Laurie Sparham/Focus Features The agents take turns monitoring and feeding Vogel, who attempts to psychologically humiliate and intimidate them. [82] He returned to Buenos Aires several times to settle his business affairs and visit his family. Sam Worthington as the young David meshes believably with Hinds as the older version of himself, and the fiery performance of Marton Csokas as the young Stefan (looking like a younger and even angrier Russell Crowe) outshines even Academy Award nominee Wilkinson. Describing the encounter to Stefan over the phone, Rachel declares she will not continue to lie about the 1965 mission. We meet Mirren's Rachel Singer in 1997, furrowing her brow while trying to look gracious at a Tel Aviv party for her beloved daughter Sarah (Romi Aboulafia), who's written a book lionizing her mother's career. They are David (Sam Worthington), Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain, of "The Tree of Life") and Stefan (Marton Csokas). Nazi war criminal Mirren mesmerizes in thinking-man's thriller | Washington Examiner [35], Mengele's work also involved carrying out selections, a task that he chose to perform even when he was not assigned to do so, in the hope of finding subjects for his experiments,[36] with a particular interest in locating sets of twins. The so-called Surgeon of Birkenau, Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen), escaped justice at the end of the war. He next worked as a salesman for his family's farm equipment company, Karl Mengele & Sons, and in 1951 he began making frequent trips to Paraguay as a regional sales representative. How could he possibly be allowed to get away? The movie drowns the deeper questions it raises in a sadistic procedural, an endless circular motion of fight scenes whose only justification is themselves. [31][32], In early 1943, Von Verschuer encouraged Mengele to apply for a transfer to the concentration camp service. Some movies get by on the strength of their heroes. The Debt, by contrast, explores nothing, preferring to stake out positions through stock characters declaiming expository dialogue. He performed deadly experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) concentration camp, where he was a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be killed in the gas chambers, [a] and was one of the doctors who administered the gas. Nicholas D. D'Angelo, an attorney from Niagara County, will serve six months in jail and also will be placed on sex offender probation for 10 . Arent you tired of lying? One character tells another, speaking of Vogels alleged death. [103], Mengele's health had been steadily deteriorating since 1972. Mengele even makes a surprise appearance in Annie Jacobsens allegedly nonfiction book Area 51 as the scientist who, at the behest of Stalin, surgically altered children to look like Martians and thereby trigger a War of the Worldslike panic. Lies have piled up, and one way or another all three agents will emerge as tragic figures. He initially lived in and around Buenos Aires, then fled to Paraguay in 1959 and Brazil in 1960, all while being sought by West Germany, Israel, and Nazi hunters such as Simon Wiesenthal, who wanted to bring him to trial. Part of Block No. It details how she shot their captured target, Dieter Vogel, otherwise known as the "Surgeon of Birkenau," when he attacked her and tried to escape. Every so often, several dozen Jewish men and women prisoners were brought in. In 1965,Mossadagent Rachel Singer arrives inEast Berlinto meet with fellow agents David Peretz and Stefan Gold . Ruth Elias was pregnant when she was transferred from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. Under cover of night, the trio attempt their exfiltration atWollankstrasse Station, on a railway line along the sector boundary between East and West Berlin, and next to a mail depot. On Mengeles orders, children suffering from noma were put to death in order for pathology investigations to be carried out. Martha and Karl lived in a boarding house in the city until December 1960, when they returned to West Germany. [72] After a few weeks, he moved to the house of a Nazi sympathizer in the more affluent neighborhood of Florida Este. For these actions, Mengele was awarded the War Merit Cross (Second Class with swords) and was promoted in 1944 to First Physician of the Birkenau subcamp. Terms of Service apply. The Surgeon (2005) - News - IMDb [55], Mengele's eye experiments included attempts to change the eye color by injecting chemicals into the eyes of living subjects, and he killed people with heterochromatic eyes so that the eyes could be removed and sent to Berlin for study. Josef Rudolf Mengele ([jozf ml] (listen); 16 March 1911 7 February 1979), also known as the Angel of Death (German: Todesengel),[1] was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and physician during World WarII. You\'ll receive the next newsletter in your inbox. In the new film The Debt, the former "surgeon of Birkenau" is hiding out in East Berlin working under . These are the staples of the typical James Bond film, and seem to be what film audiences want out of a European-based thriller. While the psychological depth of the older characters is deftly portrayed, Chastain as the young Rachel is too much of an incomprehensible cipher to carry a story of this weight. [19] Nazi Germany attempted to obtain this new territory by attacking Poland and the Soviet Union, intending to deport or kill the Jews and Slavs living there, who were considered by the Nazis to be inferior to the Aryan master race. [88], In May 1960, Isser Harel, director of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, personally led the successful effort to capture Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires. . And yet its still gripping. [66], After several months on the run, including a trip back to the Soviet-occupied area to recover his Auschwitz records, Mengele found work near Rosenheim as a farmhand. [20], Mengele joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the Schutzstaffel (SS; 'Protection Squadron') in 1938. [40], Mengele used Auschwitz as an opportunity to continue his anthropological studies and research into heredity, using inmates for human experimentation. More than half of The Debt is set in East Berlin, where young Rachel is now Jessica Chastain, Stephan is played by Martin Csokas, and Davids avatar is Sam Worthington. [3][4] He was particularly interested in identical twins, people with heterochromia iridum (eyes of two different colors), dwarfs, and people with physical abnormalities. In an article that he sent to Himmler in April 1944, titled The Effect of X-Ray Radiation on the human Reproductive Glands, Schumann expressed a preference for surgical castration, as being quicker and more certain. Auschwitz-Birkenau: Nazi Medical Experimentation. (Well, its original.). But the connections run deeper than that, a theme that recurs in the film. See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.