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Friday, February 7, 2014

THE ANGEL OF DEATH: DR. JOSEF MENGELE (16 MARCH 1911 TO 7 FEBRUARY 1979)




The Angel of Death, Dr. Josef Mengele died on this date, 7 February 1979. I will post information about this Mad Scientist from Wikipedia.


Josef Mengele sometime before 1945

Birth name
Josef Mengele
Nickname
Angel of Death (German: Todesengel)
Born
16 March 1911
Günzburg, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire
Died
7 February 1979 (aged 67)
Bertioga, São Paulo, Brazil
Allegiance
 Nazi Germany
Service/branch
Schutzstaffel
Years of service
1938—1945
Rank
SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain)
Service number
NSDAP #5,574,974
SS #3,177,885
Awards
Iron Cross First Class
Black Badge for the Wounded
Medal for the Care of the German People


Josef Mengele (; 16 March 1911 – 7 February 1979) was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. He qualified for doctorates in Anthropology from Munich University and in Medicine from Frankfurt University. He became one of the more notorious characters to emerge from the Third Reich in World War II as an SS medical officer who supervised the selection of victims of the Holocaust, determining who was to be killed and who was to temporarily become a forced laborer, and for performing bizarre and murderous human experiments on prisoners.

Surviving the war, after a period of living incognito in Germany he fled to South America, where he evaded capture for the rest of his life, despite being hunted as a Nazi war criminal.

Early life and education

Mengele was born the eldest of three children on 16 March 1911 to Karl and Walburga (Hupfauer) Mengele in Günzburg, Bavaria, Germany. His younger brothers were Karl Jr and Alois. Mengele's father was a founder of the Karl Mengele & Sons company, producers of farm machinery. Mengele did well in school and developed an interest in music, art, and skiing. He completed high school in April 1930 and left for the University of Munich, where he studied medicine and philosophy. Munich was headquarters of the Nazi Party, an antisemitic political party led by Adolf Hitler. In 1931 Mengele joined the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, a paramilitary organisation that was in 1934 absorbed into the Nazi Sturmabteilung (Storm Detachment; SA).

In 1935, Mengele earned a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Munich. In January 1937, at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt, he became the assistant to Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, who was a leading scientist known for his research in genetics, with a particular interest in twins. As an assistant to von Verschuer, Mengele's research focused on the genetic factors resulting in a cleft lip and palate or cleft chin. His thesis on the subject earned him a cum laude doctorate in medicine in 1938. Had he continued his focus on academic matters, Mengele would likely have become a professor. In a letter of recommendation, von Verschuer praised Mengele's reliability and and his ability to verbally present complex material in a clear manner. Robert Jay Lifton notes that Mengele's published works did not deviate much from the scientific mainstream of the time, and would probably have been viewed as valid scientific efforts even outside the borders of Nazi Germany.

On 28 July 1939, Mengele married Irene Schönbein, whom he had met while working as a medical resident in Leipzig. Their only son, Rolf, was born in 1944.

Military service

The ideology of Nazism brought together elements of antisemitism, racial hygiene, and eugenics, and combined them with pan-Germanism and territorial expansionism with the goal of obtaining more Lebensraum (living space) for the Germanic people. Nazi Germany attempted to obtain this new territory by attacking Poland and the Soviet Union, intending to deport or kill the Jews and Slavs living there, who were viewed as being inferior to the Aryan master race.

Mengele joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the Schutzstaffel (SS; protection squadron) in 1938. He received basic training in 1938 with the Gebirgsjäger (mountain infantry) and was called up for service in the Wehrmacht in June 1940, some months after the outbreak of World War II, as a kidney ailment had kept him out of active service until that time. He soon volunteered for medical service in the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the SS, where he served with the rank of SS-Untersturmführer (second lieutenant) in a medical reserve battalion until November 1940. He was next assigned to the SS-Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (SS Race and Resettlement Main Office) in Posen, evaluating candidates for Germanisation.

In June 1941 Mengele was posted to Ukraine, where he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. In January 1942 he joined the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking as a battalion medical officer. He rescued two German soldiers from a burning tank and was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, as well as the Wound Badge in Black and the Medal for the Care of the German People. He was seriously wounded in action near Rostov-on-Don in the summer of 1942 and was declared unfit for further active service. After recovery, he was transferred to the Race and Resettlement Office in Berlin. Whilst there, Mengele resumed his association with von Verschuer, who was at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics. Mengele was promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) in April 1943.


Selection ramp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau (2013)
Auschwitz

In early 1943, encouraged by von Verschauer, Mengele applied for transfer to the concentration camp service, where he foresaw the opportunity to undertake genetic research on human subjects. His application was accepted, and he was posted to Auschwitz concentration camp. He was appointed by SS-Standortarzt Eduard Wirths, chief medical officer at Auschwitz, as chief physician of the Zigeunerfamilienlager (Gypsy family camp), located in the sub-camp at Birkenau. One line of research was intended to prove the supremacy of heredity over environment, and thus bolster the Nazi premise of the superiority of the Aryan race.

By late 1941 Hitler had decided that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated, so Birkenau, originally intended to house slave labourers, was re-purposed as a combination labor camp / extermination camp. Prisoners were transported by rail to Auschwitz from all over German-occupied Europe, arriving in daily convoys. By July 1942, the SS were conducting "selections". Incoming Jews were segregated; those deemed able to work were admitted into the camp, and those deemed unfit for labour were immediately killed in the gas chambers. The group selected to die, about three-quarters of the total, included almost all children, women with small children, pregnant women, all the elderly, and all those who appeared on brief and superficial inspection by an SS doctor not to be completely fit. Mengele, a member of the team of doctors assigned to do selections, undertook this work even when he was not assigned to do so in the hope of finding subjects for his experiments. He was particularly interested in locating sets of twins. In contrast to most of the doctors, who viewed undertaking selections as one of their most stressful and horrible duties, Mengele undertook the task with a flamboyant air, often smiling or whistling a tune.

Mengele and other SS doctors did not treat inmates, but supervised the activities of inmate doctors forced to work in the camp medical service. He made weekly visits the hospital barracks and sent to the gas chambers any prisoners who had not recovered after two weeks in bed. Mengele was also a member of the team of doctors responsible for supervising the administration of Zyklon B, the cyanide-based pesticide that was used to kill people in the gas chambers at Birkenau. He served in this capacity at the gas chambers located in crematoria IV and V.

When an outbreak of noma (a gangrenous bacterial disease of the mouth and face) broke out in the Gypsy camp in 1943, Mengele initiated a study to determine the cause of the disease and develop a treatment. He enlisted the aid of prisoner Dr. Berthold Epstein, a Jewish pediatrician and professor at Prague University. Mengele isolated the patients in a separate barrack and had several afflicted children killed so that their preserved heads and organs could be sent to the SS Medical Academy in Graz and other facilities for study. The research was still ongoing when the Gypsy camp was liquidated and its remaining occupants killed in 1944.

In response to a typhus epidemic in the women's camp, Mengele cleared one block of 600 Jewish women and sent them to the gas chamber. The building was then cleaned and disinfected, and the occupants of the neighbouring block were bathed, de-loused, and given new clothing before being moved into the clean block. The process was repeated until all the barracks were disinfected. Similar methods were used for later epidemics of scarlet fever and other diseases, but with all the ill prisoners being sent to the gas chambers. For his efforts, Mengele was awarded the War Merit Cross (Second Class with Swords) and was promoted in 1944 to First Physician of the Birkenau subcamp.


This 1944 photo provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) shows SS officers socializing on the grounds of the SS retreat, Solahutte outside of Auschwitz, Poland. From left, Dr. Josef Mengele, Rudolf Hoess, (former Commandant of Auschwitz), Josef Kramer (Commandant of Birkenau), and unidentified.
Human experimentation

Mengele used Auschwitz as an opportunity to continue his anthropological studies and research on heredity, using inmates for human experimentation. The experiments were unscientific and had no regard for the health or safety of the victims. He was particularly interested in identical twins, people with heterochromia iridum (eyes of two different colours), dwarfs, and people with physical abnormalities. A grant for was provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, applied for by von Verschuer, who received regular reports and shipments of specimens from Mengele. The grant was used to build a pathology laboratory attached to Crematorium II at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, a Hungarian Jewish pathologist who arrived in Auschwitz on 29 May 1944, performed dissections and prepared specimens for shipment in this facility. Nyiszli and others report that Mengele's twin studies may also have been motivated by a desire to improve the reproduction rate of the German race by improving the chances of racially desirable people having twins.

Mengele's research subjects were better fed and housed than other prisoners and temporarily safe from the gas chambers. He established a kindergarten for children that were subjects of experiments, along with all Gypsy children under the age of six. The facility provided better food and living conditions than other areas of the camp, and even included a playground. When visiting his child subjects, he introduced himself as "Uncle Mengele" and offered them sweets. But he also was personally responsible for the deaths of an unknown number of victims that he killed via lethal injection, shootings, beatings, and through selections and deadly experiments. Lifton describes Mengele as sadistic, lacking empathy, and extremely antisemitic, believing the Jews should be eliminated entirely as an inferior and dangerous race.

A former Auschwitz prisoner doctor said:


He was capable of being so kind to the children, to have them become fond of him, to bring them sugar, to think of small details in their daily lives, and to do things we would genuinely admire ... And then, next to that, ... the crematoria smoke, and these children, tomorrow or in a half-hour, he is going to send them there. Well, that is where the anomaly lay.

Twins were subjected to weekly examinations and measurements of their physical attributes by Mengele or one of his assistants. Experiments performed by Mengele on twins included unnecessary amputation of limbs, intentionally infecting one twin with typhus or other diseases, and transfusing the blood of one twin into the other. Many of the victims died while undergoing these procedures. After an experiment was over, the twins were sometimes killed and their bodies dissected. Nyiszli recalled one occasion where Mengele had personally killed fourteen twins in one night via a chloroform injection to the heart. If one twin died of disease, Mengele killed the other so that comparative post-mortem reports could be prepared.

Mengele's experiments with eyes included attempts to change eye color by injecting chemicals into the eyes of living subjects and killing people with heterochromatic eyes so that the eyes could be removed and sent to Berlin for study. His experiments on dwarfs and other people with physical abnormalities included taking physical measurements, drawing blood, extracting healthy teeth, and treatment with unneccessary drugs and X-rays. Many of the victims were sent to the gas chambers after about two weeks, and their skeletons were sent to Berlin for further study. Mengele sought out pregnant women, on whom he would perform experiments before sending them to the gas chambers. He sewed two Gypsy twins together back to back in an attempt to create conjoined twins. The children died of gangrene after several days of suffering. In another experiment, he connected a 7-year-old girl's urinary tract to her colon.


Jewish twins kept alive to be used in Mengele's medical experiments. These children from Auschwitz were liberated by the Red Army in January 1945.

Still photograph from the Soviet Film of the liberation of Auschwitz, taken by the film unit of the First Ukrainian Front, shot over a period of several months beginning on January 27, 1945 by Alexander Voronzow and others in his group. Child survivors of Auschwitz, wearing adult-size prisoner jackets, stand behind a barbed wire fence. Among those pictured are Tomasz Szwarz; Alicja Gruenbaum; Solomon Rozalin; Gita Sztrauss; Wiera Sadler; Marta Wiess; Boro Eksztein; Josef Rozenwaser; Rafael Szlezinger; Gabriel Nejman; Gugiel Appelbaum; Mark Berkowitz (a twin); Pesa Balter; Rut Muszkies (later Webber); Miriam Friedman; and twins Miriam Mozes and Eva Mozes wearing knitted hats.
After Auschwitz

The SS abandoned the Auschwitz camp on 27 January 1945, and Mengele transferred to Gross Rosen camp in Lower Silesia, again working as camp physician. Gross Rosen was dissolved at the end of February when the Red Army was close to taking it. Mengele worked in other camps for a short time and, on 2 May, joined a Wehrmacht medical unit led by Hans Otto Kahler, his former colleague at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Bohemia. The unit hurried west to avoid being captured by the Soviets and were taken as prisoners of war by the Americans. Mengele, initially registered under his own name, was released in June 1945 with papers giving his name as "Fritz Hollmann". From July 1945 until May 1949, he worked as a farmhand in a small village near Rosenheim, Bavaria, staying in contact with his wife and his old friend Hans Sedlmeier, who arranged Mengele's escape to Argentina via Innsbruck, Sterzing, Meran, and Genoa. Mengele may have been assisted by the ODESSA network.


Josef Mengele in 1956. Photo taken by a police photographer in Buenos Aires for Mengele's Argentine identification document.
In South America

In Buenos Aires, Mengele first worked in construction, but soon came in contact with influential Germans, who allowed him to live an affluent lifestyle in subsequent years. He also got to know other Nazis in Buenos Aires, such as Hans-Ulrich Rudel and Adolf Eichmann. In 1955, he bought a 50 percent share of Fadro Farm, a pharmaceutical company; the same year, his wife, Irene, divorced him. She continued to live in Germany with their son. On 25 July 1958, in Nueva Helvecia, Uruguay, Mengele married Martha Mengele, widow of his deceased brother Karl. Martha had arrived in Buenos Aires in 1956 with her son, Karl-Heinz Mengele. Mengele lived with his family in a German-owned boarding house in the Buenos Aires suburb of Vicente Lopez from 1958 to 1960. While living in Buenos Aires Mengele practised medicine though he became known for carrying out abortions—illegal in much of the world at the time, including Argentina. When a woman died from an abortion in his clinic he was brought before a judge, but was only briefly detained.

Mengele was doing well in South America, yet he feared being captured, especially after news of Eichmann's capture and subsequent trial were revealed. Thus, he left Argentina in 1962 and moved to Paraguay after managing to get a Paraguayan passport in the name of "José Mengele".

Shortly after the capture of Eichmann in May 1960 by the Israeli Mossad, Mengele was spotted at his home. Agents of the Mossad debated whether or not they should kidnap him as well. However, they still had Eichmann in a safe house inside Argentina, and determined that it would not be possible to conduct another operation at the same time. By the time Eichmann had been brought out of the country, Mengele had escaped to Paraguay.

Isser Harel, Chief Executive of the Secret Services of Israel (1952–1963), personally presided over the successful effort to capture Eichmann in Buenos Aires. In his account of the operation, he reports no sightings of Mengele in 1960, but believes that they might have got him if they could have moved more quickly. When asked about the secondary target by the co-pilot who helped transport Eichmann at the time, he claims to have told him that "had it been possible to start the operation several weeks earlier, Mengele might also have been on the plane." They checked on the last known location for Mengele in Argentina, but he had apparently moved on just two weeks earlier.

Mengele hoped that Paraguay would be safer for him, because dictator Alfredo Stroessner was of German descent and even recruited former Nazis to help the country develop. Among other locations in Paraguay, he lived on the outskirts of Hohenau, a German colony north of Encarnación in the department of Itapúa.

According to a senior Mossad man, Israel had received reports that Mengele was in Brazil, but they kept this information to themselves. The Six-Day War in 1967 forced them to concentrate their resources on operations related to the war. But after the war, Israel decided to open an embassy in Asunción, Paraguay – perhaps an ideal base from which to pursue Mengele. But Benjamin Weiser Varon, Israeli ambassador from 1968 to 1972, was "not given any instructions by the foreign office on Mengele of any kind. It wasn't even mentioned."


"I must confess I was not so eager to find Mengele. He presented a dilemma. Israel had less of a claim for his extradition than Germany. He was, after all, a German citizen who had committed his crimes in the name of the Third Reich. None of his victims were Israeli—Israel came into existence only several years later."

The same year, Mengele moved to Nova Europa, about 200 km (120 mi) outside São Paulo in Brazil, where he lived with Hungarian refugees Geza and Gitta Stammer, working as manager of their farm. In the seclusion of his Brazilian hideaway Mengele was safe. In 1974, when his relationship with the Stammer family was coming to an end, Hans-Ulrich Rudel and Wolfgang Gerhard discussed relocating Mengele to Bolivia where he could spend time with Klaus Barbie, but Mengele rejected this proposal. Instead, he lived in a bungalow in a suburb of São Paulo for the last years of his life. In 1977, his only son Rolf, never having known his father before, visited him there and found an unrepentant Nazi who claimed that he "had never personally harmed anyone in his whole life".

Mengele's health had been deteriorating for years, and he developed a chronic sinus infection. Mengele died on 7 February 1979, in Bertioga, Brazil, where he accidentally drowned, or possibly suffered a stroke, while swimming in the Atlantic. He was buried in Embu das Artes under the name "Wolfgang Gerhard", whose ID card he had used since 1976.

Mengele showed little regret or remorse for his crimes, and expressed in a letter his astonishment and disgust over the remorseful position taken by Hitler's chief architect and Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer.

Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa speculated in his 2008 biography that Mengele, under the alias Rudolph Weiss, continued his human experimentation in South America, and as a result of these experiments, a municipality in Brazil, Cândido Godói, has a very high birthrate of twin children: one in five pregnancies, with a substantial amount of the population looking Nordic. His theory was rejected by Brazilian scientists who had studied twins living in the area; they suggested genetic factors within that community as a more likely explanation.

Manhunt

Mengele was listed on the Allies' list of war criminals as early as 1944. His name was mentioned in the Nuremberg trials several times, but Allied forces were convinced that Mengele was dead, which was also claimed by Irene and the family in Günzburg. In 1959, suspicions had grown that he was still alive, given his divorce from Irene in 1955 and his marriage to Martha in 1958. An arrest warrant was issued by the West German authorities. Subsequently, West German attorneys such as Fritz Bauer, Israel's Mossad, and private investigators such as Simon Wiesenthal and Beate Klarsfeld followed the trail of the "Angel of Death". The last confirmed sightings of Mengele placed him in Paraguay, and it was believed that he was still hiding there, allegedly protected by flying ace Hans-Ulrich Rudel and possibly even by the dictator President Alfredo Stroessner. Mengele sightings were reported all over the world, but they turned out to be false.

In 1985, the West German police raided Hans Sedlmeier's house in Günzburg and seized address books, letters, and papers hinting at the grave in Embu. The remains of "Wolfgang Gerhard" were exhumed on 6 June 1985 and identified as Mengele's with high probability by forensic experts from UNICAMP. Rolf Mengele issued a statement saying that he "had no doubt it was the remains of his father". Everything was kept quiet "to protect those who knew him in South America", Rolf said. In 1992, a DNA test confirmed Mengele's identity. He had evaded capture for 34 years.

After the exhumation, the São Paulo Institute for Forensic Medicine stored his remains and attempted to repatriate them to the remaining Mengele family members, but the family rejected them. The bones have been stored at the São Paulo Institute for Forensic Medicine ever since. According to the Find a Grave database, Mengele's body has been cremated. Since the family has not claimed the ashes, they remain in the custody of unnamed Brazilian officials.

In the 21st century

On 17 September 2007, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum released photographs taken from a photo album of Auschwitz staff, which contained eight photographs of Mengele. According to museum officials, these eight photos of Mengele are the first authenticated pictures of him at Auschwitz.

In February 2010, Mengele's diary, kept from 1960 until his death in 1979, which included letters sent to Rolf and Wolfgang Gerhard, was sold at auction in Connecticut by Alexander Autographs for an estimated $200,000 (£130,000). According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), the buyer was an East Coast Jewish philanthropist who wished to remain anonymous. The auction triggered protests amongst some Holocaust survivors, who described it as "a cynical act of exploitation aimed at profiting from the writings of one of the most heinous Nazi criminals." The previous owner, who acquired the diary in Brazil, is said to be close to the Mengele family.

Pseudonyms
  • Wolfgang Gerhard
  • Fritz Hollmann
  • José Mengele
  • Helmut Gregor[i]
  • Rudolph Weiss
  • Dr. Fausto Rindón
  • S. Josi Alvers Aspiazu
Summary of SS career
  • SS number: 317,885
  • Nazi Party number: 5,574,974
  • Primary Positions: WVHA, Medical Physician (Auschwitz Concentration Camp)
  • Waffen-SS Service:
Dates of Rank
Awards
Writings
  • Racial-Morphological Examinations of the Anterior Portion of the Lower Jaw in Four Racial Groups. This dissertation, completed in 1935 and first published in 1937, earned him a PhD in anthropology from Munich University. In this work Mengele sought to demonstrate that there were structural differences in the lower jaws of individuals from different ethnic groups, and that racial distinctions could be made based on these differences.
  • Genealogical Studies in the Cases of Cleft Lip-Jaw-Palate (1938), his medical dissertation, earned him a doctorate in medicine from Frankfurt University. Studying the influence of genetics as a factor in the occurrence of this deformity, Mengele conducted research on families who exhibited these traits in multiple generations. The work also included notes on other abnormalities found in these family lines.
  • Hereditary Transmission of Fistulae Auris. This journal article, published in Der Erbarzt (The Genetic Physician), focuses on fistula auris (an abnormal fissure on the external ear) as a hereditary trait. Mengele noted that individuals who have this trait also tend to have a dimple on their chin.


Josefe Mengele's home in Hohenau, Itapua, Paraguay. Photo taken August 2007


Block 10 - Medical experimentation block in Auschwitz

Block 10 - Medical experimentation block in Auschwitz

Sourced

  • There can't be two smart peoples in the world. We're going to win the war, so only the Aryan race will stand.
    • As quoted in Defy the darkness: A Tale of Courage in the Shadow of Mengele (2000) by Joe Rosenblum and David Kohn, p. 192
  • Even the Russians are fighting us. They've brought in Jewish pilots, nurses, and doctors. Everybody's ganging up on us. We didn't think it would happen this way.
    • As quoted in Defy the darkness: A Tale of Courage in the Shadow of Mengele (2000) by Joe Rosenblum and David Kohn, p. 192
  • The Jewish people, no matter where they are, they become the best in the world.
    • As quoted in Defy the darkness: A Tale of Courage in the Shadow of Mengele (2000) by Joe Rosenblum and David Kohn, p. 192
  • The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.
    • As quoted in Surfing the Tao : A Revolution of Free Will (2004) by Angela V. Michaels
  • Away with this shit!
    • To people who were about to be sent to gas chambers, as quoted in People in Auschwitz (2004) by Hermann Langbein and Henry Friedlander, p. 119

Quotes about Mengele

  • Mengele was known as a manic collector of things human, including dwarf corpses, gallstones, and eyes. His fascination with eyes led to the infamous experiments in which he injected various substances into the eyes of brown-eyed Jewish children in an attempt to make them Nordic (blue).
    • Bettina Beech, as quoted in Race & Research : Perspectives on Minority Participation in Health Studies‎ (2004) by Bettina M. Beech and Maurine Goodman, p. 41
  • I have never accepted that Mengele believed he was doing serious medical work ... He was exercising power. Major surgery was performed without anaesthetic. Once I witnessed a stomach operation — Mengele was removing pieces from the stomach, but without any anaesthesia. It was horrifying.
    • Alex Dekel, a camp survivor, as quoted in Weimar and Nazi Germany (1996) by Fiona Reynoldson, Stephen J. Lee, David Taylor and Rosemary Rees
  • I was given five injections. That evening I developed extremely high fever. I was trembling. My arms and my legs were swollen, huge size. Mengele and Dr. Konig and three other doctors came in the next morning. They looked at my fever chart, and Dr. Mengele said, laughingly, "Too bad, she is so young. She has only two weeks to live..."

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