He is an evil and ruthless Nazi war criminal who got his nickname from his medical experimentson Jews during World War II in the times of the Holocaust. The espionage thriller begins in 1997, as shocking news reaches retired Mossad secret agents Rachel Singer (Dame Helen Mirren) and Stephan Gold (Tom Wilkinson) about their former colleague David Peretz (Ciarn Hinds). Eytan Fox's excellent 2004 film Walk on Water skillfully integrated the excitement of the chase with humane, intelligent reflection about what a man does to himself when he lowers himself to the standards of the oppressor. Many of them were at the point of exhaustion, in the Musselman state, in the final stages of starvation to death. She leaves a note for the journalist and prepares to leave, but suddenly spots Vogel in his 80s by now among the other patients and follows him to an isolated area of the hospital. [23][24][25], In 1942, Auschwitz II (Birkenau), originally intended to house slave laborers, began to be used instead as a combined labour camp and extermination camp. [17] Their only son, Rolf, was born in 1944. In close collaboration with the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Genetics, and Eugenics, he studied the phenomena of twins, as well as the physiology and pathology of dwarfism. Evil-doer Rachel Brener is one of 3 young Mossad agents team who caught "The Surgeon of Birkenau" - a Nazi monster who was never brought to trial in Israel. The German physicians who ran SS and Wehrmacht medical institutions, along with medical personnel at lower levels, participated actively in carrying out Nazi extermination plans. [11] In 1931 he joined Der Stahlhelm, a paramilitary organization that was absorbed into the Nazi Sturmabteilung ('Storm Detachment'; SA) in 1934. Three Mossad agents Rachel (Jessica Chastair) Stephen (Martin Csokas) David (Sam Worthington) set out in 1965 to capture a Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen) the surgeon of Birkenau but when the film reverts to 1997 Rachel is Helen Mirren, Stephen is Tom Wilkinson and David is Ciaran Hinds. They did so on commission from IG Farbenindustrie, and particularly from the Bayer firm, which was part of that cartel. Settling A Tab? Vogel is found. Assisted by a network of former SS members, he used the ratline to travel to Genoa, where he obtained a passport from the International Committee of the Red Cross under the alias "Helmut Gregor", and sailed to Argentina in July 1949. Every so often, several dozen Jewish men and women prisoners were brought in. At her third appointment, Rachel injects Vogel with a sedative during an examination and induces the nurse (Vogel's wife) to believe that he has suffered a heart attack. In fact he escaped and is now taking credit for his work at Birkenau in a hospital in Ukraine. Scientifically interesting anatomical specimens were preserved and shipped to the Institute in Berlin-Dahlem for more detailed examination. He then escapes into the night as the agents are left to assess their failure. [82] He returned to Buenos Aires several times to settle his business affairs and visit his family. [6] His two younger brothers were KarlJr. and Alois. The victims corpses were sent to Hirt as material for his skeleton collection, which was intended for use in anthropological studies that would demonstrate the superiority of the Nordic race. After the war, Mengele fled to Argentina in July 1949, assisted by a network of former SS members. The interactions between Rachel and Vogel surely show the most dramatic tension ever established while knicker-free and in gynecological stirrups. [20], Mengele joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the Schutzstaffel (SS; 'Protection Squadron') in 1938. After rescuing two German soldiers from a burning tank, he was decorated with the Iron Cross 1st Class, the Wound Badge in Black, and the Medal for the Care of the German People. [13] His thesis on the subject earned him a cum laude doctorate in medicine (MD) from the University of Frankfurt in 1938. So the three need to find Vogel and finish the job before people find out what really happened. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: As part of your account, youll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. Their mission is to capture Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogel (Christensen) - infamously known as "The Surgeon of Birkenau " for his medical experiments on Jews during World War II - and bring him to justice in Israel. Chilling indeed. High intelligencePsychological manipulationStrengthEvasionSkilled doctor at the times of WWIISkilled knifeman Once feared for his medical experiments on Jewish concentration-camp inmates, Vogel has by the '60s set himself up in a comfortable practice as a gynecologist. Schumann applied various intensities at various intervals in his search for the optimal dose of radiation. [35], Mengele's work also involved carrying out selections, a task that he chose to perform even when he was not assigned to do so, in the hope of finding subjects for his experiments,[36] with a particular interest in locating sets of twins. [16], On 28 July 1939, Mengele married Irene Schnbein, whom he had met while working as a medical resident in Leipzig. To be sure, the older actors get some excitement of their own, but by then, the plot has lost its way. In 1965, Mossad Agents Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain), Stephan Gold (Marton Csokas), and David Peretz (Sam Worthington) are assigned to kidnap Nazi Dieter Vogel, a.k.a. (renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax). The cinematography by Ben Davis is un-flashy but fluid; the editing by Alexander Berner perfectly judged. Here the Mengele figure is called Dieter Vogel and played by Jesper Christensen as a Hannibal Lecterlike evil genius who can instantly read Jews minds and press the exact buttons to make them irrational with hurt and rage. This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. (Known as the Surgeon of Birkenau, he's modeled on Josef Mengele). In 1965, I was part of a mission to kidnap Dieter Vogel, The Surgeon of Birkenau, and bring him to Israel to stand trial. They have been honored in their country by their action for more than 30 years. / Such a living doll / in a prayer shawl As a matter of fact, the whole world is Jewish / Since I fell in love with you, Rose McGonigle!) would plotz at an English dame and a willowy, long-limbed future superstar fighting Nazis under the name Rachel Singer. And this Mengele, Jesper Christensen (Christensen, of course! [57] Mengele sought out pregnant women, on whom he would perform experiments before sending them to the gas chambers. Only how to die." [3], When a typhus epidemic began in the women's camp, Mengele cleared one block of six hundred Jewish women and sent them to their deaths in the gas chambers. On 7February 1979, while visiting his friends Wolfram and Liselotte Bossert in the coastal resort of Bertioga, Mengele suffered another stroke while swimming and drowned. )[15] In a letter of recommendation, VonVerschuer praised Mengele's reliability and his ability to verbally present complex material in a clear manner. [113] Worldwide interest in the case was heightened by a mock trial held in Jerusalem in February 1985, featuring the testimonies of over one hundred victims of Mengele's experiments. He was further disheartened by Rachels admission that she would continue propagating the lie to protect those closest to her, particularly her daughter. The term surgeon is used in the movie The Debt to describe the character named Dr. Dieter Vogel, who is based on the real-life Dr. Josef Mengele. "The Debt" opens in 1997, with two members of an elite, legendary Mossad team responsible for the capture and killing of a Nazi war criminal in East Berlin in 1966 coming together at a launch party for a book detailing their famous mission. Torn between vengeful alpha-agent Stephan (played as a youth by Marton Csokas) and sensitive liberal David (Sam Worthington), who's a Holocaust survivor like herself, Chastain's Rachel is also the movie's unlikely main action figure, contorting her porcelain features into a ferocious scowl as she beats her prey to a pulp. What If a Whole Stand-up Special Were About Peanut Butter? Surveillance of the house did not reveal Mengele or any members of his family, and the neighborhood postman claimed that although Mengele had recently been receiving letters there under his real name, he had since relocated without leaving a forwarding address. Their mission is to captureNaziwar criminalDieter Vogel infamously known as "The Surgeon ofBirkenau" for his medical experimentsonJewsduringWorld War IIand bring him toIsraelto face justice. Rachel refutes Stefan's explanation, recalling an encounter with David a day before his suicide, in which he revealed his shame about the lie and disclosed that he had spent years unsuccessfully searching the world for Vogel. This password will be used to sign into all. Privacy Policy and Thanks to its bad guys, this thriller is well worth its ticket price. "At a time when Ahmadinejad's Iran regularly denies the Holocaust and anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews is back in vogue, this acquisition is especially significant", he said. [51], Twins were subjected to weekly examinations and measurements of their physical attributes by Mengele or one of his assistants. [3][4] He was particularly interested in identical twins, people with heterochromia iridum (eyes of two different colors), dwarfs, and people with physical abnormalities. The younger versions of the characters have scenes that are intrinsically more exciting, but the actors playing the older versions are more interesting. They succeed in the abduction, but fail in bringing him to the west side. He performed deadly experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) concentration camp, where he was a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be killed in the gas chambers,[a] and was one of the doctors who administered the gas. Not everything in the book is quite as it seems. You might expect some intelligent thought on the subject from director John Madden, who's chiefly known for the glum Edith Wharton adaptation Ethan Frome and the brainy romp Shakespeare in Love. Later, at David's flat, Stefan provides evidence that Vogel now resides at an insane asylum inUkraine, and is soon scheduled to be interviewed by a local journalist. Ruth Elias was pregnant when she was transferred from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. (There is no one better than Mirren at signaling discomfort with her eyes.) The myth of Mengele-at-large and the fantasy in which he gets his agonizing comeuppance is central to Jewish-penned paranoid thrillers like Marathon Man and The Boys From Brazil (in which Mengele is busy trying to clone der Fuhrer), and the bad doctor is surely the model for the extraterrestrial in Cowboys & Aliens that performs gruesome experiments on earthlings. [97], In 1969, Mengele and the Stammers jointly purchased a farmhouse in Caieiras, with Mengele as half owner. And yet its still gripping. Mengele even makes a surprise appearance in Annie Jacobsens allegedly nonfiction book Area 51 as the scientist who, at the behest of Stalin, surgically altered children to look like Martians and thereby trigger a War of the Worldslike panic. [60] Witness Vera Alexander described how Mengele sewed two Romani twins together, back to back, in a crude attempt to create conjoined twins;[53] both children died of gangrene after several days of suffering. Industry professionals are tweeting their support of guild members. Find Dr. Voegele's phone number, address, insurance information, hospital affiliations and more. He was forced to return to work without painkillers. [88], In May 1960, Isser Harel, director of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, personally led the successful effort to capture Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires. The film falters at the very end, with an unnecessary and unlikely fight scene. Film considers time and space subjectively. [61], Along with several other Auschwitz doctors, Mengele transferred to Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Lower Silesia on 17 January 1945, taking with him two boxes of specimens and the records of his experiments at Auschwitz. [115] They found a coded address book and copies of letters sent to and received from Mengele. He next worked as a salesman for his family's farm equipment company, Karl Mengele & Sons, and in 1951 he began making frequent trips to Paraguay as a regional sales representative. The Surgeon of Birkenau (Jesper Christensen), in East Berlin. There he temporarily entrusted his incriminating documents to a nurse with whom he had struck up a relationship. He admitted Thinking Out Loud was actually inspired by Van Morrison, not Marvin Gaye. [14] (Both of his degrees were revoked by the issuing universities in the 1960s. Claubergs experiments killed some of his subjects, and others were put to death so that autopsies could be performed. They succeed in the abduction, but fail in bringing him to the west side. He goads, wheedles and whispers to each by turn, commenting on their personalities and relationships and pushing them to react. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google The so-called Surgeon of Birkenau, Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen), escaped justice at the end of the war. While I may be overly sensitive on this point, the film seems to be focused on the lie the Israeli characters allowed to exist rather than on the unutterable evils perpetrated by the person they are hunting. His experiments focused primarily on twins, with no regard for the health or safety of the victims. She said, I delivered a beautiful big blonde girl, but Mengele ordered that my breast be bound so that, as he said, We can see how long a newborn baby can survive without food. After watching her baby suffer for several days, a female Czech doctor gave Elias a syringe with an overdose of morphine to end the childs agony. Stephan investigates and finds that Dieter Vogel is apparently alive in a hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, and will be interviewed by a journalist. In 1943-1944, prisoners who were interested in helping their sick fellow-prisoners began to play a leading role in both the medical "self-government" and among the staff on the wards. In 1965 a three person Mossad team of Rachel Singer, David Peretz and Stefan Gold went to East Berlin to capture an infamous Nazi doctor called The Surgeon of Birkenau. The actors, particularly Chastain and Mirren in the show-off roles, are not merely superb: They also constitute the best-looking collection of shiksas and goys playing Jews that Ive ever seen. In 1997, Rachel is honoured by her daughter Sarah during a release party inTel Avivfor Sarah's book based on the account Rachel, Stefan and David gave of the events in 1965. In a thriller, you must be sure. As soon as the examinations of a given pair of twins or dwarf were finished, Mengele ordered them killed by phenol injection so that he could go on to the next phase of his experiments, the comparative analysis of internal organs at autopsy. We meet Mirren's Rachel Singer in 1997, furrowing her brow while trying to look gracious at a Tel Aviv party for her beloved daughter Sarah (Romi Aboulafia), who's written a book lionizing her mother's career. The plan goes awry leaving them stranded in East Berlin with Vogel aka The Surgeon of Birkenau. [58] Alex Dekel, a survivor, reports witnessing Mengele performing vivisection without anesthesia, removing hearts and stomachs of victims. The film catapults between the mission and the present, in which there is ambiguity as to whether or not the mission actually succeeded, and that ambiguity needs to be resolved. You\'ll receive the next newsletter in your inbox. [28] By July 1942, SS doctors were conducting "selections" where incoming Jews were segregated, and those considered able to work were admitted into the camp while those deemed unfit for labor were immediately killed in the gas chambers. SS physicians assigned to the concentration camps, including Auschwitz, played a special role. Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site. But this was a lie. [72] After a few weeks, he moved to the house of a Nazi sympathizer in the more affluent neighborhood of Florida Este. This stuff plays to the strength of cinema, underlining the details of each strategy and the dangers it involves. Within several weeks, the fallopian tubes grew shut and were blocked. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search. The Surgeon of BirkenauVogelDr. At great risk, and at considerable personal cost, the team's mission was accomplished--or was it? Martha and her son Karl Heinz followed about a month later, and the three began living together. [9] In January 1937, he joined the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt, where he worked for Otmar Freiherr vonVerschuer, a German geneticist with a particular interest in researching twins. It describes the truth of the mission, ready to be relayed to the world. Tel Aviv, Israel. For these actions, Mengele was awarded the War Merit Cross (Second Class with swords) and was promoted in 1944 to First Physician of the Birkenau subcamp. The film jumps timelines between 1997 and 1965, when a trio of photogenic Mossad agents are tasked with capturing Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christiansen), a notorious Nazi officer, uncreatively. [79] Along with several other doctors, he was questioned in 1958 on suspicion of practicing medicine without a license when a teenage girl died after an abortion, but he was released without charge. Unfinished business; Israeli agents hailed for killing a Nazi war criminal confront a long-kept secret. The later scenes involve the publication of a book about the famous raid by Rachel's daughter. [10] He attended the University of Bonn, where he took his medical preliminary examination. Now playing. Rachel (Jessica Chastain, left) and David (Sam Worthington) are '60s-era Mossad agents in John Madden's thriller The Debt. Aware that the publicity could lead to his Nazi background and wartime activities being discovered, he took an extended business trip to Paraguay and was granted citizenship there in 1959 under the name "Jos Mengele". In scenes set in 1997, they will be played by Ciaran Hinds, Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson. They are David (Sam Worthington), Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain, of "The Tree of Life") and Stefan (Marton Csokas). Freevees new series will determine whos the greatest reality-TV contestant across. We have always claimed that Vogel was killed, trying to escape. [49] Rolf Mengele later claimed that his father had shown no remorse for his wartime activities.[50]. He was next assigned to the SS-Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt ('SS Race and Settlement Main Office') in Pozna, evaluating candidates for Germanization. Turns out she needs that Krav Maga, too: Vogel, nicely played by Danish actor Jesper Christensen, is a piece of work straight out of a Boys' Own World War II comic. [48] In his 1986 book, Lifton describes Mengele as sadistic, lacking empathy, and extremely antisemitic, believing the Jews should be eliminated as an inferior and dangerous race. In East Berlin, during the Cold War, they killed. He enlisted the assistance of prisoner Berthold Epstein, a Jewish pediatrician and professor at Prague University. [64] Mengele fled Gross-Rosen on 18 February, a week before the Soviets arrived there, and traveled westward to atec in Czechoslovakia, disguised as a Wehrmacht officer. SS Physicians Friedrich Entress, Helmuth Vetter and Eduard Wirths. [56] His experiments on dwarfs and people with physical abnormalities included taking physical measurements, drawing blood, extracting healthy teeth, and treatment with unnecessary drugs and X-rays. (Not all that high-minded: The harsh neo-Israeli gutturals that pass for period Hebrew produce a distractingly comic effect, like a funeral fedora worn slightly askew.). But the connections run deeper than that, a theme that recurs in the film. To see is to believe. Please email us at [emailprotected], subject line republish, with any questions or to let us know what stories youre picking up. It is a reunion of sorts for her and her ex-husband, Sarahs father, Stephan (Tom Wilkinson), the second of the Mossad agents who traveled to Berlin in 65. [1] Vogel was a contributor to two volumes of the seminal work Germany and the Second World War from the MGFA. Hobby Hi. The German physicians who ran SS and Wehrmacht medical institutions, along with medical personnel at lower levels, participated actively in carrying out Nazi extermination plans. The couple bought a farm in Nova Europa with the help of an investment from Mengele, who was given the job of managing for them. The story deals with retired Mossad agents Rachel (Mirren), Stefan (Wilkinson) and David (Ciaran Hinds), and a 1965 mission that won them renown. Former pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel put him in touch with the Nazi supporter Wolfgang Gerhard, who helped Mengele cross the border into Brazil. Front and center: Rachel's role in the 1965 dispatch of former concentration camp doctor Dieter Vogel. hide caption, With: Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, Ciaran Hinds, Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas. The movie is . Several hundred Jewish women from various countries lived in two large rooms on the second floor of the building. SS physicians assigned to the concentration camps, including Auschwitz, played a special role. Sure, the films most suspenseful moments are still there the moments when Rachel, pretending to be trying to conceive, visits the surgeon of Birkenau, now in hiding as a gynecologist practicing in East Berlin. They stay with him in an apartment building; he escapes, but the trio of young Agents lies to their government and tells them that Rachel killed Vogel while he was running away. After going through quarantine, some of the prisoners whom Berger selected were sent in July and early August to Natzweiler-Struthof Concentration Camp, where they were killed in the gas chamber. "The Debt" weaves a tangled web of lies and deceptions around a seemingly heroic raid in 1965 carried out by three agents of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency known for more ability than it exhibits here. Describing the encounter to Stefan over the phone, Rachel declares she will not continue to lie about the 1965 mission. [21][22], In June 1941, Mengele was posted to Ukraine, where he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class. Elias story in Bernard Edinger, Claude Lanzmann Does it Again, The Jerusalem Report, (January 22, 2018). It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Unethical experimentationWar crimes Their inquiries in Paraguay revealed no clues to his whereabouts, and they were unable to intercept any correspondence between Mengele and his wife Martha, who by this time was living in Italy. ), belongs in the pantheon of movie Nazis: smug, insinuating, a voyeur engorged by Jewish pain. *Sorry, there was a problem signing you up. [79][80] When he returned to Argentina in September 1956, Mengele began living under his real name. They are Rachel Singer (. The Notorious Surgeon of Birkneau Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2011 Verified Purchase In 1965 the Israeli Intelligence, Mossad, sent agents into East Berlin to capture the notorious war criminal, Vogel, the Surgeon of Birkneau.
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