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by editorial writer Mark Genrich published in The Phoenix Gazette
One of the shortest and seemingly simple editorials, yet most elegant and sophisticated in use of allusion, repetition and symbolism, was written by Mark Genrich. Formerly with The Phoenix Gazette, in which this editorial was published, Genrich reminds us all of mankind's capacity to inflict the greatest horrors against mankind. "The Angel of Death, they say" has the power to persuade by the sheer beauty of expression. Ironically, as Genrich exposes the darkest and most heinous side of human behavior. They say the most wanted man in the world, fugitive Nazi Josef Mengele, has been found. They say the man responsible for the murders of 400,000 people at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, died in 1979. They say "The Angel of Death" who headed Auschwitz's medical department between May 1943 and January 1945, died in a swimming accident in Brazil and was buried at Embu. Positive identification, they say, will be difficult. The remains of matted hair and darkened bones are not well preserved and the dental records are inconclusive. But this is the Angel of Death, they say. This is Josef Mengele. They are wrong. The grave at Embu held teeth and bones. Josef Mengele walks elsewhere. Mengele is in Afghanistan, his hand on the shoulder of a Soviet soldier executing villagers, women and children. Mengele is playing cards in a watch tower with an East German border guard, waiting to kill a family escaping to the West. Mengele is laughing with Soviet surrogates in Ethiopia as he watches thousands die of starvation. Mengele is the co-pilot of Soviet jets shooting down unarmed civilian airlines. Mengele whispers in the ear of Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray and Ali Agca. He is adviser to the PLO and counselor for the IRA. He is in Lebanon and Vietnam, Cuba and Chile, South Africa and Cambodia. He is wherever the horror of man's darkest and deepest nightmares come true. No, that is not Josef Mengele buried in a grave at Embu. Josef Mengele
is somewhere else. THIS EDITORIAL IS REPRINTED COURTESY OF MARK GENRICH AND BY PERMISSION OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF EDITORIAL WRITERS.
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