10 Shockingly Dark Origins Of Comic Villains

Jewish Max Eisenhardt was born in Nuremberg, Germany. In school, he became attracted to a young Romani girl named Magda. Attempting to escape the growing Nazi Party, his family moved to Poland. They lived in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940 where Max worked as a smuggler. He was eventually captured and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. There, he saw first-hand how human beings treated those who were different.

After some time cleaning the cremation furnaces and watching family and friends die, Max was reunited with Magda and saved her from execution. The pair escaped to a village in the Carpathian Mountains. They married and had a daughter named Anya. Max adopted the name “Erik Lehnsherr” to fit in among Magda’s people.

Erik moved his family to the Soviet city of Vinnytsia. His powers hadn’t manifested at puberty due to a case of hepatitis, but they did come to the fore when he magnetically hurled a crowbar at his boss for refusing to pay him. By the time Erik returned to the place his family was staying, it was on fire with Anya on the top floor. KGB agents held Erik down, preventing him from saving her. Lehnsherr lashed out, destroying the men and a large portion of the town. A newly pregnant Magda fled in fear of her husband. Now truly alone, Magneto was born.