Josef Mengele. Nazi official SS doctor considered one of the most prolific “butchers” of the 20th century , This individual known by the nickname of “The Angel of Death” has gone down in history for his cruelty and hatred towards Jews. He had the idea that the Jews were aberrated human beings and believed that he could cure them of their “disease” for which he investigated and carried out experiments on them, looking among other things for the genes responsible for the supposed anomaly. In parallel, he was looking for the genes responsible for the Aryan race to ensure the perpetuation of the best characteristics of his species.
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 1 Studies
- 2 Nazi trajectory
- 3 Auschwitz
- 4 Experiments
- 5 End of experiments
- 6 Death
- 7 Exhumation
- 2 Testimonies about the symbol of Nazi terror
- 3 See also
- 4 Sources
Biographical synthesis
He was born Günzburg , Bavaria , on March 16 , 1911, to a respected Bavarian Catholic family. He was the eldest of the three sons of Karl Mengele ( 1881 – 1963 ) and his wife Walburga (who died in 1946 ), wealthy industrialists in the city. His younger brothers were Karl Mengele ( 1912 – 1949 ) and Alois Mengele ( 1914 – 1974 ). He adored his mother dearly, despite her being very severe and strict; however, he kept a certain distance from his father.
That environment would be of extreme importance in Mengele’s later life. From a young age, he knew that the family business was not for him. “Mengele’s father was a tough character. When he came to the factory he did it screaming. He was a very tough person. And his mother was made from the same mold. She was a devout Catholic, pious, though very upright in character and tough discipline. Mengele always had the impulse to do something very special, to prove and surpass himself. He had no love or home warmth. A former schoolmate recalled that since those times, Mengele said that he should do something special, that he definitely try his academic ability “(Gerald Astor, actor and author of the book” The Last Nazi “).
Studies
He attended a public school, and later the Gymnasyum, intended for those with higher academic aspirations.
“He was a brilliant and extraordinarily ambitious student. He was always trying to do something out of the ordinary, to be a great scientist.”
Julius Disbach, Mengele’s former classmate.
Another friend from that time described him as aggressive and very patriotic.
In 1930, Mengele entered the University of Münich, a city that would become a center of upheaval.
Josef Mengele wearing his medical gown
politics. There, he was struck by a speech by Hitler on the superiority of the German race. At that time many students joined the Nazi movement. “Heredity” and “eugenics” were terms commonly applied by the scientific community, most of which supported Hitler and his mystical concept of the German people. Hereditary purity, euthanasia, sterilization of the undesirables, and racial superiority through eugenics, occupied the scientific community. Eugenics became a sacred word.
In 1934 he joined the Nazi Party, but continued his studies and received a Ph.D. in Philosophy , to later pass the entrance exams to Medicine. He moved to the University of Frankfurt and began researching at the Institute for Biological Heritage and Racial Hygiene under the tutelage of Dr. Ottmar von Verschuer , an ardent Nazi and specialist in eugenic science, through which the master race would be created.
He received his doctorate in Anthropology in 1935 with a doctoral thesis on racial differences in the structure of the lower jaw, under the supervision of Professor Theodor Mollison. He then traveled to Frankfurt am Main, where he worked as Otmar von Verschuer’s assistant at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene at the University of Frankfurt. Although he received a doctorate in medicine with a thesis entitled “Studies of cleft lip-mandibular-palatine in certain tribes”, Mengele’s concern as a physician was mainly oriented to the genetic-racial study rather than to curative medicine.
Nazi trajectory
In 1937 , Mengele joined the Nazi party. The following year, the same year that he received his medical degree, he
Mengele representing his rank of Captain
joined the SS. In June 1940 , he was drafted into the army and then volunteered for the Waffen-SS (armed forces of the SS) medical service. While documentation is sparse and often contradictory regarding Mengele’s activities from this time to early 1943, it is clear that he first served as a medical expert for the Main Office of Race and Settlement (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt o RuSHA) in the summer of 1940 at the Central Immigration Office (Einwandererstelle) Northeast Posen (now Poznan ) and after that he held the position of medical officer in the “Wiking” of the SS division (V Battalion pioneers of the SS), with which he participated in war actions on the eastern front.
Mengele was wounded in the field and returned to Germany in January 1943, where he began work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (KWI) for Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics led by his former mentor von Verschuer. In April 1943 , he was promoted to the rank of captain of the SS. This progress briefly preceded Mengele’s transfer to Auschwitz on May 30 , 1943 .
Auschwitz
One of the assignments of the camp doctors was to receive the trains loaded with Jews. These doctors had terrifying power: they could instantly decide if a prisoner was going to die in the gas chamber, if he was destined for experiments, or if he was going to forced labor. Most Germans called Auschwitz “Anus Mundi” or “year of the world”, but for the Angel of Death it was his research paradise.
It was during his 21-month stay in Auschwitz that Dr. Mengele rose to fame, earning himself the nickname “angel of death.” When the train cars full of prisoners arrived at Auschwitz II (Birkenau), he would stop on a ramp in front of the lines and indicated with a wave of his hand who died and who lived: to the right were the elderly, children, pregnant women and disabled; to the left were young women and men in obvious good health. Those left in the row on the right went directly to the gas chambers. [[Image: Join-with-twins.jpg | thumb | right | Join-with-twins selected for your experiments.
In a very short time he would become famous for being one of the few camp doctors who could carry out the task of selection in cold blood and always in search of twins, on which he carried out the most painful experiments in the hope of discovering the secret. of multiple births, in order to genetically create the Aryan Super Race that would dominate the world during the thousand years that, according to Hitler , the Reich would last.
Mengele seldom displayed humanitarianism towards any of the convicts, and even personally killed some captives for disobeying the rules. Cases of sexual perversion practiced with the women of the left row were known; whipping the breasts with a whip or executing defenestrations that left the girls invalid who, sooner or later, would end up in the gas chambers. He was particularly tough on those inmates who got pregnant from the guards. Mother and daughter (born or unborn) went to the gas chamber. Many times, the corpses of mothers with their children still alive in their arms were left in the wagons in which the condemned were brought. Mengele ordered these creatures to be thrown directly into the laundry oven, to serve as fuel. Later he changed his attitude: allowed pregnant women to give birth, but the babies born were confiscated to go to an experiment room elsewhere in the concentration camp. In many cases, Mengele ordered that the birthing mother be bandaged so that she would not breastfeed her baby. He collected data on the starvation of infants.
Siamese twins
Mengele, following in Von Verschuer’s footsteps, had developed a strong interest in twins as a source of information about these concepts. Starting in 1943, the twins were selected and placed in special barracks. The experiments included, for example, attempts to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children’s eyes, various amputations and other brutal surgeries and, documented on at least one occasion, an attempt to artificially create conjoined twins by union of veins of twin brothers (the operation was a failure and the only result was that the hands of the children became seriously infected). The people who were the target of Mengele’s experiments, if they survived the experiment, were almost always killed for further dissection.
Mengele injected all kinds of substances into the veins, such as phenols, chloroform, naphtha, insecticides … Sometimes, directly into the heart. He killed the objects of his experiments for autopsies. He did vivisections, to study the limits of resistance to trauma and pain in human beings. A vivisection is the same as doing an autopsy on a living being. Needless to say, he did it with the conscious person and without anesthesia … Obviously, no one survived. In this way, Mengele’s experiments claimed up to 60 victims a day.
Experiments
Among his most outstanding experiments are these:
Children used for their investigative purposes
- Attempts to change the color of the eyes by injecting chemicals into children’s eyes.
- Miscellaneous amputations and other brutal surgeries.
- He tried, also chemically, to change the inmates’ hair color by applying painful subcutaneous injections.
- He carried out castrations and experiments on the spinal cord, leaving the intervened paralyzed.
- In cooperation with other doctors, Mengele also tried to find a mass sterilization method; many of the victims were women who were injected with various substances, many of them succumbing or becoming sterile in many other cases.
- On other occasions, he carried out experiments by immersing inmates of strong constitution in ice water to observe their reactions to hypothermia.
- He also burned many Jews alive to record the time it took for them to die from burns.
End of experiments
Mengele’s experiments came to an end in the winter of 1944 with the advance of the Red Army towards the German positions, especially towards the Auschwitz death camp. On November 26 of that year, Einrich Himmler, top SS chief, telegraphically ordered all Field Commanders to suspend the executions.
Before the dismantling of the camp, Mengele made his final selection, sending 461, out of a total of 509 newly arrived prisoners, to instant death. It was his last service at Auschwitz. With the sound of the Russian cannons getting louder, Mengele gathered his records and annotations, and on January 18 , 1945 , the Angel of Death disappeared, starting the flight that as constant torture would accompany him until his death.
Mengele had covertly left the Auschwitz camp on January 17 , ten days before the camp was liberated by the Red Army , heading for the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, but this camp had already been closed since August 1944 . It is assumed that in April 1945 he fled west disguised as a member of the German regular infantry with a false identity. He was captured as a prisoner of war near Nuremberg and was freed by the allies, who did not know his identity.
Joseph Mengele in his refugee stage
Many conjectures have been drawn about Mengele’s escape, he is even credited with the help of a Jewish girl for his escape, but the most accepted is that he escapes thanks to Operation Paperclip , aided by the allies, more interested in his scientific knowledge than in doing justice.
After hiding for some time in Günzburg and then in Bavaria , Mengele left for South America , specifically for Hohenau ( Paraguay ), in 1949 , where many other fugitive Nazi officers helped by the illegal organization ODESSA had arrived and found refuge. His wife Irene did not follow in his footsteps and somehow disowned him and his family and they actually separated. Josef Mengele was divorced by correspondence from her through a letter sent to him by his father Karl, who visited him in Argentina.
During the Nuremberg trials, the genocidal Josef Mengele was not mentioned and since his name was not mentioned in the press and apparently the hunt for Nazis would not reach him, he was judged free of suspicion and boldly took his original name again, it was He was registered as such in the Buenos Aires telephone directory and even traveled to Switzerland to visit his son Rolf in 1956 , without anyone even suspecting him and his past.
In 1958 he married Maria Martha Will in Colonia (Uruguay), the wife of his brother Karl, who had died in 1949. She and her son moved to Argentina to meet with Mengele, although they both returned to Europe years later.
The divorce certificate between Irene and Josef Mengele was found by Simon Wiesenthal and gave light to the Jewish leadership that Mengele was alive and also in Argentina. The data was sent to be corroborated by collaborators in Argentina and extradition was requested by the Bonn government, which was rejected by the Argentine government on the grounds that Mengele did not live at that address. Mengele was warned of this situation and escaped from Buenos Aires. One of the people who tipped off Mengele was Hans-Ulrich Rudel , the famous Stuka pilot who was a client of Mengele’s company. Rudel maintained good relations with the government of Paraguay and maintained friendly relations with the dictator Alfredo Stroessner, president of that nation, which allowed the arrival of Mengele to that country.
Despite international efforts to trace him, he was never arrested and lived with impunity for 35 years under various false identities. In 1959 Mengele lived in Paraguay in a very modest way as a tenant of the Auler family, the maintenance costs were paid by the Mengele company in Germany until 1960 ; then he moved to Brazil to live under the wing of another family of German origin, also subsidized by the Mengele company, under the name of Pedro Gerhard. Then he became independent and moved to a favela, where he lived in a very modest cabin.
Death
In 1979, his health was in serious decline and the German family who attended him invited him to cool off on a gently sloping beach, and Mengele agreed. When some members entered the beach, Mengele followed them until they reached a distance in the sea of about 100 meters and of little depth and, then, for confusing and strange reasons, he drowned in Bertioga , Brazil , on February 7 , 1979 , despite the fact that one of the friends soon came to help him.
As for the causes of death, it was speculated that they could be from cramps, heart attack, dizziness and even death. The official version is that “he hit a tree while swimming on a beach called Bertioga and drowned.”
He was buried in a cemetery in Embu under a false name, Wolfgang Gerdhard , with the assistance of his son Rolf. No more direct member of his family attended.
Exhumation
In 1985 , six years later, his remains were exhumed and identified amid media pressure from Israel , the US, Wiesenthal and other anti-Nazi groups. The identification of the remains, while not one hundred percent conclusive, was satisfactory for those who were looking for it. A dental defect that Mengele had in his upper front teeth was found, in addition to matching age and height. In 1992 , DNA analysis finally confirmed his identity.
Testimonies about the symbol of Nazi terror
“When the train stopped, we heard many Nazis giving orders outside. Surrounding the field were huge walls with barbed wire. Everything there was a gloomy color. One had to obey orders immediately or die. It had to be instantaneous, like a flash. It would decide between life in the countryside or death in the gas chambers. My mother held me and Miriam, my twin sister by the hands. We were frozen in that place. My mother did not let go of us. My father and my other brothers disappeared into the crowd, and we never saw them again … Suddenly Mengele appeared shouting in German “zwillingen, zwillingen!”, that is to say “twins, twins!” He stopped in front of us and Looking at my sister and me, she asked if we were twins. My mother didn’t know what to say, she only managed to ask: “Is that good? “There, an SS officer ordered:” Answer by yes or no! “And my poor mother said” yes, they are twins. “My mother was sent in one direction, and we in the opposite direction. When I turned around, I saw her for the last time, extending her arms towards us … ”
Eva Mozes Kor , Auschwitz survivor
Mengele’s investigations had a clearly demarcated aim: to achieve the absolute perfection of the Aryan race and to ensure its reproduction. That is why he tried to decipher the secrets of multiple births. When it was known that it was the turn of Mengele’s rounds, tension invaded SS prisoners, guards and doctors alike. Everyone was terrified when he began to check on newcomers, in his frantic search for twins. When he came with his terrible voice, the Nazi guards were terrified, and that terrified the Jews even more. Mengele always appeared in his impeccable uniform and perfectly polished leather boots, very elegant, like a refined and aristocratic gentleman, walking as if he owned the universe, absolutely sure of himself
“We saw him immaculately dressed, with a pair of leather gloves in one of his hands, and with a small riding whip in the other. The relationship between” subjects “and” master “is very difficult to explain, and even after having lived it, I can’t explain it. ”
Eva Mozes Kor.
Mengele knew the effect he had on women, and he perfectly calculated his gestures to achieve the desired result.
“Mengele delighted in presenting himself to us, exquisitely scented … so elegant and attractive … He wore beautiful blue shirts. Many women said,” I would love to spend the night with him. “It was his way of driving us crazy: it must to be crazy to breathe the smoke of the crematoria, and to continue seeing in him a man so attractive as to spend the night. ”
Gissela Weird, a prisoner Jewish doctor.
A survivor remembers him executing a 17-year-old for stealing coal. Mengele shot him in both knees, then grabbed his hair and shot him in the head.
“Stealing is forbidden, and you must respect the rules of this place,” he said, then walking away as if nothing had happened.
Except for occasional visits, Irenna Mengele did not live with her husband. Auschwitz was very little cosmopolitan for her, so it is doubtful that she fully knew what was happening, as well as that Mengele would have been faithful to her during her stay in the camp.
“Mengele liked to select the most beautiful Jewish women to spend his free hours. He made them spend a beautiful night, playing the piano. But in all cases, in the morning, he killed them.”
Siegfried Halbreich, survivor.
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Twins exposed to research and experiments
Mengele was an excellent pianist. A recording of him is even known, singing and playing. Often he played for the guests, while the notes wandered ghoulishly across the field until dawn.
He was the personification of the worst demon. It became a true symbol of Nazi terror. It is absolutely impossible to read the accusation made against him in the former East Germany, which fully describes his atrocities, without even shedding a tear.
“We were completely overwhelmed by its monstrosity.”
Eli M. Rosenbaum, director of the Office of Special Investigations of the Department of Justice of the United States Government.
The most impressive thing is to see that his mind operated like that of a scientist, concentrating on his studies and experimenting by letting go of feelings.
“I really don’t think Mengele had any regrets for what he did. I think that in his mind as a scientist, he justified what he did. He injected us up to five injections together, to see what would happen. Many times you just died. what were those injections
