Bonn to Pay 80 Twins Hurt in Experiments by Mengele

More than 80 twins, victims of gruesome medical experiments by Nazi death camp doctor Josef Mengele, will receive compensation from West Germany totaling more than $1 million, a lawyer announced today.

Tel Aviv lawyer Aryeh Ben-Tov said each twin will receive a one-time payment of about $13,000 for mental and physical damage done to them during Mengele’s experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.

Ben-Tov, also an Auschwitz survivor, said all the twins were between 6 and 8 years old at the time of the experiments and are today in their late 50s. Most live in Israel, but several reside in the United States, he said.

Ben-Tov said he signed the settlement with the West German Finance Ministry last week on behalf of 83 twins around the world after several years of negotiations. He said he originally represented 86 people but three recently died.

Mengele was blamed for the deaths of 400,000 Jews at the Auschwitz camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where he conducted pseudo-medical experiments on twins, dwarfs and others.

On June 21, 1985, a panel of international experts in Sao Paulo, Brazil, conclusively identified bones of a 1979 drowning victim as those of Mengele, ending a 40-year search for the Auschwitz “angel of death” and months of intense efforts to capture him.