Josef Mengele: Nazi doctor and concentration camp experiments

Josef Mengele

The Angel of Death

Many atrocious crimes are committed during wartime. Individuals often experience shock, pain, and trauma, and the regret that comes with killing other, innocent individuals. These are, then, the realities of war. Yet the atrociousness of the Second World War, especially with regards to everything related to the "Final Solution" or the extermination of the Jewish Population, is singular and unparalleled. The sheer volume of innocent people killed, and the torture to which they were subjected is truly incredible. This paper will focus on one individual who was vital to promoting extermination policies; namely, Josef Mengele, also known as the Angel of Death. The paper will argue that this man was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, directly and indirectly, and that his 'experiments' were pure and simple torture.

So-called 'medical experimentation' was a big part of this particular war, and is especially characteristic of the Third Reich. During World War II, German physicians from all concentration camps, not just Auschwitz-Birkenau where Mengele was posted, conducted painful and deadly experiments on thousands of prisoners without these individuals' consent. According to the U.S. Memorial Holocaust Museum, this kind of medical experimentation can be divided in three categories: experiments at facilitating the survival of military personnel, experiments at developing and testing pharmaceuticals and treatment methods for German soldiers, and experiments that meant to advance the ideological and racial tenets of the Nazi worldview.

Josef Mengele was part of the third category of experimentation. Mengele thus focused on experimenting with children, and particularly with twins, in order to potentially double the size of the German race.

Just as with most other officers, Mengele's history prior to joining the Nazi party is quite uneventful. Mengele was born in a relatively wealthy family, and studied physical anthropology at the University of Munich, from which he received his Ph.D. In 1937, according to record, he became the assistant of a Dr. Otmar von Verschuer at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt. Dr. von Verschuer was known for his research on twins, and he and Mengele often performed experiments on identical can fraternal twin in order to trace genetic origins for disease.

While working with the doctor, Mengele was often restricted by the fact that he had to follow various research protocols; once at Auschwitz, however, the 'doctor' was happy to have full license to torture, maim and kill his subjects in the name of science.

It is also important here to note that Mengele was not the only physician at the camp, nor was he the highest-ranking physician. But Mengele was in charge of the 'selection process' and the tortuous experimentation of twin children, two of the foremost torture-methods that the camp employed. According to research,

"Approximately 30 physicians served at Auschwitz during the period in which Mengele was assigned to the camp. As a requisite feature of their "rounds," medical staff performed "selections" of prisoners on the ramp, determining from among the mass of humanity arriving at Auschwitz who would be retained for work and who would perish immediately in the gas chambers. Known as the "Angel of Death," or sometimes as the "White Angel," for his coldly cruel demeanor on the ramp, Mengele is associated more closely with this "selection duty" than any other medical officer at Auschwitz, although by most accounts he performed this task no more often than any of his colleagues. Undoubtedly, this association is partially explained by his postwar notoriety, but the ubiquitous image of Mengele at the ramp in so many survivors' accounts has also to do with the fact that Mengele often appeared "off-duty" in the selection area whenever trainloads of new prisoners arrived at Auschwitz, searching for twins."

Mengele's fascination with twins, and especially with experimentation on twins in order to find a way in which he could potentially double the size of the German race, led him to experiment on everything from eyesight, to pain tolerance, to tuberculosis. From witness accounts, Mengele would even inject the children with diseases, which often provoked vomiting and diarrhea, or would subject them to cuts while strapped to a table.

Because of his firsthand experimentation and selection of many prisoners, Mengele is responsible for countless numbers of deaths. Furthermore, due to his orders, others were either tortured, maimed, or killed at the man's behest, and thus, he is also responsible of inflicting pain and death indirectly. Because of this complicity, Mengele emigrated to Argentina post-war and spent the next few decades of his life running from country to escape the International Military Tribunal that wanted him for crimes against humanity. Though little evidence is known of Mengele's whereabouts during this period, it is significant to note that, according to some reports, Mengele not only lived comfortably during these last decades, but also continued his experiments. For instance, in a recent newspaper article, a journalist claims, "The Nazi doctor Josef Mengele is responsible for the astonishing number of twins in a small Brazilian town," and attributed this finding to research done by an Argentine historian. The article describes Mengele's whereabouts, as well as his roles in promoting the small twin community of children, all of which are blue-eyed and blond, thereby signaling that the famous murderer may have attained his scope after all.