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Unnamed SS Physician Blog Entry |
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April 25, 2022, 9:22:32 PM April 26, 2022, 2:38:28 AM April 26, 2022, 2:39:22 AM 4/25/22: Just a rough sketch attempt for the next character coming up! Hair... ;_; [Rough SS Physician Sketch 2022 [Monday, April 25, 2022, 9:22:32 PM]] 4/26/22: r/SketchDaily theme, "Villains." I know...I know...today's theme wasn't intended for this, and my portraits are really not good. 😖 But that's why I want to practice them, plus they give me the excuse to infodump character development in my Tumblr and create new profiles on Toyhou.se. So I know this doesn't go over well but I was short on time and wanted to get this one out of the way. I don't feel comfortable sharing the identity of today's character portrait attempt from my weird anthro alternate-reality WWII storyline, sans cap (top drawing) and with cap (bottom drawing), since he's the only character of mine so far (and I have hundreds) based on a real person. I will say, though, that the person he's based on was a real-life villain as well as a minor/background villain in my story, so, technically he fits the prompt, even if he's not a good drawing. Regarding the design, I'm not terribly thrilled with it, partly because I don't know how to draw hair like this (it's based on the real person's hairstyle in photos I looked at), but like I said I was pressed for time; maybe my skills will improve in the future. Although the real person is described as dark haired, dark eyed, and rather dark skinned, I decided to make this character a white Alsatian (German shepherd) because it goes along with one of his nicknames. (I kept the dark hair and eyes, though. Maybe that's what throws me, the dark hair with the white fur. Hm.) There'll be more about him later on in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. Okay! No more character portraits until Free Draw Friday, promise. EDIT: Oops, awkward. 😳 Unfortunately this character profile is a violation of Toyhou.se terms against depicting real people. I could have sworn I had seen other characters depicting real people (not personas) but I guess those were also in violation of site terms yet had slipped beneath the radar. I hate not being able to post all my characters (and feel kind of dumb that the one and only time I base one on a real person, I promptly go and break a site rule 😖 ), but orders are orders. If and when his profile info gets written up, I'll have to provide it here in my art blog and not on Toyhou.se. I know nobody is reading, but sorry about that. I knew there were reasons I don't normally do this sort of thing. (I'm wondering how he was even found, since nobody seems to look at my page anymore...I seem to only get noticed when I'm in trouble, I guess.) TUMBLR EDIT: All righty. Dr. Josef Mengele. Yep...that guy. 😳 I'm not sure how I got to this point, but for some reason this character-who's-not-really-a-character crept into my developing storyline and grew bigger until I could no longer avoid him. In fact, an entirely new section of storyline has emerged, a prequel/prologue explaining how some of the main characters came to be where they are in the main story, and while his role in the main story is supposed to be minimal (knowing the way of things he'll turn into an important character there too, eventually 🙄 ), he does play a bigger role in this prequel, in my character Lukas Mettbach's backstory. (More on him soon.) I'm in uncharted territory here, since I don't like to base characters on real people. So this particular character is going to be a bit of an anomaly. There will be no deep diving or detailed development, no backstory, no "How he came to be this way," for this one. I'm not here to glamorize him and make him sympathetic. Because presumably, his backstory is the real person's backstory, and that's literal history that you can look up elsewhere if you want. That story diverges where he becomes a character in my fiction, of course. Because he IS highly fictionalized to suit my version of events. For example, the real Mengele worked at Auschwitz, while my fictional version, in the way things go in my fictional version of WWII, does still work at a (unnamed) camp (all the camps in my story are unnamed and their structure is simplified for the sake of the story) but also occasionally travels to other camps to watch selections and see if there's anyone there he'd be interested in. There are certainly lots of other differences since I haven't delved into Mengele's history as deeply as I should have yet, so some aspects of him may change still, but that's the gist of it. The real Mengele has lots of anecdotal stories told about him and his particular habits. I picked up on a few of these, whether they're confirmed or not, and used some other details that some sources take as gospel while others feel they've been misunderstood or debunked. His study of twins and of heterochromia (differently colored eyes) is a big example. Most sources will insist the former has to do with creating the perfect Aryan race and increasing the birthrate, the latter with finding a way to turn brown eyes blue (more Aryan). These theories are repeated so often, I simply took them as established fact. One of the YouTube videos I watched, however, was by the author of a book about Mengele (a book I have not read and do not own, though I might cave in someday), and he made a good case for this "established fact" being misunderstanding about how Nazi science worked. I buy his argument regarding twin study. This was apparently common back then and had nothing in particular to do with Nazis and nothing to do with creating a master race. Scientists just studied twins a lot, is all. The eye color thing is iffier IMO. The author rebutted the theory about changing the color of eyes, but he gave no alternate explanation that I can recall. The only one I can think of is that Mengele was just a sick guy who did experiments like this for the hell of it. Which is highly likely. I mean what reasonable doctor would think you can inject stuff into an eye to change its color? But this explanation is rather thin, especially for my story, so I'm going with the assumed theory on that one, that he was genuinely trying to figure out how to change eye color. I picked up bits and pieces here and there without fully taking note of where they all came from, and like I said, most seem anecdotal. Supposedly he played the violin. Supposedly he played chess with one of his experimental subjects. He would give candy to children and they'd call him "Uncle." He let a family of little people live because they were entertaining. One source mentioned that while he could get inappropriate with selecting female subjects, it wasn't out of any sexual interest; another, not as reliable-seeming (IMO) source hinted he in fact lusted after them. (Mehhhh...I don't get this vibe.) He acted kind at times but at other times had an explosive temper and supposedly liked to hit people with a riding crop. He would whistle opera tunes while selecting subjects on the ramp. I think I read a story about him riding a bicycle through the camp and losing one of his medals so everybody had to go looking around for it. I just watched another video that mentioned his only time getting in trouble at Auschwitz was when he ran his motorcycle into another vehicle. (Heh.) I watched a scene from a TV(?) movie where, as the actor playing him did selections and whistled, he wore white gloves, and I was thinking, "WTF, he wouldn't be wearing those, he'd be wearing leather gloves, wouldn't he?"--everyone in the comments was arguing about how crappy the costume selection was and they got everything wrong and he looked like a Lufthansa pilot and not an SS doctor, so I figured yeah, he would not be wearing white gloves...BUT!...another source I came across some time later mentioned that he loved wearing white cotton gloves to distinguish himself. Well...huh. So okay, perhaps he wore white gloves after all. Some sources said his subjects were initially treated better than the other residents of the camp, while others said they were treated not much better at all. Etc. etc., I'm sure I'm forgetting some things. The key point here is, almost none of these details seem to have been backed up by anything other than somebody saying it was so. In fact, many of these details gave no source, for example the white gloves one, the video I saw that in just mentioned it like it was a fact but where did they get it from? I don't know. It could all be from one of the books about Mengele I haven't read yet. But even the info where there is a source given, that source is often just one or two witnesses from the camps, often not even test subjects themselves. These people testified in court so I doubt they were lying, but there's always a chance they misunderstood something they saw, or misremembered. I'm taking them at their word. Just that you have to keep in mind there's no direct evidence for much of this stuff, other than that. That's my longwinded way of saying, hey, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and read some witness accounts of Mengele's life and activities and I'm using that for my story. I can't verify any of it. I'm not a great researcher or anything. Some details that were weirdly difficult to dig up were the specifics of Mengele's physical appearance; I needed to know these to draw him. (Oh yeah, before I forget. I mentioned making him a "white Alsatian" in line with one of his nicknames. You surely know he was best known as the Angel of Death, yes? (This is how he's almost always referred to in my story. At least outside the prequel/prologue, nobody so far refers to him by name.) Well, he was also apparently known as the White Angel. Some sources say this was because he wore his white lab coat while doing selections, which I find...really weird...and don't plan on including in my story. But anyway.) You can tell from his pictures he has dark hair; I assumed brown. (One video I watched the other day mentioned him being blond and I had to look through the comments to see if anybody else contradicted this since THE PHOTOS ARE SO DAMN CLEAR, where did this narrator get BLOND?? But nobody I saw commented on it. Urgh annoying. They were literally showing photos of him with his dark hair!) Various sources described him as having darker skin as well, and eyes. Not too Aryan there, eh! Specific color, however, was harder to come by. I thought I'd seen his eyes referred to as brown but I couldn't be sure, and Googling "Mengele eye color" will of course take you to all that info about his heterochromia experiments, not his own eye color! Derp. I dug out Lifton's The Nazi Doctors which has a chapter on Mengele, from which I'd gotten some of my details, and it described the dark hair and complexion but no specifics...BUT in a different section, a witness described his eyes as "brown and bloodshot." Aha! I wanted to make really sure, though (the same book pointed out how many people had highly mistaken impressions of Mengele, such as him being tall and blond), plus figure out if his hair was brown or black. I finally thought to see if I could find any sort of fake ID since he went by various assumed identities when he escaped to South America, and don't those list your eye and hair color? Well...yes and no, I guess? Because even there I wasn't entirely successful at first but I did FINALLY come across a passport application which listed his eye color in German. I understood "braun." But the word before it was weird and I couldn't be sure of the spelling since the handwriting was meh. I startled Googling "German words for brown" (I know they have a boatload of terms for different shades of gray) and then just "German colors." The word in front of "brown" was "green." Green-brown eyes. Another source I found online--a wanted poster (another idea I came up with to look for)--confirmed the description "greenish brown" (oddly, none of these gave his hair color!), and then I found someone on Quora who mentioned Mengele having brown hair and brown eyes. So...that was good enough for me. Brown hair, green-brown eyes. (I'm realizing the irony of this person who was so well known, yet so little known, too, that I would have so much trouble just finding out his hair and eye color, what should have been the easiest things to find out. By now he's turned more into myth and rumor than anything. Or it's like I said and I just really suck at researching, I dunno.) EDIT 5/7/22: I've since acquired Lagnado & Dekel's Children Of The Flames and Posner & Ware's Mengele: The Complete Story. Both books confirm the white gloves, the latter also mentioning a cane; while the former refers to Mengele's eyes as "varicolored," the latter provides this description of Mengele's physical appearance: Such contempt for these lives is explained by Mengele's view that Gypsies were a subspecies. The irony was that Mengele himself was sometimes known to remark on his own distinctly un-Aryan looks, which more closely resembled those of a Gypsy than of a perfect Nordic specimen. Indeed, Mengele's own racial classification by the SS had put him in the Dynarisch-Ostisch category, which meant that his predominant features were of "Eastern" origin. Since childhood he had been self-conscious about his slightly tawny skin, his penetrating brown-green eyes, and his dark brown hair. At school he had endured mild taunts from his classmates about his Gypsy looks. And in Bavaria, where Mengele grew up, the word for "Gypsy" had a derogatory meaning denoting an unstable and unsettled person. His home town of Günzburg, especially, was full of folklore about Gypsies coming to kidnap children who misbehaved. So...there you go! All righty...back to the fictional Mengele. He isn't INTENDED to play a major role in the main storyline, though knowing how this is developing, that can change. Primarily, he's meant to make a brief appearance later in the storyline after Obersturmführer (1st Lt.) Gunter Hesse is attacked and repeatedly stabbed by Lukas Mettbach, a Sinti member of the underground Diamond Network, which aids victims of the Nazis. Hesse is nearly killed and, to say the least, extremely pissed off; he vows to go after Mettbach's family, but Mettbach has no family left, they've all been killed in the camps. As soon as he's able, Hesse goes to the local labor camp where he knows Mengele is visiting that day and manages to catch his attention; he informs Mengele that if he's willing to wait a bit, a train with a whole bunch of Sinti prisoners will arrive and he can take his pick. Mengele is especially interested in experimenting on Sinti and Roma captives, so the implication is that Mettbach's actions will result in the torture and mass extermination of yet more of his people. Lt. Hesse can be particularly kind, but when crossed he can be particularly nasty as well. It turns out there's an additional implication here that's only hinted at so far in the main story, that being that Mettbach is one of Mengele's victims, himself. This is meant to be covered in the prequel story. Mettbach's camp (Sinti camp, not the other kind of camp) is attacked by the Nazis, many of them killed, some taken captive and the camp burned down. Mettbach ends up in a Nazi camp, the first of three he'll occupy, and is sent right (to hard labor) at selections, has his head shaved, is tattooed (number tattoos are given in numerous camps in my story, not just whatever-unnamed-camp-stands-in-for-Auschwitz), is deloused or whatever, and is put in striped clothes and given a black triangle patch with a Z, to mark him as an asocial/work-shy "Zigeuner" or "Gypsy." Mettbach, or Lukas as I prefer to call him, has always had a problem with authority and so he ends up getting in trouble rather fast. But he learns fast, too, to behave himself, keep his head down, not attract attention, but remain useful by working hard. The more invisible he is, the better. Somehow he survives the first camp (impressive, considering that "Gypsies" generally aren't given a second chance) but ends up shuttled off to a second. This is generic-unnamed-Auschwitz-stand-in, where Dr. Mengele works. (There's a hint that Lukas being allowed to live and move on to this particular camp was intentional on the part of the camp authorities. They knew Mengele might be interested in him.) So, Lukas arrives at the second camp. Goes through selections a second time. Doesn't get to figure out whether he'll be sent left or right, though, as an SS captain abruptly confronts him in the line, grabs his jaw, and turns his head from side to side, looking at him intently. Then whistles and gestures for a guard to escort Lukas to his office. He walks off while Lukas is led away from the line, just as the officer in charge of selections for the day gets fed up and yells for everyone else to be sent left (to the gas chamber). Lukas doesn't know it yet, but Dr. Mengele just saved his life. Oh--right. I didn't mention what exactly it was about Lukas that captured Mengele's attention. Lukas has one brown eye and one blue--heterochromia. The rest of Lukas's segment of this story is intended to cover his experience in Mengele's lab as one of his subjects. He goes through lots and lots of measurements and tests, during which Mengele asks him various offhand questions that make little sense to him. Mengele: "Anyone else in your family have eyes like yours?" Mettbach: "I have no family left." Mengele (peeved): "When you had family. Anyone else have eyes like yours?" Mettbach: "Nein, not that I know of." Mengele: "Any twins?" Mettbach: "I'm not sure...? None I know." Mengele: "Any dwarfs?" Mettbach: "Dwarfs...?" Mengele: "Short people. Little people. Dwarfs?" Mettbach: "Nein." Mengele: "Any hermaphrodites?" Mettbach: "Herm..." Mengele: "Man-ladies. Ladymen. Hermaphrodites?" Mettbach (confused): "...Huh?" Experiments start out simple enough, with Mengele just taking lots of blood samples and putting drops in Lukas's eyes. They sting, but it isn't so bad, especially considering that he no longer has to do hard camp labor, just helps clean things up in Mengele's lab. Sure, that's kind of gruesome at times but he can handle it. He also gets a better bunk to sleep in, somewhat better food, doesn't get beaten, and when Mengele discovers he knows how, they even play chess together. (The first time, Lukas throws the game near the end, knowing he's about to win; he's relieved when Mengele wins instead, until Mengele grabs his hand hard enough to hurt, leans over the board, and whispers, "I know you let me win. Don't ever do that again.") All in all, not a bad existence, compared to the alternative. But then come the eye injections. Then the serum tests. (Lukas is a subject of Projekt Weltuntergang--better known in the story as Project Doomsday--which, although started by Dietmar Kammler (Dr. C), it turns out Mengele has picked up and started working on too--Lukas lacks the proper blood type, so the experiment is exceedingly painful for him.) Then after various increasingly unpleasant experiments, Mengele says to him one day, "Did you know that a healthy adult male can function perfectly fine with just one kidney?" and gives him a paralytic that, while he can still breathe unassisted, prevents him from otherwise moving around or screaming, and, you got it, removes his kidney. Just because, I guess. Lukas gets no anesthesia, no morphine. Afterward, Mengele loses interest in him, though rather than kill him off, just sends him back to work in the camp. Yes, Lukas just had his f***ing kidney cut out but has to almost immediately go back to hard labor. To be honest though, he prefers it, because by now he's sure the doctor will end up killing him--probably in the most excruciating, drawn-out manner possible--and Lukas really, really wants to stay alive. (This part is based on the account of one of Mengele's actual victims. His story didn't include my fictional paralytic (which doesn't exist anyway--a ventilator would likely be needed). But I couldn't imagine how to properly restrain someone completely enough to remove a kidney without severing a bunch of important stuff and somehow keep that person alive, what with all the squirming and screaming. I did try to imagine it. It just didn't seem feasible. I'm not claiming this person lied, I just can't personally envision how it was pulled off. One version of the account specifically mentions the victim screaming during the surgery, so obviously a paralytic wasn't involved.) Welp...Lukas returns to work in the camp, though he doesn't last long before an infection sets in, and after several days of worsening symptoms, he's sent, half delirious, right back to the camp hospital ward. Right back to Dr. Mengele. He comes out of his delirium just long enough to notice where he is and Mengele chirps, "Fancy meeting you again," and Lukas just moans, sure he's about to die. Mengele hooking him up to an IV and telling him that his return to the lab gives him the chance to "try out something new" just seems to confirm his fears. But it turns out that "something new" is merely a new kind of antibiotic...which works...and several days later, Lukas is sent back out into the camp a second time and that's it for his experience with the Angel of Death. Not long after, he's shuttled off to his third destination, Obersturmbannführer (Lt. Col.) Ernst Dannecker's labor camp. This particular guy's nickname is Der Teufel, or the Devil. So Lukas is sent from the Angel to the Devil. Mengele taught him his lesson though, and as soon as he learns Dannecker's nickname he's like "HELL naw" and manages to avoid any serious interactions with him, unlike later new arrival Josef Diamant...but that's neither here nor there. Lukas survives the Angel of Death and that's what's important. Mengele ends up casting a long shadow over Lukas, though. He's left with various side effects of the experiments, his eyes painfully sensitive to the light and his hands always itching; the psychological trauma, however, is much worse. In the story he comes across as borderline psychotic, with a hair-trigger temper and a vicious streak that includes a propensity for threatening people with stabbing and evisceration. ("Let's cut him open and look at his insides!" he exclaims when the Diamond Network debriefs an American spy.) This, ironically, includes his near-fatal stabbing of Lt. Hesse, which leads right back to Dr. Mengele and yet more suffering for Lukas's people. I guess having his kidney cut out made a lasting impression and a vengeful drive to inflict that same sort of pain on others. ...And yes, just as I'd expected, this ended up being more about Lukas Mettbach than about Dr. Mengele, though that's pretty much his intended role in the story, the effect he had on a more central character. There's also his connection to Project Doomsday, though his influence on that doesn't show up much until the epilogue story, Ultima Thule, whose new and improved serum is the result not of Dr. C's/Kammler's efforts but Mengele's. ADDENDUM: The formatting's a bit wonky but here is the "Mengele, Josef" basic profile as it originally appeared on Toyhou.se. The full profile is still pending but if the entry length will permit it'll appear here in the future. Name/Nickname: Josef Mengele (AKA the Angel Of Death; Der Todesengel; the White Angel) Gender: Male Birthdate/"Permanent" Story Age/Astrological Sign: March 16; thirties/forties; Pisces (NOTE, I've kept the actual birthday, but the year of birth and age have been modified for the story) Birthplace/Current Location: Germany/WWII Germany Height: Average Weight/Body Type: Fit/athletic Eyes: Green-brown Hair: Dark brown hair; white fur Race/Ethnic Background: Caucasian; German Relationship Status: Single/married Orientation: Heteroromantic(?) heterosexual Siblings: Two younger brothers Profession: Hauptsturmführer (Captain) in the Schutzstaffel (SS); camp physician in charge of human experimentation; Nazi physician in charge of Project Ultima Thule Distinguishing Characteristics: Oddly charismatic, charming, and even playful despite his job and often cruel/uncaring demeanor; many of his test subjects hold conflicting views of him, finding him kind and thoughtful on the one hand, but brutal and sadistic on the other; tends to enjoy doing selections in camps (a job most other officers despise), often whistling while doing so; can be chatty and sociable with his test subjects, giving the children candy or playing chess or the violin with the adults; his subjects also get better housing, food, and work than other camp inmates, but are at the constant mercy of his experiments; especially interested in twins, heterochromia, Roma/Sinti, and various physical deformities; has a hair-trigger temper that can be unpredictable--can be violent when crossed; although he often engages with his subjects in a highly personal manner, can easily detach himself from them, viewing them as other than human; highly intelligent, yet carries some odd/erroneous ideas regarding race and genetics due to his Nazi background; has acquired an almost mythic status among victims of the Nazis, who usually refer to him by nickname (the Angel Of Death) rather than by his real name General Appearance: White Alsatian (German shepherd) with pricked, upright ears; average height, fit/athletic build; dark brown hair, white fur, greenish-brown eyes; wears a traditional SS uniform and cap, except in the lab, where he often wears a white lab coat over his uniform and removes the cap; often wears white cotton gloves with his uniform, rather than the standard dark leather gloves; carries a riding crop; sometimes rides a bicycle First Appeared In: The Trench Rats: Reborn (flashback/unnamed bit part) (UPDATE: This character has since been renamed "Unnamed SS Physician" for reasons; he still maintains certain attributes in common with Mengele but is no longer based directly on him.) [Unnamed SS Physician 2022 [Tuesday, April 26, 2022, 2:38:28 AM]] [Unnamed SS Physician 2022 2 [Tuesday, April 26, 2022, 2:39:22 AM]] |