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Dr. Christian Szell (also known as The White Angel of Auschwitz) is the primary antagonist of the novel Marathon Man and its 1976 film adaptation.

In his characterisation, he is a notorious diamond smuggler and Nazi war criminal who sought to kill protagonist Thomas "Babe" Levy in order to extract a cache of smuggled conflict diamonds.

He was portrayed by the late Laurence Olivier, who also portrayed Heathcliff in the 1939 adaptation of Wuthering Heights, the title character in the 1955 film adaptation of Richard III, Dr. Totenkopf in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and Shylock in the 1973 adaptation of The Merchant of Venice .

Early life[]

Christian Szell, also known as The White Angel of Auschwitz, was once a dentist. When World War II started, Szell volunteered to perform dental work on concentration camp prisoners. He also tortured the prisoners in the camps, especially the prisoners of Auschwitz, ultimately murdering hundreds of them. During the war, he obtained a significant amount of gold by extracting dental fillings from the prisoners' mouths, without anesthesia.

After the war ended, Szell was convicted of crimes against humanity, but fled Germany to escape punishment. Szell settled in the U.S., where he continued to work as a dentist, while secretly smuggling diamonds stolen from Holocaust victims through an elaborate network of couriers and selling the on the black market.

Retrieving the diamonds[]

He meets with Henry Levy, a government agent posing as an oil executive in order to arrest Szell and his courier network. After the deal, Szell learns that his brother Klaus, who was also one of his couriers, has been killed in a car accident. Szell suspects foul play, however; anyone who obtains one of the two keys to the safe deposit box, which only he and Klaus had access to, would be able to steal a fortune in diamonds. Deducing this from hearing about the incident from his boss Peter Janeway, Henry himself finds out that Szell is about to go to New York City in order to retrieve the diamonds.

After discovering the deaths of many couriers, Henry returns to his hotel room, where he is nearly killed by an assassin working for Szell. He then meets with his brother Thomas and his girlfriend Elsa and takes them both out to dinner, and becomes suspicious that Elsa is working for Szell.

After a police investigation of Babe, he is abducted by Szell and his men, including Henry's boss, Peter Janeway, a double agent. Babe is then taken into a warehouse, where he finally meets Szell, who tortures him by performing a root canal on him without anesthesia. After the infamous torture scene, Babe flees.

The Final Confrontation and Death[]

While attempting to determine the value of his diamonds, Szell is recognized by the shop assistant, who is also a Holocaust survivor. After Szell hurriedly leaves the shop, an elderly Jewish woman also recognizes him. Trying to cross the street to get closer to Szell, the woman is hit by a taxi, causing a crowd to assemble to aid her. Amid the confusion, the shop assistant follows and confronts Szell, who slits the man's throat.

Szell retrieves his diamonds from the bank, but as he is leaving, Babe appears behind him and tells him, "It isn't safe" and forces him at gunpoint to walk to a water treatment plant in Central Park (where Babe regularly runs). Szell, in an attempt to negotiate his escape, offers Babe a portion of the diamonds; Babe declines, telling Szell he can keep as many diamonds as he can swallow. Szell initially refuses, so Babe taunts Szell taking his briefcase and throwing handfuls of diamonds at him, which fall through the grating platform they're standing on and into the water below. Szell, aghast at Babe's actions, relents and swallows one diamond, but then refuses to cooperate further.

Szell tries to get close to Babe to stab him, accusing his late father and brother of being as weak and predictable as Babe is, and spits at him; Babe strikes Szell, but loses his grip on his gun. Szell then reveals his dagger and lunges at him, but Babe manages to avoid it and throw the open briefcase with the remaining diamonds down a stairwell towards the water. Szell dives towards the diamonds, but stumbles and rolls down the steps, fatally falling on his own knife blade and Szell dies for good eventually. 

Personality[]

Christian Szell is a sadistic psychopath who takes perverse pleasure in torturing people, especially those who do not fit the Third Reich's Aryan ideal. His main hobby, which he developed during WWII, was to torture the prisoners in the camps by performing dental surgery on them without anesthesia.

Szell is highly sophisticated. When a Holocaust survivor sees him after he buys some diamonds from a shop, she starts to yell his name and he starts to escape in response, in a harsh attempt to hide who he truly is. When the survivor is attempting to contact the police, she nearly dies when she's being run over by a nearby car.

Trivia[]

• Christian Szell is loosely based on the real-life war criminal and Nazi scientist Josef Mengele.