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Angel of Death

Dr. Mengele: Man or Myth?

Dr. Josef Mengele was born on March 16, 1911, the eldest of three sons of Karl and Walburga Mengele.  Josef was refined, intelligent, and popular in his town. He studied philosophy at Munich and medicine at Frankfurt University. In 1935, his dissertation dealt with racial differences in the structure of the lower jaw. In 1937 he joined the Nazi party, then in 1938 he went to the SS. In 1942, he was wounded at the Russian front and was pronounced unfit for duty. After that, he volunteered to go to the concentration camp and was sent to Auschwitz. Dr. Josef Mengele, nicknamed "the Angel of Death", became the surviving symbol of Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution."

Having originally arrived in Auschwitz to replace a previous doctor in 1943, immdiately entering an extremely ironic position. Although he was a "doctor", his mission was to use his knowledge in order to hurt and kill people rather than heal and save them. His duties involved selecting who would stay and work and who would go to the death chambers and conducting medical experiments on the people residing in the camps. While working here he earned the nickname "Angel of Death" from all of his ruthless medical research, in which the victims rarely survived.

A majority of his experimentations were attempts to learn more about genetics. While in Auschwitz he conducted serveral surgical procedures on twins and children, studying the effects of various way to alter their development and growth. His surgeries were grotesque and unethical, but his drive to study his subjects took priority above any moral or code of human decency. In one experiment he went so far as to attempt to create conjoined twins by sewing veins together. This procedure, along with most of his other medical attempts, failed. He also experimented with the sterilization of young girls, killing almost all of the patients. With extreme lack of sanitation in the camps, infections were almost inevitable after one of the famous doctor's surgeries.
 
A large majority of the mad doctor's work relates back to Hitler's ideal goal of creating the perfect Aryan Race. There was a large focus on racial and genetic patterns in the people he studied during his work in Auschwitz. With the forced assistance of prisoner Gina Gottiebova Babbitt, he had studied several portraits of the Gypsies in the camp as well as of himself. Both Mengele and his Assistants would dissect victims after he performed his procedures to gather information about the human body and the reactions that took place with his experimenations.

After the war Mengele managed to flee and slip away to South America where he spent the rest of his years moving from country to country. He never stayed in one place for too long and every few years he was known to pick up and move, changing identities and starting over again. He married several times and impregnanted several women along the way. Ironically, he continued illegal medical practices in abortion in South America. While living in Buenos Aries he killed a young girl from malpractice, but managed to be released by his judge. There is evidence that he kept various journals and diaries during this era of his life on the run, but this documentation has yet to be released to the public.  He was never caught by the Nazi Hunters during his lifetime. It was until 1992 that his identity was confirmed through DNA testing, and proved that he had died from drowning after having a stroke during a swim in Brazil.
 


Josef Mengele's experiments were perhaps the most gruesome and astonishing aspect of the Holocaust. Many say it is too astonishing to be true. How could one man do such horrifing things to little boys and girls? Many say that Mengele was simply a monster created to frighten children. They are quite right about that...