Word: karle
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...History occurs twice," Stefan Kanfer writes at the outset of The International Garage Sale, quoting Karl Marx, "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." Some 200 pages later, many of them stingingly funny, Kanfer ends his novel invoking the same message. Yet the novel itself lies somewhere on the continuum between tragedy and farce. Ostensibly it is a sardonic burlesque of the United Nations (here thinly disguised as the World Body) and its present-day cast of characters, but underneath runs a current of sadness that the ideals of the 1940s have been overrun by the travesties...
Even as Rolf and Dieter finally spoke out, attempts last week to question other Mengeles proved unsuccessful. In Gunzburg (pop. 19,000), the town where most of the clan resides, family members were "not available," either at their homes or at the headquarters of Karl Mengele & Sons, the family-run farm-machinery and hydraulic-press concern that is Gunzburg's largest employer. In Munich, 120 miles to the southeast, some Mengele relatives were so wary of newsmen that they took nameplates off their doorbells...
Nonetheless, the Mengeles seemed certain to retain the loyalty of many of Gunzburg's citizens, in large measure because of local pride in and reliance on the Mengele firm. The company was founded in 1907 by Karl Mengele, Josef's father and the man to whom the family's passion for privacy and self-reliance can be traced. During his military service in World War I, the elder Mengele left his wife in charge of his business, establishing a tradition of keeping the firm securely in family hands...
...Karl Mengele & Sons now has a payroll of 1,200; 1984 revenues amounted to $82 million. The firm is run by Dieter Mengele and his cousin Karl-Heinz and is considered a fair employer and a generous civic donor. According to local police, the Mengeles have never reported a threat against their lives or their properties. Advertising signs saying MENGELE-GUNZBURG dot the sides of roads in the vicinity of the town; the firm's slogan, MENGELE -- THE BETTER IDEA, is splashed across the side of a plant building, clearly visible to motorists passing on a nearby expressway...
...latest curious twist in the search for Mengele began two weeks ago, when West German authorities descended upon the idyllic town of Gunzburg, whose biggest employer is the firm of Karl Mengele & Sons, manufacturers of agricultural equipment. There, acting on a tip from an unidentified university professor, for reasons still not clear, they raided a house that is believed to belong to Hans Sedlmeier, a onetime legal clerk for the Mengele firm. Sedlmeier was widely reported to have been a messenger between Mengele and his family when the fugitive was living in Asuncion, Paraguay. Inside a closet in the home...