The graphic novel “La disparition de Josef Mengele” is a wonderful surprise for me, both in terms of the scenario and the graphics. Anyone interested in true stories will devour this book as it represents a goldmine of astonishing information on the life, or rather the survival, of the Nazi criminal in Latin America.
Who provides him with the money he needs? How does he protect himself? Does he lead the existence of a pasha? How does he behave abroad? Does his thinking on race show any sign of evolution, or is it still sclerotic? Why does Argentina encourage the arrival of these fugitive assassins?
For the general public, there are two categories of National Socialist criminals: the first concerns the names that received most media coverage at the Nuremberg Tribunal. The second involves Nazi criminals who fled abroad, thanks to political or family support. Josef Mengele belongs to both groups. He is holed up in Latin America and knows that several organizations are seriously looking for him, including Mossad.
How does he remain roaming for so long? It soon becomes clear that the Mossad is not only concentrating on Nazi criminals on the run. The book introduces us to some other priorities for the agency, one of which is very urgent: the elimination of former German scientists working in Egypt to create radioactive waste weapons designed to destroy Israel. The secret services must choose between Mengele, a past threat, or a more immediate danger. With limited resources, they have to adjust and deal with the most pressing situation.
Nazis were integrated into the new German government.
There is, however, a third category that the public has heard very little about, and which is also discussed in the graphic novel: these are Nazis who rejoined the new German government a few years after the end of the Second World War.
Indeed, the Allied powers of the time – the USA, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union – administered the occupation zones of the German territory after the Second World War. But tensions between East and West grew rapidly. Each side accused the other of imperialist or communist expansionism.
To offer a better-organized resistance to the Soviet Union, Germany’s autonomy had to be quickly restored. The former Nazis had experience of governance that was immediately available.
If the Allies adopted the clear-cut position of preventing the Nazis from attaining essential functions in the public apparatus of the future Bonn Republic, then people with little or no knowledge had to be trained to carry out the more complex tasks. Time was short, as was the will to bring all possible war criminals to justice.
So, many Nazis found work in government agencies. One thing led to another, and some of these former Nazis recycled as government agents became part of the inner circle protecting the most prominent war criminals who had fled abroad. Josef Mengele benefited from this high-level support.
But several additional Germans, also in high places, acted in the opposite direction, striving to flush out the biggest criminals, at the risk of their own health and safety. One such person is introduced in the book: Fritz Bauer. This man contacted Mossad with information that eventually help to capture Adolf Eichmann. The latter went on trial in Israel and sentenced to hanging.
Eichmann and Mengele meet each other.
Mengele reads the newspapers and suspects that his end will resemble that of Eichmann. The graphic novel shows him as a hunted animal, talking to himself. His racist, backward-looking words drive away the individuals who could support him most in the last years of his life. He withered slowly and died on a beach in Brazil. But it was not officially known until 1985.
The book covers a period of several decades. It features a brief summary of Mengele’s actions as a doctor at Auschwitz. He is not alone, even if he remains very high-profile to the general public. A large number of scientific assistants carried out experiments on humans, including one who became rector of the University of Münster after the end of the Second World War.
The authors mention in passing the idea of a Fourth Reichpursued by Mengele and his ilk. In short, readers won’t get bored with this skilfully constructed graphic novel.
“Enfant de salaud” means “Bastard’s child” in English. Author Sorj Chalandon is a journalist and worked for decades for the French newspapers Liberation and Canard Enchaîné. During his career, he received numerous awards: Albert-Londres (1988), Médicis (2006), Grand Prix de l’Académie française (2011), Goncourt des lycéens (2013) and most recentlyGoncourt 2021 des lecteurs de 20 Minutes.
“Enfant de salaud” is the true story of the author who tries to shed light on his father’s extremely nebulous past during World War II, in the German-occupied France.
Having had access to official archives, he gradually discovers that his father went through the war by enlisting in five armies, which he all deserted. He served the enemy in every way, but always made sure that the few things he was doing for Francewere listed somewhere in case of an investigation after the war.
The head of the Sûreté nationale de Lille who questioned the father after the war said of him: “This individual is a liar endowed with an astonishing imagination. He must be considered very dangerous and treated as such.”
Between the reflections and the discoveries of the son on the past and the psychology of the father, the reader participates in parallel to the trial of Klaus Barbie , psychopath and great war criminal, who died in prison in France in 1991. Passages of the book are blood curdling, although we know what to expect when it comes to Nazis, SS and members of the Gestapo.
When the survivor Isaac Lathermann takes the stand during the Barbie trial, he announces: “[in the concentration camps], at breast height, there was no more bark on the trees, everything had been eaten. No more grass either. Eaten too.” (p. 238)
The reader discovers the resistantLise Lesèvre who, even tortured by Klaus Barbie for days, doesn’t give up a single name: a phenomenal example of courage and patriotism.
“Enfant de salaud” is the author’s decades-long inner journey. The fact that he relates a real-life story further reinforces the intensity of the narrative.
“The Psychopath Test” is a very interesting book for those who want to demystify what lies behind the term “psychopath” or “sociopath”. The author also writes about what leads to a medical misdiagnosis of a mental illness in a person. Despite the fact that writing on psychopaths is a serious task, the text is written with a bit of humor and derision, the author often putting forward his own insecurities and neurosis.
Although the book’s main theme is about psychopathy, the spectrum of subjects is quite large and all the stories are interesting, if not surprising. Numerous cases that have made the news throughout the years are brought back to memory, but with new details that allow a deeper understanding.
Jon Ronson’s “The Psychopath Test” Book Cover
Misdiagnosis
It is quite surprising to realize how easy it is to make mistakes in the diagnosis of mental illnesses. There are also several mental illnesses that can be attributed to individuals who do not have a behavior that is considered as strictly “normal” in our society. But since what is standard and acceptable vary throughout the years and societies, it seems obvious that a mental illness can be attributed to a person who is not really sick.
It is quite troubling to realize that mental illnesses will be attributed to children while the particular symptoms of those illnesses are known to become apparent only when a person becomes an adolescent or adult.
Faking madness to avoid prison time is not particularly wise…
The author shows how different personal interpretations by all kinds of “specialists” on the multiple criteria used to diagnose several mental illnesses sometimes result in a person being sent wrongly to a mental institution where she will be heavily medicated for a very long period.
A particularly interesting story is that of a man who faked madness after having committed a violent crime in order to avoid being sent to jail, thinking that he would instead be sent to a psychiatric institution where life is relatively comfortable. He was sent, like he wanted, to a psychiatric institution, but not the one he expected. He spent more than twelve years at Broadmoor, in England, an institution where serial killers and pedophiles are imprisoned.
In his case, the Robert Hare’s list was used. This is a list which is used to determine if a person is a psychopath. His luck turned when the “specialists” considered that he met most of the criteria on the list. He then had to fight for years to prove that he was victim of a wrong interpretation…
Some particularly weird psychotherapy sessions
The author mentions some of the weird experiments that went on to heal patients, experiments that were destined to fail before they even started. For example, the reader learns of psychotherapies where the patients were nude and under LSD influence. Another experiment involved criminals who had to heal each other: they could not stay away and distant from each other as they were taped together, like this serial killer of three children in Toronto who was taped to a car thief…
The negative effects of psychopaths that are highly placed in society
The author tries to verify, using the Robert Hare’s list, if it is true that psychopaths are ruling the world. He admits he partially failed. This seems reasonable since there is about 1% of the population that is composed of psychopaths, and that percentage grows to 3% with politicians and corporate leaders. So, from 3% to 100%, it seems obvious that this was a tall order to start with.
The author quotes one of his sources, Essi Viding, who studies psychopaths: “Psychopaths don’t change. The best you can hope for is that they’ll eventually get too old and lazy to be bothered to offend. And they can seem impressive. Charismatic. People are dazzled. So, yeah, the real trouble starts when one makes it big in mainstream society” (p.60)
Active psychopaths on the stock market can be as dangerous as psychopaths that are serial killers. As Robert Hare writes it: “Serial killers ruin families. Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies” (p.112)
“The Psychopath Test” book back cover by author Jon Ronson
The twenty-point Hare PCL-R Checklist to establish if somebody is a psychopath
Here is a summary of the twenty points included in the Robert Hare’s Checklist. If a person scores 30 or more out of 40, she is considered as a psychopath:
1. Glibness/superficial charm
2. Grandiose sense of self-worth
3. Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
4. Pathological lying
5. Conning/manipulative
6. Lack of remorse or guilt
7. Shallow affect
8. Callous/lack of empathy
9. Parasitic lifestyle
10. Poor behavioral controls
11. Promiscuous sexual behavior
12. Early behavior problems
13. Lack of realistic long-term goals
14. Impulsivity
15. Irresponsibility
16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
17. Many short-term marital relationships
18. Juvenile delinquency
19. Revocation of conditional release
20. Criminal versatility
The twenty-point Hare PCL-R Checklist applied to a candidate of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, during the 2016 American Presidential elections
At the time I am reading “The Psychopath Test”, American television is reporting on a daily basis the whereabouts of the American candidates competing to lead the Republican Party for the 2016American Presidential elections. Every day, I am hearing reporters and political analysts complain about the behavior (point 10) and irresponsible speeches (point 15) of one of the candidate, Donald Trump.
On several occasions, what that candidate has said has been found to be inexact when verified (point 4). I regularly notice his impulsivity when faced with unforeseen events or contradictions (point 14).
Moreover, he refuses to accept responsibility for his actions or words (point 16), does not seem to regret anything which makes any excuses pretty hard to formulate clearly (point 6). According to several well-known and respected political analysts, his long-term goals as to what he would realize if he was elected President of the United States are not realistic (point 13).
Similarly, his lack of empathy towards millions of American citizens is regularly making the news (point 8). He sometimes refers to himself at the third person, continually putting forward his own self-worth (point 2). I did not spend more time researching other connections with the remaining points in the checklist; I leave it to you. CNN nonetheless took the time, in September 2016, to mention some details on the personal life of Mr Trump and if I believe what is said, then points 11 and 17 would also apply here. Having no experience in psychoanalysis, I used the Robert Hare checklist for fun only and no serious conclusion should be drawn here.
The psychopath Emmanuel (Toto) Constant and Haiti
Talking of American politics, the reader discovers Emmanuel (Toto) Constant and the consequences of his actions for Haiti. He is a mass murderer, psychopath, who was working for the CIA in Haiti. He was released from jail when he implied that he would reveal secrets on the American foreign policy in Haiti. Emmanuel Constant “profoundly altered Haitian society for three years, set it spiraling frantically in the wrong direction, destroying the lives of thousands, tainting hundreds of thousands more.” (p.129)
Reality TV and selected mental illnesses
The author also develops the reality TV theme, where guests face each other and fight aggressively, verbally or even physically. He interviewed a person who was in charge of finding the appropriate guests for each program. He learned that the candidates were chosen according to the type of drugs they were taking to stabilize their mental illness. This is not done without making some mistakes and he learned that a member of a family killed herself because she felt guilty about the way she behaved in preparation for the TV program.
Are you a psychopath?
Are you a psychopath? “If you’re beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath, if you recognize some of those traits in yourself, if you’re feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one” (p.114). The psychopath has no emotions about his own situation: he is not sad about it, does not question himself as to his situation no more than is he happy to be classified as a psychopath.
The financial interests of huge pharmaceutical companies
Obviously, huge financial interests are at play when it comes to prescribing medication to millions of patients susceptible to be diagnosed with a specific mental illness: the role and pressure exerted by pharmaceutical companies are rightly raised in the book:” There are obviously a lot of very ill people out there. But there are also people in the middle, getting overlabeled, becoming more than a big splurge of madness in the minds of the people who benefit from it” (p.267)
Some personal comments
On few occasions, the author’s reasoning surprised me. For example, he founds abnormal to take the time to write articles on a blog since there is no pay to be expected. Should I assume that every act of creativity in society has to be done in exchange for money, otherwise it makes no sense? In another chapter where there is a mention of the 9/11 attacks, he writes: “9/11 obviously wasn’t an inside job”. The word “obviously” replaces what should be an appropriate research on the subject since half of the American population still has unanswered questions about those attacks.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, here is quote that, I think, best resumes the author’s thoughts: “There is no evidence that we’ve been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things” (p.271).
