INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

Robert Nisbet
Alan Britt
Jennifer Burd
Michelle Bailat-Jones
Running Cub
Elisavietta Ritchie
Odimegwu Onwumere
Laszlo Slomovits
Lyn Lifshin
Ramesh Dohan
Silvia Scheibli
Alex Ferde
Richard Kostelanetz
Richard Gartee
Irsa Ruci
Duane Locke
Janet Buck
Nahshon Cook
Jim Daniels
Fred Wolven
Peycho Kanev
Ali Znaidi
Sunday Eyitayo Michael
Karyn M. Bruce
Arsim Halili
Engjell I. Berisha
Muharrem Kurti
 

Ann Arbor Review

is an independent

International Journal & ezine

Copyright (c) 2015 Francis Ferde
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
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AAR history note:  in print 1967 - 1980.  Irregular publications 1980 - 2004.  As ezine 2004 - present. Most of 48 years all together....

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staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven


 

Submissions via e-mail:

poetfred@att.net

JOSEPHY MENGELE, THE ANGEL OF DEATH

when he smiled, you
knew it meant danger
because that was when
he was most sadistic.
An 80 year old from
Pre war Czechoslovakia 
who lived for two
months in Mengele’s
experimental Auschwitz-
Birkenau death camps
Mengele, a German
officer and physician
was known for con-
ducting cruel, unscientific
experiments on inmates,
especially Jewish and
Romani children. He
was obsessed with twins
and dwarfs. His “research”
included attempts to turn
dark eyes blue and
studies into how twins
were conceived with
the aim of boosting the
fecundity of the
Aryan  master race.
Most of those who came
under his care did not
survive

ONE WOMAN SAID

We lived with a family of
Hungarian dwarfs with
nine  children. Mengele
bounced a 2 year old
boy on his knee and
cooed “  Call me uncle
Mengele” Then he
injected the toddler
with some thing that
made his skin  turn blue

ANOTHER  SPENT HER

Final weeks at the camp
In Mengele’s barracks
with her older sister
Eva. She and her sister
were  also injected
with a substance tho
they never discovered
what. Just before
the camp’s liberation
she said she had one of
her most intimate
moments with the Nazi
doctor. After her
sister became sick and
was placed in the camp’s
hospital. Mengele
allowed her to visit with
her sister. It must
have tickled him to see
this half dead child
come to help
her sick half dead
sister every day

A FEW DAYS LATER

Russian soldiers arrived
and freed the survivors.
“they didn’t have much
but they gave us what
they had,” a woman said
remembering  how one
soldier handed her a
bottle of vodka. Although
she was only 10 years old,
the war and living in
hiding before her capture
had taught her that
commodities could buy
life. After they were
freed the sisters gave the
vodka to a truck driver
to help return to her
parents in Bratislava

BEFORE THE WAR

the sisters lived with
their parents and 8
siblings in a prestigious
neighborhood. Their
father was a self made
textile merchant who
was originally considered
and “essential Jew” by
the Nazis for his business
prowess. It was his mix
of business, smarts
and deep pessimism
that helped him save his
wife and  all but one
child. In the early years
his children were sent to
relatives in Hungary.
They went to school every
day  and to church on
Sundays. The sisters had
the perfect cover, blond
green eyed girls until
neighbors grew suspicious
and they were arrested
on Oct 10, 1944 the birthday
of the woman now 80,
telling the story, “some
survivors say no one helped
them”  but she said  people
always tried to help when
ever they could. But
survival she learned is just
pure luck 

ONE WOMAN WHO MOVED TO AUSTRALIA

with her parents said
they never said a word
about the war. She and
her sister did not mention
one word about Auschwitz.
Now a mother of 3 grand
mother 14 and great grand
mother of 8 immigrated
with her husband to
Israel. “I used to be an
optimist she says but the
situation in the Mideast
has changed and the world
does not notice anything”
she said days after the
terrorists attacks in
Paris. “reading the news
paper in the past few
days is just like reading the
newspaper in the 1930’s

THAT’S WHEN I KNEW WE WERE DEALING WITH ANIMALS

of many horrors of Auschwitz, Herman Hollereiners’ most
vivid memories of Nazi cruelty came in the first hours
arriving at Auschwitz. A small dog had some how been
separated from a prisoner in on the train. The guard just
pointed his pistol at this small innocent little dog and
killed him. That’s when I knew we were dealing with
animals.  Along with other ethnic  Romani from Nazi
occupied Europe, Hollereins and his family  had been
arrested and deported from their home and arrived at the
camp on a frosty March morning in 1943. A few months
later, weakened from lack of food and shell shocked
from the wild cruelty around him, he was picked
to help out in the lab of Josef Mengele whose medical
experiments  brought an extra dose of terror to Auschwitz.
Rumors of experiments ran wild in the camp. Those
experiments would involve both Hollenreiner and his
family. One particularly frightening morning Hollenreiner
was greeted by a smiling Mengele who asked him to
transport a collection of jars. “I didn’t want to look but I
did."  Inside the jars were what looked like human organs
preserved in some kind of liquid--lungs, hearts--it made
me sick.

LATER HOLLENREINER

And his family were purpose injected
with typhoid tho first they tried
attaching body parts where they
didn’t belong. Still it could have
worse. A relative became a
a subject for study on Mengele’s
operating table. He survived
but was never the same

by his incarceration,
but what pains he says
was the unlearned
lessons

I AM OLD, I AM SICK, I DO NOT WANT TO DIE IN AUCHWITZ

on a sub zero night January 18
fast approaching the gates of
Auschwitz, Rapael, then 19,
was forced into line with
thousands of Jewish prisoners
under the light of the full moon.
The bright moon brought an
unearthly clarity to a moment
of dread. Shouting Nazis
separated emaciated prisoners,
some barely able to move,
into groups of 500. For a fleeting
moment Rafael thought they
might all be killed right there.
A French Jew hauled to the camp
on a cattle car after his arrest
in Lyon 11 months earlier
made a promise to survive the
ordeal. The thing he’d seen
had already tested his will to live.
But what came next, was a
different kind of horror:
the death march. The Nazis
pushed tens of thousands of
weakened prisoners into long
treks bound for other facilities
farther west. On hard ice
the prisoners marched in shoes
of cloth and wood that quickly fell
apart. The worst were barefoot
and within a few hours were
swollen, their bloody soles sticking
to the ice with each step. Their
feet would freeze and they
would fall  to their knees. When
they fell, a Nazi officer would
stick a gun to their heads
and pull the trigger. “I could only
think of my mother, that I
would never see her again and I
would die before I was 20.
Now 70 years later, after spending
years talking to high school
students and hearing them say “I
don’t want to hear about the
Holocaust any more. I’ve had
enough.” “It makes you feel
terrible. He said he “He had been
back a dozen times, but this
anniversary I’m going to
sit it out, I am old, I am sick and
I do not want to die in Auschwitz.

Lyn Lifshin, Vienna, Virginia
                     Niskayuna, New York