Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death”, is a haunting figure remembered for his atrocities at Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. He gained the name for performing deadly experiments on prisoners at the Nazi concentration camp.
Born on March 16, 1911, in Gunzburg, Germany, he studied medicine and anthropology at the University of Munich and received his doctorate in 1935.
Mengele joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the Schutzstaffel, a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler, in 1938.
He arrived at Auschwitz in May 1943 and was given the role of a camp physician. His main job was to decide the fate of prisoners as they arrived. He would choose who was to work under harsh conditions and who would go straight to the gas chambers to be killed.
His medical experiments were infamous for their extreme cruelty and lack of scientific value. He specifically focused on twins, believing that studying them could reveal genetic information useful to Nazi beliefs. Victims, including children and adults, endured surgeries, injections and other painful procedures without any form of pain relief, often leading to excruciating deaths. He even attempted to change eye colour through injections. These experiments were conducted without the consent of the victims.
“In a grotesque perversion of the physician’s role, Auschwitz’s so called Angel of Death employed his knowledge of the workings of life in order to destroy it. He determined who would die immediately in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and who would be exploited for labor or ‘Nazi “science before being killed,” the US justice department said in a report.
“When prisoners arrived at Auschwitz, Mengele and his ‘doctor’ colleagues selected for slave labor those who appeared medically fit (thus consigning them to toil under inhumane and often deadly conditions) or who could be used by the Third Reich in some other way. All other prisoners, the vast majority, were immediately murdered by gassing in specially designed asphyxiation chambers,” it added.
For his experiments, he would allegedly remove the organs of prisoners without anaesthesia and intentionally infected his subjects with diseases.
Because of his highly visible and significant role in the Hitler regime’s homicidal reign of terror, Mengele effectively became a symbol of the Holocaust; in particular, his name became synonymous with the evil of Auschwitz.
As World War II came to an end, Mengele left Auschwitz and avoided being caught for many years. Despite efforts by those searching for Nazi criminals and international authorities, he managed to evade prosecution using different aliases in several countries.
In 1979, there was enough evidence to confirm Mengele’s death in Brazil, where he had been living under a false name. Forensic investigations in 1985 conclusively identified his remains, confirming he had drowned in a swimming accident.
Mengele became known as the embodiment of evil at Auschwitz, where over a million people, mostly Jews, were killed. His actions, seen as a horrific misuse of medical knowledge, showed how low people can stoop under oppressive governments.
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