Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele (
March 16,
1911 –
February 7,
1979) was a
Nazi German SS officer and a
physician in the concentration camp
Auschwitz. He gained notoriety chiefly for being one of the SS physicians who supervised the selection of arriving transports of prisoners, determining who was to be killed and who was to become a forced labourer, and for performing brutal experiments of dubious scientific value on camp inmates. After the war he escaped Germany through a variety of ruses and subterfuges and lived covertly abroad until an eventual accidental death by drowning in
Brazil, which was later confirmed using
DNA testing on his remains.
Mengele was born in
Günzburg,
Bavaria, eldest of three sons of Karl Mengele (1881–1959), a well-to-do industrialist, and his wife Walburga (d. 1946). He had two younger brothers, Karl (1912–1949) and Alois (1914–1974).
In 1930 Mengele graduated from the Günzburg
gymnasium, or high school. He studied medicine and
anthropology at the
University of Munich, earning a doctorate in
Anthropology (
Ph.D.) in 1935 with a dissertation on racial differences in the structure of the lower jaw, supervised by Prof. Theodor Mollison. After his exams he went to
Frankfurt, and worked as an assistant to
Otmar von Verschuer at the
Frankfurt University Institute of Hereditary Biology and
Racial Hygiene. In 1938 he obtained a doctorate in medicine (
M.D.) with a dissertation called "Familial Research on
Cleft Lip,
Palate and
Jaw". His belief in the Nazi racial ideology was already evident in his academic research. The Universities of Munich and Frankfurt revoked his degrees in 1964.
In 1931, at the age of 20, Mengele joined the
Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten (Steel Helmet, League of Front Soldiers), which was incorporated into the
SA in 1933. He resigned shortly thereafter, alluding to health problems. He applied for
Nazi party membership in 1937 and in 1938 joined the
SS. In 1939, Mengele married his first wife, Irene Schoenbein, with whom he had one child, a son named Rolf. In 1940 he was placed in the reserve medical corps, following which he served with a
Waffen-SS unit, the multi-national
SS-Division (mot.) Wiking. In 1942 he was wounded at the Russian front and was pronounced medically unfit for combat, and promoted to the rank of SS-
Hauptsturmführer (Captain).
During his service on the eastern front during 1941-1942, Mengele received an
Iron Cross first class and an Iron Cross second class for bravery in combat.
In 1943 Mengele's application for an assignment to the German Nazi
death camp Auschwitz was accepted. He replaced another doctor who had fallen ill. On
May 24 1943, he became medical officer of Auschwitz-Birkenau's "
gypsy camp". In August 1944, this camp was liquidated and all its inmates were gassed. Subsequently Mengele became Chief Medical Officer of the main infirmary camp at Birkenau. He was not, though, the Chief Medical Officer of Auschwitz â€" superior to him was SS-Standortarzt (garrison physician)
Eduard Wirths.
It was during his 21-month stay at Auschwitz that Mengele achieved infamy, and it is for this period that he was later referred to as the "Angel of Death". Mengele took turns with the other SS physicians at Auschwitz in meeting incoming prisoners at the ramp, determining who would be retained for work and who would be sent to the gas chambers immediately.
Mengele used Auschwitz as an opportunity to continue his research on heredity, using inmates for
human experimentation. He was particularly interested in twins, who were selected and placed in special barracks. He also studied a disease called
Noma, that particularly affected children from the gypsy camp. While the cause of Noma remains not entirely known, it is a disease that affects chiefly children suffering from malnutrition and a weak immune system, and many who develop the disease had another illness like measles or tuberculosis shortly before. He tried to prove that it was caused by their "racial inferiority".
Mengele's experiments were of no scientific value, including attempts to change eye colour by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, various amputations of limbs and other brutal surgeries, and in at least one case, attempts to create artificially conjoined twins by sewing two young children together back-to-back, also joining the
veins at their wrists. This operation was not successful and only caused the wounds to become badly infected. He also purportedly submerged subjects in boiling cauldrons of water to see how much heat the human body could take before death.
Rena Kornreich Gelissen's account of her time in Auschwitz details certain experiments performed on female prisoners around October 1943. During roll calls Dr. Mengele would show up to perform a "special work detail" selection, which fooled some into thinking that this would be a relief from the otherwise hard labour they were performing. In actuality Mengele would experiment on the chosen girls, performing sterilization and shock treatments. Most of the victims died, either due to the experiments or later infections.
Mengele also took an interest in dwarves with the arrival of the
Ovitz family, a
Jewish Romanian artist's family, seven of whose ten members were dwarves. Prior to their deportation they toured in Eastern Europe as the Lilliput troupe. He often called them "my dwarf family". To him they seemed to be the perfect expression of 'the abnorm'.
The subjects of Mengele's research were better fed and housed than ordinary prisoners and were for the time being safe from the gas chambers. To Mengele they were nevertheless not fellow human beings, but rather material to conduct his experiments on. He would not hesitate to kill subjects simply to be able to dissect them afterwards.
Mengele left
Auschwitz and went to
Gross-Rosen concentration camp. In April 1945 he fled westward disguised as a member of the regular German infantry. He was captured as a
POW and held near
Nuremberg. He was released by the Allies, who had no idea of his true identity. After hiding as a farm labourer in Upper Bavaria, Mengele departed for
Argentina in 1949, where many other fleeing Nazi officials had also sought refuge. Mengele
divorced his wife Irene, and in 1958 married his brother Karl's widow, Martha. She and her son moved to Argentina to join Mengele.
His family at home backed him financially and he prospered in the 1950s. In 1959 he fled to
Altos,
Paraguay when his address was discovered by
Nazi hunters. Martha never managed to adjust to her new life and returned to
Europe with her son. Mengele later moved south to
Hohenau and then from the late 1960s he lived in
Embu, a small city near
São Paulo,
Brazil until his death in 1979, when he suffered a
stroke while swimming at
Bertioga, Brazil and drowned. He was buried in the
Nossa Senhora do Rosario cemetery in
Embu under his false identity, Wolfgang Gerhard.
Despite international efforts to track him down, he was never apprehended and lived for 35 years hiding under various aliases. In 1992
DNA tests confirmed his identity.
Mengele has a daughter born to an Australian woman of German lineage after a liaison between the two when the woman visited the German Colony in
Paraguay in mid-1960. His child was born in
Melbourne,
Australia on
March 10 1961. Her name was recorded as "Marion", but was changed when she was adopted privately in August of that year.
Eighty-five previously unreleased letters and diaries written by Mengele were discovered in late 2004. They had been seized in a 1985 raid on the home of Wolfram and Liselotte
Bossert, who had harbored the fugitive Mengele until his death. These personal writings have not been made publicly available.
As reported in a
PBS documentary, Mengele denied his experiments to his son,
Rolf Mengele, calling them "fabrications".
*Mengele has also been used as a fictionalized literary and movie character, featured prominently in
The Boys from Brazil (portrayed by
Gregory Peck) and as part of an amalgam of Nazi doctors in
Marathon Man. *The controversial 1999 film
Nichts als die Wahrheit (
After the Truth) depicts a fictional trial against an 80-year-old Mengele before a German criminal court.
*He was one of the lead characters in the movie
Out Of The Ashes, starring
Bruce Davison and
Christine Lahti.
*Mengele figured in the 2001 movie
The Grey Zone, an account of everyday life in Auschwitz and the hopeless revolt attempted by some of the prisoners.
*He was mentioned in
Martin Amis's
Time's Arrow.
*
Mordecai Richler's
St-Urbain's Horseman refers to Mengele several times throughout the book.
*In the science fiction book
Camouflage by
Joe Haldeman, one of the main characters meets with Mengele and his experiments are briefly described. It also offers an alternate scenario for Mengele's death.
*He was the subject matter of the song "
Angel of Death" by the group Slayer. He was also the subject of
Al Stewart's song "Running Man", from his 1980 album,
24 Carrots.
*Dr. Josef Mengele is revealed to be the landlord of the building in which the three friends live in the pilot episode of
Stella, but only after he dies as a result of a botched open heart surgery operation at the end of the episode.
Forgiving Dr. Mengele*
Nazi human experimentation*
Unit 731*
Mengele - the complete story, Gerald Posner and John Ware, McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, 1986 ISBN 0-07-050598-5
Night, By Elie Weisel. He is referenced as "The Angel Of Death"
And the Violins Stopped Playing, a DVD about a gypsy clan fleeing from the Nazis which shows Mengele "at work" in Auschwitz.
*
Josef Mengele, The Angel Of Death*
A short essay on Mengele at the Holocaust history project*
A short essay about Mengele by Robert Jay Lifton*
A timeline of his life*
Chicago Tribune Magazine: "How Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele cheated justice for 34 years" by
Gerald Posner and John Ware
*
Declassified U.S. CIA information on Mengele and other NSDAP war criminals* "Skeletons in the Closet of German Science"
Deutsche Welle (18.05.2005) [
1]
* "Rena's Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz"
Macadam & Celissen; (12.2.2006)
*
C.A.N.D.L.E.S museum (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors) Terre Haute, IN. Founded by Mengele Twin, Eva Korr
