Auschwitz was the most notorious and horrible
of the concentration camps during World War
II.
Over a million innocent people were murdered
at the camp located in Southern Poland (which
was “annexed” by Nazi German forces at
the beginning of the war).
Survivors, of which there were only about
200,000 of the 1.3 million that were sent
there, reported that when it came time for
them to be paraded up a long ramp and “inspected,”
there was always one SS official who would
stand off to the side.
He would gesture to the soldiers, giving his
decision about which people would be placed
in work camps and which ones would be sent
to their death in the gas chambers.
The survivors came to call this man the “Angel
of Death” due to his direct connection to
theirs and their loved ones’ fate.
This man’s real name was Josef Mengele.
Josef Mengele grew up wealthy in Gunzburg,
Germany.
His father, Karl Mengele, fought in World
War I, while his mother took over the family
threshing production business.
When the war ended, the company, simply named
Karl Mengele, took full advantage of a peacetime
hike in production and became the third largest
company of its kind in Germany.
According to Gerald Posner’s book Mengele:
The Complete Story, the factory became Gunzburg’s
largest employer and the Mengeles became the
town’s wealthiest family.
According to a few unverified reports, the
factory still exists, with many jobs attached
to it, in Gunzburg today.
As the oldest son, he was expected to take
over the family’s factory.
This was not what Josef desired, due to his
own ambition and, according to several biographers,
his distaste of his parents’ “coldness.”
Instead, in 1930 at the age of 19, he traveled
to Munich to attend the university there to
study medicine.
By 1930, the Nazi party had become the second
largest political party in Germany and Hitler
had begun his rise to power.
In his autobiography, Mengele noted that he,
as a university student, was greatly persuaded
by the National Socialist Movement,
“In the long run, it was impossible to stand
aside in these political stirring times, should
our Fatherland not succemb to the Marxist-Bolshevik
attack.
This simple political concept became the decisive
factor in my life.”
Meanwhile, Karl Mengele himself had joined
the Nazi party due to his belief (and, as
it turned out, not wrongly) that it would
be a profitable move for him and his company.
Aligning with the soon-to-rise political power
not only kept the Mengele family in business,
but allowed it to prosper.
Posner’s book notes that it is rather hard
to pin down exactly when Josef Mengele’s
turn to evil.
Being infected with party politics at young
college age probably was a big factor.
He also had a “real interest in genetics
and evolution” and since he was where he
was, he studied under professors who subscribed
to the “life unworthy of life” (German:
Lebensunwertes Leben) theory, or more simply
known as “Nazi eugenics.”
(Eugenics in general was extremely popular
throughout the world at this time, even supported
by the likes of Winston Churchill.
Further, by 1936 in the United States, 31
of 48 states had some type of eugenics or
forced sterilization laws for undesirables.
For more on all this, see: The Fascinating
History of Eugenics)
For the Nazis, their particular brand of eugenics
stemmed from the belief that the German and
Aryan race was the master race and those who
threatened to “weaken” it must be sterilized
or simply just killed.
As one can imagine, this encompassed many
groups of people – those of Jewish origin,
anyone with a physical deformity (even being
deaf), “gypsies,” homosexuals, people
of African origin, etc.
In fact, one of Mengele’s teachers was Ernst
Rudin, the man behind Hitler’s compulsory
sterilization laws that were enacted in 1933.
Fully ingrained in this world and his studies,
Mengele received his PhD in anthropology (while
also studying to be a doctor) with his thesis
“Racial Morphological Research on the Lower
Jaw Section of Four Racial Groups,” which
basically concluded it was possible to identify
races based solely on jaw lines.
He worked his first job at a hospital and,
then, in 1937 was hired as a research assistant
at Third Reich Institute for Heredity, Biological,
and Racial Purity at the University of Frankfurt.
He was taken under the wing of Otmar Freiherr
von Verschuer, who took interest in twin research
and said that Hitler was “the first statesmen
to recognize hereditary biological and race
hygiene.”
Mengele quickly became Verschuer’s protege
and he officially was made part of the Nazi
Party in 1937 and the SS (Schutzstaffel) in
1938.
With war was on the horizon, Mengele went
to basic training and eventually was assigned
to a regiment as a medic.
He fought for the Third Reich in the early
years of the war, even continuing his medical
work with a paper about hereditary links found
in ear fistules (folds).
He also found time to marry Irene Schonbein,
though first, as a requirement for being a
member in the SS, he had to make sure she
was of “pure blood.”
Though it could not be determined if her great
grandfather’s (an American diplomat named
Harry Lyons Dumler) mother had any Jewish
blood, she was given the okay due to friends
saying she was “very Nordic in her ways.”
In 1942, Verschuer got Mengele placed out
of harm’s way and into the Kaiser Wilhelm
Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics
and Eugenics.
There, Verschuer and Mengele continued their
work together.
In 1943, with Verschuer’s blessing, he applied
for work at Auschwitz to take advantage of
the prisoners there.
He was accepted and thus began Mengele’s
most notorious work.
Mengele arrived at Auschwitz when it housed
nearly 140,000 prisoners.
It was an enormous complex, that if it wasn’t
designed to commit unspeakable horrors, could
have been admired for its organization.
It had several libraries, its very own soccer
stadium, theaters, swimming pools, and even
a brothel.
Mengele quickly took advantage of his new
position when the camp was in a the middle
of a typhoid epidemic.
Instead of treating it, he sent thousands
of people stricken with the disease to the
gas chamber.
Mengele, like his mentor, took great interest
in the medical attributes of twins, especially
children.
He would routinely separate twins, sometimes
killing one to see if the other could “sense”
it.
He would study the differences and similarities
between the two, often the eyes.
To do this, he would gouge out the eyes, among
many other similarly appalling experiments.
As the war dragged on, his “work” expanded
beyond twins to others.
As mentioned, he and several guards would
stand at the top of “the ramp” while trains
unloaded, pointing and shoving people in one
direction or another, nearly solely at Mengele’s
discretion.
As described in a 1992 report, seven years
in the making, prepared by the United States’
Office of Special Investigations and presented
to the Attorney General, “in a grotesque
perversion of the physician’s role, Auschwitz
so-called ‘Angel of Death’ employed his
knowledge of the workings of life in order
to destroy it.”
The report goes onto describe his apparent
complete lack of remorse for anything he did
and the continuous heinous acts that Mengele
committed.
(You can read the full 197 page report here.)
The Soviet Armed Forces (the Red Army) captured
Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, but Mengele
had already fled by then.
He traveled around occupied German territories,
evading Soviet and American forces while carrying
with him several boxes of medical records.
He worked as a farmhand, until he went to
Genoa in 1949 and, then, a few months later,
he took sanctuary in Argentina.
His wife Irene refused to go with him and
they divorced.
He chose Argentina, like many of his Nazi
colleagues, because the government was firmly
pro-Axis, thanks to President Juan Dominego
Peron’s fascist admiration.
To this point, German was taught in many Argentinian
schools.
With open arms, Peron accepted Nazi fugitives,
not just for ideological reasons, but financial
as well.
Many of these escapees brought wealth with
them often looted from former prisoners.
Argentina is where Mengele lived the next
five years of his life, mostly under a false
name, working as a small pharmaceutical business
owner and farmer.
After an incident where a girl he tried to
perform an abortion on died, he left for Paraguay.
In May 1960, the Mossad (the Israeli Intelligence
Agency whose job was to track down Nazi war
criminals and bring them to Israel for trial)
captured Adolf Eichmann.
They turned their attentions next to Mengele.
During the Nuremberg Trials in 1945/1946,
Mengele’s name was mentioned several times,
but Allied forces thought he was dead.
The Mossad knew otherwise.
Much later, it is almost universally thought
that the Mossad had found Mengele living in
São Paulo, Brazil in 1962.
But, due to budgetary concerns and the ongoing
dispute with Egypt, the Mossad was called
back home and could not pursue.
Josef Mengele went on to live another 17 years
in relative seclusion and deteriorating health,
with recently published journal entries indicating
he never changed his political ideologies
nor showed any remorse for his actions.
He had a stroke in 1976 and died in 1979.
He was buried under the false name “Wolfgang
Gerhard” in Brazil.
It wasn’t until 1992 that authorities exhumed
the body and DNA proved that this Wolfgang
was, in fact, Josef Mangele, Auschwitz’s
Angel of Death.
