Dr.Josef Mengele
- How many things do you know about Josef Mengele?
Nicknamed Angel of Death, the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele is widely known as one of the most fearful people from Auschwitz-Birkenau. Even though he didn’t initially accept the Nazi philosophy, Mengele is said to have particularly enjoyed the chances and authority that Auschwitz gave him while other camp physicians conducted experiments.
But who was really Mengele, and why did a brave medicine student become a notorious and sadistic figure during the Holocaust?
- Who was Josef Mengele before the Nazis
On March 16, 1911, Josef Mengele was born in Günzburg, Germany, a Bavarian city. He was the firstborn child of wealthy agricultural equipment manufacturer Karl Mengele. After attending many institutions to study medicine and physical anthropology, he graduated with a Ph.D. in physical anthropology from the University of Munich in 1935.
He started working at an institute of hereditary biology in 1937. In collaboration with Professor Dr. Otmar von Verschuer, he developed an interest in twin genetics.
- At first, he wasn’t a “fan” of the Nazi Party
This may come as a surprise to those who don’t know many things about Josef Mengele. If he was one of the most trustworthy and reliable people for Hitler, then how is it possible that he didn’t actively support the Nazi Party before they had supreme power?
He enlisted in the German National People’s Party’s Stahlhelm paramilitary group in 1931, which belonged to another right-wing party. When the Nazi SA annexed the Stahlhelm in 1933, Josef Mengele joined it; nevertheless, he stopped being actively involved in it in 1934.
He finally joined the SS and the Nazi Party later in 1938, and his primary intention was to further the Nazis’ belief that the German pure race was better.
- Weirdly, he was actually a very calm person
In various interviews with Holocaust survivors, Josef Mengele was described as a person with calmness and tact. For example, Sam Pivnik, who was 14 years old during the Holocaust, said in an interview with the Sunday Express that Mengele had a habit of discreetly flipping his gloves to the left if a prisoner was destined to die or to the right if they were to remain alive while assessing the destiny of new arrivals.
Before bringing the children to his medical laboratory, Mengele would frequently play the role of a good “father” with them by feeding them candy, establishing a kindergarten, and playing the violin to give them a false feeling of security.
- His main obsession was twin genetics
The frightening obsession that Josef Mengele had with twins is among the most well-known facts about him. His first research was motivated by the Nazi Party’s favorite theory of eugenics, which promotes the selective removal of deemed undesirable DNA segments to enhance human genetic characteristics. After collaborating with Professor Otmar Freiherr von Vershuer, Mengele thought he might learn more about how to physically remove genetic composition by researching twins.
Josef Mengele believed that identical twins were the key to unlocking the mysteries of genetics. That’s why he performed some amazing experiments on twins, including forced insemination, amputations, blood transfusions, injections of illness, and murder, using one twin as a control. The deceased were dissected and examined, while the twins who survived were murdered and put through the same ordeal.
Furthermore, twins in Auschwitz were granted certain fundamental human rights, such as the ability to keep their hair and wear clothes, because Mengele valued them more than other prisoners. However, these “benefits” came at a cost because they were put through cruel tests that, in the end, appeared to be more about terrorizing individuals than doing real scientific research.
Out of the 3,000 twins that were used in medical experimentation in Auschwitz, just 200 of them lived.
- He experimented with the human iris to change the eye color
When it came to body abnormalities, Mengele was highly interested in the phenomenon called heterochromia. This particular condition affects the iris of the person, making them different colors. Because he tried to see if it was possible to change the color, he injected chemicals into the iris. Of course, the experiment failed most of the time, and when that happened, he removed the entire eyeball and sent it to other colleagues for further research.
- He had a collection of human body parts from humans
Many of the things he kept as “souvenirs” were stashed away in the archives of the Max Planck Psychiatric Institute in Munich. Most of the remains, including a lot of jars with brains, were from all the experiments he conducted at Auschwitz.
- Josef Mengele’s experiments were conducted mainly on children
The majority of Mengele’s patients were young children. The kids Mengele chose for his experiments were housed in different camps from the other inmates and were given slightly better food and care. He even treated them with kindness and played nice just to trick them into trusting him but this was only hypocrisy because they were there as test subjects, not to have a happy childhood.
One of the most cruel experiments Josef Mengele conducted was the study of eye color by applying a material given to him by a colleague to the eyes of infants and young children. Of course, the final results weren’t pleasant at all because most of the newborns and young children suffered from bad swelling of the eyelids. Some of them went completely blind, while others died.
- He used another man’s identity to escape Germany
Mengele was able to flee Germany following their defeat after WWII and relocate to South America. There, he got to know Wolfgang Gerhard, an Austrian who was a fervent admirer of the Nazi party. Mengele received his identity card from the doctor because they got along so well.
Mengele lived the rest of his life under the Austrian’s identity to stay hidden; upon his death in 1979, he was even buried beneath a gravestone with Gerhard’s name on it. Until 1985, these details were unknown to the public but were disclosed in an interview that Mengele’s son gave to the press.
- The US Army had Josef Mengele in custody
One of the most unsettling facts about Josef Mengele is that right after Germany was defeated in WWII, Hitler committed suicide, and everything went berzerk, the U.S. army managed to capture him.
Unfortunately, because things were a bit chaotic during that time and they had no evidence of who he was or what he did, they released him. After that, the doctor was employed as a farm worker near Rosenheim, Bavaria, from the summer of 1945 to the spring of 1949 while using fake documents, until his rich relatives backed him in fleeing to South America.
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External links
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Dr.Josef_Mengele ]
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