Can we talk?

Nine days ago I completed a collage depicting Josef Mengele. It took me several days to settle down from doing it. When it became known I was DID and had been in a government program to deliberately create dissociation, that is when I dove into research about common ties of military to CIA to cults (exploited children "business") and Operation Paperclip. I joined a support group to be able to talk about the bizarre memories only to find out many had already done the same research, although I always did my own as back up. First, the collage.


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Several survivors indicated they had memories of Mengele (a/k/a Dr. Green). We were all in our 40s and 50s then. I couldn't imagine that the U.S. would have allowed Mengele to touch "our country's" children for the purpose of abuse after the holocaust events became known. I was very naive about the country and our history. I had memories of Nazis but wasn't certain of names. Alters have shown me but there will never be proof. Suffice it to say I was in Germany and was around Nazis in several underground locations.

I invite you to do your own research but I'm not going to look up dates again. It's in a huge stash of paper from a decade ago. Secret Agenda is a good start that validates Mengele was a part of Paperclip. He was both in Germany (at least at designated times for programming during my time there) and in the U.S. at various times. Carol Rutz has done extensive research on Mengele's whereabouts disclosed in her book A Nation Betrayed. The possibility he had access to me at birth and before his published death in the 70s, is there. His pictures as an older man were known by my alters. I hadn't known the name though until several years into healing when his pictures from later decades became available on the internet.

My point is I couldn't allow myself to believe Mengele had been anywhere near me and he had not come up in my memories until a year or so into healing. It's also possible that they called each other by famous Nazi names with their M.O. of unbelievability. Numerous survivors recall a Dr. Green and Dr. White. I have few names that come up. My alters gave me images over and over again of people whose identity became known after I saw the real person on a documentary or in an article, along with appropriate holy sh*t triggered response.

With Mengele, I began to hear internal messages that I had been born virtually into his hands. In 1952, Operation Paperclip had begun and Aberdeen Proving Grounds was the primary first stopping point for Nazis being assigned throughout the U.S. at military bases, hospitals, and research facilities. That's where I was born. Videos of Mengele's history show he evaded capture after the war and escaped to another country. However, his vast research on twins made him an "asset" apparently. It's documented that he had worked with the U.S. and his entry and exit was facilitated by our government.

My earliest collages show a single combat boot. Images of Mengele after the war meant nothing to me. It was in the second video I acquired of Mengele that included his voice singing a bit of a song. As soon as I heard his voice, I freaked to the point of not being me. I was way in the background. I was also home alone. I ran into the bathroom screaming, locked the door, and curled up on the floor in a fetal position where I stayed for hours. The thought...the reality...of Mengele's hands having been on me was unbearable. I was raised Jewish. I was obsessed with holocaust history. I felt Mengele's level of evil through that knowledge. Flooding into my personal being was something I cannot truly put into words. Often, before my memories, I said I felt as if I were a reincarnated Anne Frank.

In processing the new collage, one of the answers I got was that I wasn't allowed to look at him. That reminded me of my client who always knew my shoes because she wasn't allowed to look at her abusers. With Mengele's reputation, I understand that was likely the case but I would have seen his boot. His voice, however, was blood curdling. Since that was the one sense "open" to me with him, I would have internalized that as trauma.

In saving items for collages, I never know what I'm going to use. The words "Omg, I'm a green crayon" I thought were fun or cute. But placed at the bottom of the Mengele collage caused another freakish reaction with his "code name" of Dr. Green. Was Mengele really an abuser or "just" another Paperclip Nazi? My personal validation is the voice. I simply did not believe it could be true. It's the last thing I would have wanted to be true about what I knew of the program(s) I was placed into at birth.