Josef Mengele, Angel of Death

Josef Mengele was born on March the 16th, 1911 in Gunzburg Ulm. His portrait photo is to the right and this was taken when he first started his duties in the concentration camp; Auschwitz. He was a very intelligent man, with a PhD in physical anthropology from the University of Munich. 

How he became the most feared doctor in Auschwitz

In January 1937, at the institute for Hereditory Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt, he became the assist of Dr. Otmar Von Verscheur, a leading scientific figure widely known for research with twins. 

In 1937 he joined the Nazi party. The following year he joined the SS which was the same year he gained his medical medical degree. 1940, he was drafted into the army, and therefore volunteered into the medical service of the Waffen-SS (armed SS). Although documentation is scant and often contradictory regarding Mengele's activities between this time and early 1943, is it clear that he first functioned as a medical expert for the race and settlement main office, (Rasseund Siedlungshauptant or ruSHA) in the summer of 1940 at the central immigration office. 

Wounded whilst on campaign, Mengele returned to Germany in January of 1943 and started to work for the KWI institute; and in April of 1943 he was promoted to the rank of SS captain. This advancement shortly preceded Mengele's transfer to Auschwitz on May 30th, 1943. 

Mengele's Medical Experiments

Mengele was researching for the secrets of heredity. The Nazi ideal of the future would benefit from the help of the genetics; it Aryan women could assuredly give birth to twins who were sure to be blond haired and blue eyed - then the future could be saved. 

He also believed that twins had held these secrets. Auschwitz seemed the best location for such research because of the large number of available twins to use as specimens. He saw the place as a 'human laboratory'. He experimented on dwarf people, children and mostly twins, or children with different coloured eyes. 

Some of his experiments included injecting chemicals into his victim's eyes to see if that changed their eye colour, he had two twins sewn together so they looked like Siamese twins to see how long they lived, took live muscle from arms and legs to see if it would regenerate outside of the human body, injected many victims with lethal drug concoctions including TB and typhoid, to see how long it took the human body to shut down and die. These are only a small amount of the experiments that took place in the camp and to small detail. There are not many research websites and journals available for public viewing regarding these experiments due to the horrific nature of 90% of them. The photo above is an example of Siamese twins being 'made' by sewing them together - with no anaesthetic or pain relief. 

The death of Josef Mengele

In 1945, as the Soviets moved eastward, it became apparent that the Germans would be defeated. By the time Auschwitz was liberated on January 27th, 1945, Mengele and the other SS officers were long gone. He hid out in Germany for a while, finding work as a farm labourer under an assuming name. It wasn't long before his name began appearing on lists of most wanted war criminals and in 1949 he followed many of his fellow Nazis to Argentina. He was put in contact with Argentine agents, who aided him with necessary papers and permits. It is thought that he drowned whilst swimming off a Brazilian coast in 1979 and was buried under a false name. His remains were disinterred and positively identified by forensic examination in 1985.