A transport arrived from Hungary late at night. Since there was no one in the infirmary at that late hour, Mengele ordered the SS men to break down the gate and take the family of midgets to the room located in the rear of the infirmary. Only the women were taken there as the men had already been taken to the men’s camp.
Early that morning we arrived at the infirmary as usual, before roll call. In the infirmary we found three female midgets, two normal women who were married to midgets, and a three-year-old boy who was the son of a midget. In its entirety the family consisted of ten people. They had all been circus performers in Budapest.
The father of the family was a midget, and the mother was a tall, strong woman. She had borne only midgets: three daughters and three sons. The women had normal nicely shaped heads and curly hair. They spoke good German in a clear, bright voice. Their height, about fifty centimeters, did not bother them. Their short stature and their small feet and hands were the source of considerable attention, and the attention was not solely professional. “We have had proposals of marriage,” they assured us and told us how certain men played with them as if they were dolls. One of the sons had married a normal woman, a pretty girl who had given birth to a normal boy in good physical condition.
“Is this really the son of that midget?” asked Mengele.
The other SS men were not stingy with jokes about that subject either.
Of the millions who came to Auschwitz, Mengele loved to single out those who had not been created “in God’s image.” I remember how he once brought a woman to our area who had two noses. Another time he brought a girl of about ten years of age who had the wool of a sheep on her head instead of hair. On another occasion, he brought a woman who had donkey ears. Now he had brought the midgets. Every day he asked for the “models” to be brought to the infirmary. He photographed them and examined them. In front of us he pretended that he was pursuing purely intellectual interests, but we knew that he was being driven by his personal sadism, gloating over the misfortunes of others, putting on display what he knew people would most like to hide. He would toy with his victims for a while and then kill them.
The three sisters had brought with them their tiny chairs and a little table. They arranged the miniature furniture in their room. The mother decorated the room very elegantly. The midgets had even brought powder and lipstick. They painted themselves and waited for the arrival of Mengele.
“How beautiful he is, how kind.” They repeated it every minute. “How fortunate that he became our protector. How good of him to ask if we have everything.”
They almost melted in adoration. They were accustomed to exposing themselves in public, and this was like another show for them. Only the young woman with the child was filled with anxiety. The boy was pretty, blond, calm, and sad.
“What do you think? What will he do with him?” the mother asked. “There are no children here. Will they kill him?”
What could we tell her? She and her child were in mortal danger. We knew it very well.
In the afternoon, Mengele came to the infirmary as usual. We all stood at attention, including the midgets. Next to them we looked like giants. He looked at them very closely. Then one of them stepped out of the row and fell at his boots. She was just about as tall as his boot. She hugged it with feeling and started to kiss it “You are so kind, so gorgeous. God should reward you,” she whispered, enraptured. He did not move for a minute, then he simply shook her off his boot. She fell. She lay there, tiny, spread out on the floor. “Now tell me how you lived with your midget.” The old woman blushed so that the blood almost came pouring out of her.
“Speak!” screamed Mengele. “Later you will tell your story,” he said to the young one. “You will tell me if the little one is the midget’s son, or did you have him with somebody else?”
We all stood there like blocks of stone. The elderly woman was telling about her husband, that he was good and smart and that he earned a lot of money in the circus.
“Don’t tell me about that, only about how you slept with him.” Mengele was salivating.
The sweat poured down her face in big drops and fell on her clothes. She spoke, and he asked questions. I cannot repeat the conversation. It was grotesque, inhuman torture.
“Now you tell the story,” he said to the young one.
She wanted to talk. Her mouth opened but there was no voice. She moved her lips like a fish. She pressed the child to herself.
“Is this his child?” he screamed.
She moved her head but she was unable to speak.
He left. The midgets crept away to their room, sad and subdued. Well, that’s how the angel was. What would happen to them now? How would they live here? For a few days Mengele did not come to the infirmary, but we knew that he had not forgotten them, that he was looking for something. The orchestra came to the area, and we all went to listen to the music. The midgets went too. They sat on their little chairs, all dressed up and coquettish. The young woman with the child sat next to me. Everything looked so innocent and idyllic that I trembled with fear. I don’t know why, but at such times I always waited for a blow. I listened for the footsteps of death, with whom we walked arm in arm. At that exact moment Marusia came running to take the child. Mengele had come to the infirmary to examine him.
“Examine him for what,” shouted the mother. “He’s not sick.”
She went along with the child, grasping him tightly by the neck. Mengele threw her out of the infirmary. He remained alone with the boy. Marusia joined us, Mengele having ordered her to leave. We no longer heard the music. I watched the mother circling the infirmary like a wounded bird.
Every few minutes she came running back to us.
“What is he doing to my child?” She grabbed our hands and demanded an answer. We knew that at that moment the little boy was a guinea pig on whom an experiment was being performed to prove some pseudo theory of this murderer in a white apron. There was no force on earth that could have torn the child out of Mengele’s hands at that moment. Maybe death would free him from the torture of the experiments. Without blinking an eye, Mengele was inflicting physical agonies on a three-year-old child who had not the least understanding of what was happening.
Finally he left. We all rushed into the infirmary. The boy was lying on the table, still alive. Mancy wanted to see if he was all right, but the mother would not allow it. She grabbed the half-dead child and went into a mad frenzy of pain. She ran around the table. Not one drop of blood was left in his little face.
“He will die. He has to die,” she said, choked with tears.
At night, the little one died. He never regained consciousness. In the small room, on the little table, lay the dead boy. Around him, like pillars of stone, stood the old lady, a large woman; the child’s mother, slim and frail; the three midgets sat in miniature chairs. They did not cry. They were all frightened of the torturous death awaiting them. They sat that way until evening. Rwieta took the child and put the dead body with the other corpses that had been taken from the area on the leichenauto.
Now we lived in constant fear. We were waiting for Mengele to reach for the next victim for his experiments. A few days passed uneventfully. Mengele did not come to the infirmary. Koenig looked over the sick patients. An air of mourning filled the little room. Silence and sadness dominated.
One afternoon, kapo Bubi burst into the room. She was a German prisoner with a black triangle. We feared her as much as we feared the SS men. She used to come in often to flirt with Orli. She was a lesbian. We all knew about it and we were afraid of her, but we were also repelled by her flirtations. With great relish she described to us all the tragic occurrences in the camp. Today she came in happy and with a twinkle in her eye.
“Where are your midgets? Let them see who is lying near the wire,” she said, laughing raucously. “Imagine,” she continued, “the old midget wanted his wife. He was constantly making a nuisance of himself with everybody. He begged them to let him see his family. The blokowy and the sztubowi had to laugh at him. They told him, ‘Okay, go ahead. You’re so small that you can slip through the wires.’ Would you believe it, he took them seriously, and this afternoon he started to sneak up to the wires. Everybody had a good show. I tell you, it was too bad you didn’t see it. He looked around, but he couldn’t see what the guard was doing. He couldn’t see that high.”
Bubi was laughing uncontrollably, as if she had just heard an unbearably funny joke, and at the same time she was watching us. She was waiting for us to join in the laughter.
“But you know, the guard wasn’t one second late. When the midget got close enough to the wires the guard popped him. He never made it to his wife.”
Bubi was bursting with happiness.
We left the infirmary. From a distance you could see the dead midget. His fellow prisoners were as much to blame for his misfortune as the SS man who actually put the bullet into him. That was the tragedy of Auschwitz.