Dr. Josef Mengele: The Angel of Death

As Adolf Hitler was on the rise, spreading his beliefs in the superiority of the German race, more and more extermination and concentration camps became active welcoming prisoners (women, seniors, children, mentally ill, disabled …) and executing those who were deemed unfit for work in gas chambers. Some even met their demise while being experimented on in the most horrific ways. This is where Dr. Josef Mengele made his entry as the Angel Of Death as he played a major role in Auschwitz, one of the biggest camps. But first, some backstory on this devilish sadist.

Born on March 16th, 1911 in Günzburg, he was quite studious and majored in anthropology at the University of Munich, where he was heavily influenced by Nazi ideology, especially Race Superiority. He also proceeded to study at the Institute For Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene where his fascination with twins kept growing. He, later on, joined the army and worked as a medical expert, but due to a serious injury on the battlefield, he was transferred to Auschwitz, where he was able to continue his researches and conducted unspeakable experiments.

As soon as newcomers arrived at the camp, it was Mengele who selected those sent to the gas chambers where he can test the gas he made and its « effectiveness ». Survivors of the camp recall him whistling songs while sending people to their inevitable death, which disturbed a lot of people working with him on the selection committee.

He’s most famous for his experiments on twins. During the selection, twins were separated from their mother and put in special quarters where they were given extra attention and food. Some even say that Mengele was really nice to them, offering them candy, treats, chocolate, and the children referred to him as « Uncle Mengele ». Little did they know that they were subjects for inhumane experiments, most of them conducted with no anesthesia. He mostly did some mass transfusions of blood from one twin to another, amputations, injections of dye into their eyes to create blue eyes causing extreme pain and sometimes permanent blindness. But his most diabolical experiments was his attempt at making conjoined twins sewing them together. Survivors of the camps recall this conjoined twin experience was done more than once, but no recordings were found to either confirm or deny this statement.

After the war, the camps were closing, and the survivors were more and more vocal about what they have been through. With his scandalous experiments revealed to the public, Mengele had to escape to avoid trials. He changed his name and flew to South America, where he changed his identity. As his notes revealed, he spent his last years in poverty and was found dead in a swimming pool after he had a stroke in 1976. His notes revealed that he regrets nothing, including wrongfully taking the lives of countless innocents, and was racist till the end.