Gomes said other documents in the archive show that Mengele assumed the false name of Josef Kabat and worked as a gynecologist in the early ‘60s in Mambore. (AP:Brazil)
We were always slightly suspicious
that you took charge so readily
at our town meetings. We don’t deny,
however, that we found your command
graveyardly necessary: your stiff,
bold arm silenced stoned suburban
crackpots, your stare made further points moot.
All in all, save for the strange lisp
and your surreal instinct for order,
we welcomed your burning coldness.
And, O dear Lord, what doctoring!
Never had we seen such glee
to probe, dissect, and carve up women,
such willingness to talk disease,
such brusque mocking of superstition.
Your summoning of Euro-techniques
thrilled and moved us: we forgave
your inclination to frown
when you delivered dark-haired girls,
or the over-eager slapping into life
of our rare blue-eyed boys.
And anyways, Herr Josef, what does the past
have to do with our now? Your skills
knocked us out: the new technology
that created ice from body heat,
the rows of obscure journals, the zeal
to experiment on the lowland’s kids.
You never slept or ate our sincere
gifts of native delicacies. Lust-crazed
war widows walked near your penthouse
hourly only to see a pale light on,
a scientist studying Marquis De Sade
they wished, but actually a masturbator
hotly desiring, like a eunuch
for another’s world, drugged dreams
of dreaming that would cancel
tomorrow’s promise of tropical nights
in favor of Aryan winter scenes,
grainy footage of snowbound women,
thousands and thousands, loathing
themselves for ever being conceived, clothes
closed tight from the uncircumcised crew.
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