The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Charles told of Mengele victim’s ‘hell on earth’
Woman tells prince about ‘miracle’ of her survival at the hands of Nazi ‘devil’
A Holocaust survivor has told the Prince of Wales about the “hell on earth” she endured while being experimented on by notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.
At the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Charles met Marta Wise, who as a 10-year-old girl was sent to Auschwitz and subjected to inhumane treatment.
He also met George Shefi, who came to England just before the war on the Kindertransport which rescued so many Jewish children from Nazi Germany.
Mrs Wise, 85, spent 25 minutes with
Charles – far longer than most one-toone encounters on a royal visit.
She said: “He was very sympathetic. He came across as genuinely interested, not just doing it for the sake of it.”
Born in Bratislava, then Czechoslovakia, Mrs Wise and her older sister were sent by their parents to live with a non-jewish family and pretend they were orphaned refugees.
But in October 1944 they were betrayed to the Nazis, who offered large rewards to anyone who reported Jews.
She said: “Twenty-seven fully armed soldiers came to pick up two little girls. We were put into detention, and from there we were sent to Auschwitz-birkenau and into Mengele’s experimental barracks.
“By a miracle we survived. It was hell on earth. Mengele was a particular devil. Our blood was taken. Jewish blood was no good, but it was good enough to take for the German army.
“He used to inject us with things. We had no idea what they were. You could be in absolute agony. He was a monster. There is no other way to describe him.”
After the war she moved to Australia where she became a historian of the Holocaust. She married Harold Wise and had three children before moving to Israel in 1998.
Mr Shefi, 88 – born George Spiegelglas in Berlin – was sent to Britain by his mother in July 1939 at the age of seven, unable to speak a word of English.
He lived with an English family, then moved in with a Jewish family.
Later in the war he joined relatives in the US. Afterwards he moved to Israel, where he became an engineer.
He welcomed the presence of Charles and other world leaders in Israel to honour Holocaust victims, at the World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem.
But he said it would be meaningless without further action: “I think it is very good. The question is, what will you do with it afterwards?”