Latest news with #JosefMengele
Epoch Times
4 days ago
- Epoch Times
‘The Last Twins': Mengele's Twisted Studies
NR | 1h 21m | Documentary | 2025 Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious 'Angel of Death,' was one of the worst National Socialist war criminals who escaped justice after World War II. Thanks to the courage of Erno 'Zvi' Spiegel, many of the young twins, who served as Mengele's unwilling research subjects, survived the Auschwitz concentration camp and could have duly testified against their tormentor had he been captured.
New York Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘The Last Twins' Review: A Rare Holocaust Story
The documentary 'The Last Twins' tells the harrowing true story of Erno Spiegel, a Jewish man who was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, but was spared for one reason: He was a twin. Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi physician, considered twins to be the ideal subjects because they allowed him to conduct what he believed were controlled genetic studies. He made Spiegel preside over a group of around 60 twin boys — many of whose lives Spiegel would save. Directed by Perri Peltz and Matthew O'Neill, 'The Last Twins' is a conventional documentary made up of talking heads, archival materials and somber narration by Liev Schreiber. The speakers are mostly Holocaust survivors — some of the very boys whom Spiegel protected by forging documents or keeping crucial information secret. After the camps were liberated, Spiegel ended up leading his group of twins on a brutal winter trek through Poland and back home to Hungary. Hearing these survivors, now well into their 90s, talk about their experiences is devastating and poignant. But a cynical part of me wonders to what extent a documentary like 'The Last Twins' simply scratches the same itch, allowing viewers to indulge a kind of morbid (if sympathetic) curiosity in the Holocaust. Should every unique survival story be packaged into the same kind of storytelling blueprint? One answer might be that real heroes — in the Holocaust and other histories of genocide — are often the stuff of fiction. Here, heroism is presented less as a feat of preternatural bravery than a series of choices made by someone who simply refused to give up his humanity. The Last TwinsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
On This Day, May 24: 1st telegraph sent in United States
On this date in history: In 1844, the first U.S telegraph line was formally opened -- between Baltimore and Washington. The first message sent was "What hath God wrought?" In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was opened to the public, linking Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York City. In 1935, the first night game in Major League Baseball was played at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. The Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1. In 1943, Josef Mengele, the so-called "Angel of Death" became the new doctor at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. He fled Germany at the conclusion of World War II and died in 1979 in Brazil. In 1958, United Press and the International News Service merger was announced, forming United Press International. In 1962, Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter became the second American to orbit Earth, circling it three times. John Glenn was the first, earlier in the year. In 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled private religious schools that practice racial discrimination aren't eligible for church-related tax benefits. In 1987, 250,000 people jammed San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge on its 50th anniversary, temporarily flattening the arched span. In 1991, Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia. In 2007, the U.S. Congress voted to increase the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years -- from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 over a three-year period. In 2018, President Donald Trump posthumously pardoned Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion, for his conviction under a Jim Crow-era law. In 2022, a mass shooting at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school left 19 students and two adults dead. Law enforcement officers fatally shot the gunman.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kirill Serebrennikov on Cannes Premiere ‘The Disappearance of Josef Mengele,' a Portrait of Fugitive Nazi Doctor
Russian auteur Kirill Serebrennikov, whose latest feature, 'The Disappearance of Josef Mengele,' debuts May 20 in the Cannes Premiere section of the Cannes Film Festival, has justice on his mind. His latest film, adapted from the best-selling French novel by Olivier Guez, follows the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who found refuge in South America at the end of WWII and was never captured. He died in Brazil in 1979 without having been judged for his crimes. More from Variety Venice Prizewinner Valentyn Vasyanovych, Rising Talent Antonio Lukich Headline Cannes Slate From Ukraine's ForeFilms (EXCLUSIVE) Cradle Film Studios Moves Forward as Backers Tout Plans for 'Most Advanced, High-Tech Studio' in Africa (EXCLUSIVE) 'The Odyssey,' 'Maria' Filming Location Greece Hits Troubled Waters Over Ongoing Delays With 40% Cash Rebate It is a subject that strikes home for the director, who left his native Russia shortly after the country's invasion of Ukraine. Asked if he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin might similarly elude justice once the war finally ends, Serebrennikov insists: 'I can't be a prophet.' 'I know that history is like this: Sometimes, people are dying in wars and the people who started the war have no responsibility,' the director tells Variety. 'They just become the heroes of their nations.' Produced by Charles Gillibert at CG Cinema ('Annette') and Ilya Stewart at Hype Studios ('Tchaikovsky's Wife'), 'The Disappearance of Josef Mengele' stars August Diehl ('A Hidden Life') as the infamous Nazi doctor, who conducted inhumane medical experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp and was branded the 'angel of death.' The audacious film is told from Mengele's point of view and follows his years as a fugitive, as he finds sympathy and support among the South American political elite while also reciting a litany of self-serving justifications for his heinous crimes. The director worked closely with the French novelist Guez to discuss the 'philosophical and practical approaches' to adapting the prize-winning novel, which was published in more than 30 countries. Serebrennikov composed the script, acknowledging it was 'a difficult task to embody this type of person we would call today a monster.' 'Disappearance' nevertheless paints a damning portrait of Mengele in his final years, as he grows increasingly paranoid, rambling and delusional — an interpretation, the director admits, that is partly an effort to deliver a dose of poetic justice to a war criminal who was never tried for his crimes. 'All his ghosts and all his nightmares are part of my imagination,' says Serebrennikov. 'I would love to believe that sometime, late at night, [criminals like Mengele] have a spark of guilt, and all those ghosts come to them. As it's written in Shakespeare's plays, 'Macbeth' or 'Richard III.' As it's written in 'Boris Godunov' — [Russian playwright Alexander] Pushkin's and [composer Modest] Mussorgsky's masterpieces. 'Now we understand that it doesn't work [that way]. It's the complete opposite,' says the director. 'All these people who are responsible for killing millions, they don't feel any guilt. They feel nothing.' Serebrennikov left Russia in 2020, following the suspension of a three-year travel ban imposed by the Kremlin on trumped-up charges. That ban notably prevented the director from presenting two previous films — 2018 rock opus 'Leto' and 2020 fever dream 'Petrov's Flu' — at the Cannes Film Festival, where he has been a mainstay since his 2016 debut 'The Student' premiered in Un Certain Regard. Five years later, Serebrennikov says a return to his homeland would be 'impossible.' The world, meanwhile, has grown darker, the future clouded with uncertainty. 'Look at America. Everything has changed in less than 100 days,' he says. The director sees this dawning age as a return to demagogues and cruelty, to a political order that the Soviet-born filmmaker, like many others, hoped had died out with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The end of history, as it turns out, did not bring with it a prolonged era of Pax Americana. The threat this time seems to be coming from everywhere all at once. 'The world we used to live in is collapsing, is dying,' Serebrennikov says. 'It's…under attack by quite a lot of forces. From people who start wars and don't care about killing other people. From people trying to attack democracy. From people who are trying to attack different aspects of democracy. Now we understand that we are very vulnerable. 'I always try to find something good, even in the worst situation,' he continues. 'We're coming back to the [realization] that we need to fight for our values. We're kicked out of the comfort zone. Now is the time to fight for what we believe in.' 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Russia Today
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
Argentina publishes files on notorious Nazi fugitives
The Argentinean government has made public almost 2,000 declassified secret service files on hundreds of Nazi war criminals who fled to the Latin American country after the Third Reich's defeat in the Second World War. According to estimates, as many as 10,000 Nazis utilized so-called 'ratlines' to escape as the Axis powers collapsed. Infamously, around half of them are believed to have chosen Argentina –known for its reluctance to grant extradition requests — as their refuge. The 1,850 files uploaded online by the Argentinian National Archives (AGN) on Monday included intelligence reports, photographs, and police records. The documents on 'Nazi activities in Argentina' are now available to all 'thanks to extensive restoration and digitization work,' the AGN said in a statement. Among other things, the papers depict how the likes of Josef Mengele, Erich Priebke and Adolf Eichmann were able to make it to Argentina and what they did in the country. Mengele was a physician and Nazi SS officer, nicknamed the 'Angel of Death' for his inhumane medical experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The published records show he entered Argentina in 1949 under the name of Gregor Helmut and then openly lived in the country. 'References obtained from different sectors of the German community allowed us to learn that he was commander of the Assault Guards and, at the same time, doctor in the German extermination camp of Auschwitz,' one of the files on Mengele read. The newly-published papers also included the 1995 extradition documents for Priebke, a mid-level SS commander, who had been in charge of a unit responsible for the massacre of 335 Italian civilians at the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome in 1944. They also shed light on the time that Eichmann, a high-ranking SS official often described as the logistics chief of the Holocaust, spent in Argentina. He was kidnapped in Buenos Aires in 1960 by Mossad agents and hanged for his crimes by Israel two years later. The files in question were declassified in 1992 under a decree from then-Argentine President Carlos Menem, but they could only be viewed in a specially designated room at the AGN. The country's current leader Javier Milei ordered that the Nazi papers be released to the general public in March on a request from the US Jewish human rights organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is currently investigating links between Swiss bank, Credit Suisse, and Nazi Germany.
