Josef Mengele
"the Angel of Death"
EARLY LIFE
Josef Mengele was born in 1911 in Gunzburg, Germany. The eldest son of a farm implement manufacturer, Karl Mengele, Josef earned his PhD in physical anthropology from the University of Munich in 1935. In 1937, he became the assistant of Dr. Verschuer, who was known for his research with twins. At the same time, Mengele joined the Nazi Party; he soon received his medical degree and joined the SS. When he was drafted into the army, he went into the medical service of the Armed SS. NAZI INVOLVEMENT AND CRIMES IN WORLD WAR II Wounded while on campaign on the Eastern Front, Mengele returned to Germany in January of 1943 and worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics, under the guidance of his former mentor, Dr. Verschuer. A few months later he was advanced to SS captain. He was then moved to Auschwitz in May of 1943. While at Auschwitz, he was not the only doctor nor was he the highest ranking physician. As a part of their duty, the physicians performed “selections” of prisoners on the ramp coming into Auschwitz, determining who would be saved for work and who would die immediately in the gas chambers. Even though all of the physicians had to do this task, many survivors remember Mengele because he often appeared “off-duty” in the selection area when new prisoners arrived, looking for twins. During his past research with Dr. Verschuer, he performed legitimate research on twins during the 1930s. However, while at Auschwitz, with full authority to do whatever he wanted with his subjects, Mengele performed a broad range of agonizing and often lethal experiments on Jewish and Roma twins, often children. One of his more in depth research topics was a fascination with eye color, and when two eyes differed in color. He conducted several experiments to try and change the eye color of victims, often resulting in blindness or death and would collect the eyes of his murdered victims for “research” In support of his belief in the National Socialist racial theory, he tried to demonstrate the degeneration of Jewish blood through multiple experiments, which often resulted in death, or Jewish victims were murdered to further “study” their bodies. Some of his other experiments included sewing twins together to make them conjoined, removing limbs, castrating children, removing organs, and injecting lethal drugs. Many of these experiments were done without any anesthetic, leaving the victims in excruciating pain. In 1945, as the Soviet Army advanced through western Poland, Mengele fled Auschwitz, and then made his way west. ESCAPE AND DEATH In the immediate postwar, Mengele was in US custody, but US officials were unaware that his name was already on a list of wanted war criminals and quickly released him. For 4 years until 1949, he worked under false papers as a farmhand in Bavaria. His family then aided him in his emigration to South America and he settled in Argentina. His crimes had been well documented, and in 1959 West German authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. Due to his knowledge of Eichmann's capture in Buenos Aires earlier that year, Mengele moved to Paraguay and then to Brazil. In 1979, he suffered a stroke while swimming in Brazil and drowned, under a false identity. Later, after following evidence from a Mengele family friend, German police located his grave and positively identified his remains. He evaded capture for 34 years. Sources: www.ushmm.org/wic/en/articl.php?ModuleId=10007060 www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/josef-mengele.shtml www.historylearningsite.co.uk/josef_mengele.htm |