tatiana Bucci went on to express the 'indescribable burden on her heart' she feels knowing their cousin went to his death on his seventh birthday, while he believed he would be visiting his mother. 

She said: 'To think that he was left believing that he was going to met his mum and instead, going to meet his death on his seventh birthday, still feels like such a burden on my heart it's indescribable.'

Reflecting on her time in the camp Andrea later said: 'I remember that we used to play with snowballs. But we were always surrounded by death.

'Because in the camps and among the barracks, there are heaps of corpses. To see these corpses that they tried to push inside this barrack had become normal to us.' 

The documentary sees the story of Anne Frank, retold alongside those of five Holocaust survivors, in a poignant documentary narrated by Oscar winner Helen Mirren.  

On August 4, 1944, Anne Frank and her family were betrayed, arrested by the Gestapo, taken from the Amsterdam annexe where they had hidden for two years and despatched to concentration camps.

The poignant diary Anne had been keeping for the two years, she and her family endured in the annexe, and had nicknamed Kitty, stopped that day.

Anne was just 15-years-old at the time of her death, and the end of the war her father Otto, the sole survivor of the concentration camps, returned home to Amsterdam and published her famous diary.

Another survivor, Arianna Szorenyi who was deported from Italy in 1944 before being deported to Auschwitz and then Bergen Belson, told of her meeting with one of the most notorious female SS guards in history. 

Irma Grese was nicknamed the 'Hyena of Auschwitz' before becoming head of Bergen-Belsen's women section, and at 22 she was the youngest woman to be sentenced to death for war crimes after the camps were liberated.

The survivor told that while in the camp, she had noticed the guard, who she says other officers were 'in love with' behind her, and didn't realise until she had turned around that she had her gun pointed at the back of her head. 

She recalled: 'I sort of ran for a short distance and then, almost in the front of my block I slowed down. 
 
'Because I saw coming towards me maybe three of four well dressed Nazi’s Irma Grees was behind me, they were all In love with her. 

'Like children I suddenly turned around because I was curious. and Irma Grese had her gun pointed at me, that was the only time I realised I could die.'

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