TODAY'S feeble attempts at bringing perpetrators of genocide to justice evokes memories of the late fifties when, at the height of the Cold War, a tall German doctor and his family showed up at a pension-turned-residence in the Cairo suburb of Maadi. At the time, the doctor introduced himself to the townies as Karl Debosch, pronounced 'Dabous' by Mohammed, his Egyptian barber on Road 9.

Maadi was then a tiny community when Digla still represented its desert outback. These were the late 50s and like any small town, Maadi had its own well-tuned grapevine addressing each rumour and gossip with equal alacrity. Nonetheless, the arrival of a yet another German doctor was no big deal. Nonetheless, over the years Maadi had its fair share of European doctors.

Ever since its creation in 1907 Maadi was home to hundreds of foreigners including Austrians and German doctors. Some old timers still remember Doctor Rudolf Ferdinand Amster who had been a member of Khedive Abbas Hilmi's coterie of Austrian aides, and how Amster later joined the exiled Khedive in Vienna after WW1.

Following Amster's departure his Maadi neighbor, Doctor Emil R. Lichtenstern, took over as medic up until the 1940s during which time he shortened his name to Lister. And there were the other resident medics : Isaac Gerson, Max Ratgheb, Paul Balog, Maurice Hauff etc..

But Doctor Debosch of the 1950s was different. Tiny tell-tale signs said as much.

A particular item which caught everyone's fancy was a report that Debosch was seen recurringly staring from his upstairs window at the building across the street. The focus of his attention was always the same; somehow, the small Maadi synagogue on Orabi (ex-Mosseri) Avenue fascinated the German doctor.

Curiously, no one ever saw Debosch outside his house. Neither did anyone run into Frau Hedwig at the Maadi Sporting Club, a must if you wanted to blend into Maadi's mainstream. Ditto for Road 9 where Maadi's few shops were located. The Deboschs, who seemingly never shopped, appeared there only when the doctor needed a haircut or a medicinal drug from the local pharmacy.

The couple neither entertained nor accepted invitations. True, there were several Germans and Austrians seen entering or leaving the Debosch's villa, but if some of these Aryan visitors sported assumed Arabic-sounding names, the rest felt comfortable under their original names: "Herr Pils", "Herr Brandner" etc.

Meanwhile, the German nuns at the St. Borromeo Convent situated at the north end of Maadi's Road 12 vouched that Doctor Debosch was a devout Roman Catholic. On the other hand, Maadi's faithful swore he never made it to mass at the Holy Family Church on Road 15, just a hundred meters from his house. Probably had nothing to confess, claimed some of the regular churchgoers.

The only way you could meet or talk to Doctor Debosch was by becoming his patient.

One German-educated Maadiite, Amina Radi, remembers that when she called on her school-friend Weiland, the doctor's son, she was surprised to find the Debosch's downstairs hall filled with Germans. Some were the parents of her other classmates at the German School.

As it turned out Debosch had twice more German patients than did his Egyptian rival, Doctor Tousson Salem who was himself half German through his mother.

Amina also remembers how, at the German school, each time Doctor Debosch's children walked into a classroom, professors talked in hushed tones to one another. Sometimes they referred to them as the children of the damned --whatever that meant!

One Maadi morning, speculation and gossip regarding the Debosch family exploded to untenable proportions. A booby-trapped letter had blown out the eye of Maadi's postman the previous day. The letter had been addressed to Doctor Karl Debosch!

Maadiites were overwhelmed with apprehension. WHO EXACTLY WAS DOCTOR DEBOSCH?

Almost simultaneously, stories, some of them comical, started to spread.

"Debosch was an unlicensed practitioner" claimed the wife of the town's Egyptian doctor who, from the start, deeply resented the new arrival.

"Rubbish!" said the self-important spouse of an army general. "This is no doctor but a great scientist." Forever pretending she was in the political know, the general's wife ascertained to her eager audience that khawaga Dabous was a rocket scientist, hence targeted by those who didn't want Egypt to have far-reaching weapons.

But, according to the Jewish wife of a famous Egyptian journalist, Dr. Debosch was in fact a wanted war criminal. During WW2 he had made lampshades using human flesh. The Czech-born woman went on to claim she had spat on the Doctor when they met per chance on Maadi's commuter train.

"He's a dog killer of the worse kind" cried the English bird-lady who lived on the other side of Maadi. Having seen a dead puppy dog near the Doctor's house, she promptly reported him to the PDSA.

Reporting him to the PDSA was unnecessary claimed Madame Leila Nagati, an Egypto-Swiss who lived in the small brown Meyr Biton building across from Doctor Debosch's house. The German doctor's end was evidently near. A closet detective, Nagati had cleverly connected the handsome foreigner who had recently moved into the ground floor of her Orabi Avenue building, with Doctor Debosch. "My neighbor is an undercover agent from Israel. He is here to finish off the Doctor" she told anyone who paid attention. "I hear his transmitter crackling late at night and have already reported him to the police. It later turned out that Laila Nagati was half right. Her neighbour was indeed an Israeli spy.

Just as the German doctor had his antagonists, he also had the ready support of his apologists who defended him with equal enthusiasm.

"He's a desperate henpecked introverted artist" whined a struggling Maadi painter who admired the Doctor's masterpieces. Apparently, these hung on his living room walls. As for the elderly couple from Luxembourg who lived a block away from the German doctor, they swore he was the best ENT specialist Maadi had ever known. "He found a cure for my husband" nodded the grateful Madame Warda Bircher-Blazer.

The stories changed each day.

What nobody knew and few suspected was that Doctor Debosch was one and the same as Doctor Hannes (Hans) Eisele of Buchenwald fame. His wartime specialty had been the injection of experimental fluids into human guinea pigs.

Why then was Doctor Debosch not in a post-war German jail? Why wasn't he in Spandau prison sharing a cell with the Alexandria-born Rudolf Hess, the fabled author of a quixotic peace flight to Scotland in May 1941.

Most certainly Doctor Debosch's story was an unusual one. It would be many years later when a curious Maadi neighbour (yours truly) pieced scanty snippets of information about him. Yet the story remains somewhat incomplete. In any case here's a sample of what was later confirmed from valid sources.

Doctor Hannes Eisele was of pure Aryan stock, his "Aryan Certificate" said as much. It listed the names, places and dates of birth (and death) of both sets of grandparents. Where necessary, the certificate explained causes of death--vital information to a Third Reich which promoted racial purity.

Eisele was the son of modest village folk. Born on 13 March 1912 in the small town of Donaneslingen, he grew up in the laender of Baden. Whereas his father Hans was a painter-laborer his mother Emma Bullinger was an ordinary housefrau.

Even before Hans Senior passed away in 1934, young Hannes supported his family taking on part time painting jobs. At 21 Eisele joined the Nationalist Socialist Democratic (NAZI) Party and, later that year like many of his generation, he became a member of the Schutzstaffel paramilitary organization or SS --a sure guarantee to upward mobility.

Eisele studied medicine at the University of Freiburg where he became involved in student politics. And later, during the war years, the former student-leader served the Fatherland at different junior officer-level posts, first as a commandant and later, in 1943, as a hauptsturmfuehrer--Captain-Doctor.

Although he didn't appear at any post-war tribunal for crimes against humanity, a US military court in Dachau found Eisele guilty and sentenced him to death. Yet, for some unknown reason, capital punishment was commuted to life imprisonment. Shortly afterwards, in 1952, Eisele was released and allowed to practice medicine in Munich. Evidently, the SS Old Boys network was alive and well in the former Third Reich.

It was only in 1958 that Eisele's medical union card was revoked right after his mysterious escape from Germany. Thereafter, his name became public domain especially since it was brought to the attention of the Bavarian Justice Minister, Dr. Ankermuller.

Yet, by the time a warrant for Eisele's arrest was issued on 28 June 1958 based on incriminating evidence provided by Herr Zommer, a former colleague from the Buchenwald days, the Doctor and his family were safely on board the SS Esperia which had set sail from Genoa for Alexandria the previous day.

If a new identity was in store for Eisele and his family in Egypt, their stay would be short and tumultuous dampened by the fear of being uncovered. In fact, the doctor’s Egyptian sojourn ended in ostracism, malady, and finally in death on 3 May 1967.

Eisele was buried at the German Cemetery in Old Cairo. The paradox here is that he shares the same plot with Doctor Theodor Maximilian Bilharz. While Doctor Bilharz's black granite plaque lists in Arabic and German his wonderful medical achievements, the short inscription on Doctor Eisele's rough tombstone reads simply "Dr. Med. Hans Eisele". Understandably, it makes no mention of any of his medical accomplishments.

Though only a few meters separate the two doctors' final resting places, the chasm between them will never be breached. Not in this world or any other.

photos samir raafat

From: Tom B. Atkinson [tomjax@bellsouth.net]
Date: November 7, 2006

My uncle has a painting by H Eisele that was painted by him when he was a prisoner at Landsberg and my uncle was the assistant commandant.

My uncle is still living and has interesting stories about him as well as the other inmates that he executed and wrote about in a Book, Captor Captive.

Nephew of Joseph Williams