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Josef Mengele

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"Mengele" redirects here. Not to be confused with Mengler (disambiguation).
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Dr. Joseph Mengele
File:Josef-mengele.jpg
Allegiance Nazi Germany
Service / branch Schutzstaffel
RankHauptsturmführer, SS
Battles / warsWorld War II
AwardsIron Cross First Class
Black Badge for the Wounded
Medal for the Care of the German People
Spouse(s)Irene Schönbein
ChildrenRolf Mengele
Other workNotorious for medical experiments he performed on prisoners at Auschwitz concentration camp.

Josef Mengele (German pronunciation: [ˈjoːzɛf ˈmɛŋələ],[1] 16 March 1911 – 7 February 1979), also known as the Angel of Death, was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He earned doctorates in anthropology from Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University. He initially gained notoriety for being one of the SS physicians who supervised the selection of arriving transports of prisoners, determining who was to be killed and who was to become a forced laborer, but is far more infamous for performing grisly human experiments on camp inmates, for which Mengele was called the "Angel of Death".

In 1940, he was placed in the reserve medical corps, following which he served with the 5th SS Panzergrenadier Division Wiking in the Eastern Front. In 1942, he was wounded at the Russian front and was pronounced medically unfit for combat, and was then promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) for saving the lives of two German soldiers. He survived the war, and after a period 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

Josef Mengele was born, the eldest of 3 children,[2] to Karl and Walburga Mengele in Günzburg, Bavaria, Germany. Mengele's father was a founder of Karl Mengele farm machinery for milling, sawing and baling, which produces major farm machinery under the name Karl Mengele & Sons.[3] In 1935, Mengele earned a Ph.D 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 mostly known for his research in genetics with a particular interest with twins. From this association, Mengele probably developed his life-long fascination with the study of twins.

Military service

In 1937 Mengele joined the Nazi party. In 1938 he received his medical degree and joined the SS. Mengele was drafted into the army in 1940 and later volunteered to the medical service of the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the SS, where he distinguished himself as a soldier. In June 1941 he was awarded the "Iron Cross Second Class" for his efforts at the Ukrainian Front. In January 1942, while serving with the SS Wiking Division deep behind Soviet lines, he pulled two German soldiers from a burning tank, and was awarded the "Iron Cross First Class" as well as the "Black Badge for the Wounded and the Medal for the Care of the German People." Mengele was wounded during this campaign; since he could not return to combat, he was posted at the Race and Resettlement Office in Berlin. During this time he resumed an association with his mentor, von Verschuer, who was at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics in Berlin. Just prior to his transfer to Auschwitz, Mengele was promoted to the rank of SS captain in April 1943.[4] [5][6]

Auschwitz

In May 1943, Mengele replaced another doctor who had fallen ill at the Nazi extermination camp Birkenau. On May 24, 1943, he became medical officer of Auschwitz-Birkenau's "Gypsy camp". In August 1944, this camp was liquidated and all its inmates gassed.[citation needed] Subsequently Mengele became Chief Medical Officer of the main infirmary camp at Birkenau. He was not, though, the Chief Medical Officer of Auschwitz — superior to him was SS-Standortarzt (garrison physician) Eduard Wirths.[7]

During his 21-month stay at Auschwitz, Mengele earned the sobriquet "Angel of Death" for the cruelty he visited upon prisoners.[citation needed] Mengele was referred to as "der weiße Engel" ("the White Angel") by camp inmates because when he stood on the platform inspecting new arrivals and directing some to the right, some to the left, his white coat and white arms outstretched evoked the image of a white angel. Mengele took turns with the other SS physicians at Auschwitz in meeting incoming prisoners at the camp, where it was determined who would be retained for work and who would be sent to the gas chambers immediately.[8] In one instance, he drew a line on the wall of the children's block 150 centimeters (about 5 feet) from the floor, and sent those whose heads could not reach the line to the gas chamber. (Lifton, p. 346.)[9]

"He had a look that said 'I am the power,'" said one survivor. When it was reported that one block was infested with lice, Mengele gassed every single one of the 750 women assigned to it.[10]

Human experimentation

Block 10 - Medical experimentation block in Auschwitz

Mengele used Auschwitz as an opportunity to continue his research on heredity, using inmates for human experimentation. He was particularly interested in identical twins; they would be selected and placed in special barracks. He also recruited Berthold Epstein, a Jewish pediatrician. As a doctor, Epstein proposed to Mengele a study into treatments of the disease called Noma that was noted for particularly affecting children from the camp.[11]

While the exact cause of Noma remains uncertain, it is now known that it has a higher occurrence in children suffering from malnutrition and a lower immune system response. Many develop the disease shortly after contracting another illness such as measles or tuberculosis.[12]

Mengele took an interest in physical abnormalities discovered among the arrivals at the concentration camp. These included dwarfs, notably the Ovitz family - the children of a Romanian artist, of whom seven of the ten members were dwarfs. Prior to their deportation, they toured in Eastern Europe as the Lilliput Troupe. Mengele often called them "my dwarf family"; to him they seemed to be the perfect expression of "the abnorm".[citation needed]

Mengele's experiments also included attempts to take one twins eyeballs and attach them to the back of the other twin's head, changing eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, various amputations of limbs, and other brutal surgeries. Rena Gelissen's account of her time in Auschwitz details certain experiments performed on female prisoners around October 1943. Mengele would experiment on the chosen girls, performing sterilization and shock treatments. Most of the victims died, either due to the experiments or later infections.

"Once Mengele's assistant rounded up 14 pairs of Roma twins during the night. Mengele placed them on his polished marble dissection table and put them to sleep. He then injected chloroform into their hearts, killing them instantly. Mengele then began dissecting and meticulously noting each piece of the twins' bodies."[9]

At Auschwitz, Mengele did a number of twin studies. After the experiment was over, these twins were usually murdered and their bodies dissected. He supervised an operation by which two Romanie children were sewn together to create conjoined twins; the hands of the children became badly infected where the veins had been resected, this also caused gangrene.[9]

The subjects of Mengele's research were better fed and housed than ordinary prisoners and were, for the time being, safe from the gas chambers.[13] When visiting his child subjects, he introduced himself as "Uncle Mengele" and offered them sweets. Some survivors remember that despite his grim acts, he was also called "Mengele the protector".[14]

The book Children of the Flames, by Lucette Matalon Lagnado and Shiela Cohn Dekel, chronicles Mengele's medical experimental activities on approximately 3,000 twins who passed through the Auschwitz death camp during World War II until its liberation at the end of the war. Only 100 pairs of twins survived;[15] 60 years later, they came forward about the special privileges they were given in Auschwitz owing to Mengele's interest in twins, and how as a result they have suffered, as the children who survived his medical experiments and injections.[9]

Auschwitz prisoner Alex Dekel has said: "I have never accepted the fact that Mengele himself believed he was doing serious work — not from the slipshod way he went about it. He was only exercising his power. Mengele ran a butcher shop — major surgeries were performed without anesthesia. Once, I witnessed a stomach operation — Mengele was removing pieces from the stomach, but without any anesthetic. Another time, it was a heart that was removed, again, without anesthesia. It was horrifying. Mengele was a doctor who became mad because of the power he was given. Nobody ever questioned him — why did this one die? Why did that one perish? The patients did not count. He professed to do what he did in the name of science, but it was a madness on his part." Some say that his reason for doing such things was so that he could enjoy something pleasurable at the expense of others.[16]

After Auschwitz

The SS abandoned the Auschwitz camp on January 27, 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.[17] Mengele worked in other camps for a short time and, on May 2, 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.[18]

In South America

In Buenos Aires, Mengele at first worked in construction, but soon came in contact with influential Germans, who allowed him 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, he divorced his wife, Irene. Three years later, he married Martha Mengele, the widow of his younger brother, Karl Jr.; she then went to Argentina with her 14-year-old son, Dieter. Mengele lived with his family in a German-owned boardinghouse in the Buenos Aires suburb of Vicente Lopez from 1958 to 1960.[19] While in Buenos Aires, Mengele practiced medicine, specializing in illegal abortions and was briefly detained by police on one occasion for the death of a patient during an abortion.[20]

File:Mengele 029.jpg
Mengele's home in Hohenhau, Paraguay

He was doing well in South America, yet Mengele 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".[19]

Shortly after the capture of Eichmann in May 1960 by the Israeli Mossad, Mengele was spotted at his home. Agents of Mossad debated whether or not to also kidnap him. 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.[21] Mengele was a secondary objective of this operation, but was never found.

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 feels 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 prior.[22]

Mengele hoped that Paraguay would be safer for him, as 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. His anxiety, however, haunted him, especially after he heard of the Mossad's abduction of Eichmann and the trial and execution in Israel. Using the identity of "Peter Hochbichler", he crossed the border to Brazil in 1960 and lived in São Paulo with Austrian-born neo-Nazi Wolfgang Gerhard, who was a member of Hans-Ulrich Rudel's "Kameradenwerk".[citation needed]

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 concentration of resources. 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 1968–1972, was "not given any instructions by the foreign office on Mengele of any kind. It wasn't even mentioned."

In absence of a "Mengele policy," Varon's standard answer to tips coming in to the embassy about the fugitive remained that the Israeli government was not searching for Mengele; the Federal Republic of Germany was. His concerns he stated thus:

"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 was Israeli—Israel came into existence only several years later."[17]

The same year, Mengele moved to Nova Europa, about 200 km (120 mi) outside São Paulo, where he lived with Hungarian refugees Geza and Gitta Stammer, working as manager of their farm. In the seclusion of his Brazilian hideaway, Mengele became depressed, egomaniacal, and aggressive, always fearing capture. In 1974, when his relationship with the Stammer family was coming to an end, Rudel and 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".[18]

Mengele's health had been deteriorating for years, and he died on February 7, 1979, in Bertioga, Brazil, where he accidentally drowned or possibly suffered a stroke while swimming in the sea. He was buried in Embu das Artes under the name "Wolfgang Gerhard", whose ID card he had used since 1976.[23]

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.[24]

In a 2008 book about Mengele, Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa speculated 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.[25] 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.[26]

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 German authorities. Subsequently, 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 President Alfredo Stroessner. Mengele sightings were reported all over the world, but they turned out to be false.

In 1985, the German police raided Hans Sedlmeier's house in Günzburg and seized address books, letters, and papers hinting at the grave in Embu. Mengele was exhumed on 6 June 1985 and identified 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".[18] 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. The bones have remained in the custody of Dr. Rubens Maluf, owing to the family's refusal to accept them.[27]

In the 21st century

On September 17, 2007, the U.S. Holocaust Museum released photographs taken from a photo album of Auschwitz staff, which contained eight photographs of Mengele. These eight photos of Mengele are the first authenticated pictures of him at Auschwitz, USHM museum officials said.[28]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ "howjsay.com". Retrieved 2010-03-30.
  2. ^ Stefan Kanfer and Peter Carls. "The Life and Crimes of a Nazi Doctor". People.
  3. ^ "The Gunzburg Clan" Time, 24 June 1985
  4. ^ "Josef Mengele". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessdatBold texte= ignored (help)
  5. ^ "Dr. Josef Mengele, ruthless Nazi concentration camp doctor - The Crime Library - Crime Library on". Trutv.com. Retrieved 2010-03-01.
  6. ^ "Dr. Josef Mengele, ruthless Nazi concentration camp doctor - The Crime Library - Crime Library on". Trutv.com. Retrieved 2010-03-01.
  7. ^ "Eduard Wirths". Wsg-hist.uni-linz.ac.at. Retrieved 2010-03-01.
  8. ^ "Essay by Robert Jay Lifton". Wellesley.edu. 1985-07-21. Retrieved 2010-03-01.
  9. ^ a b c d Bülow, Louis. "Josef Mengele, Angel of Death". Retrieved 2008-12-16.
  10. ^ Mengele - The Final Account (Documentary). New York City, United States: History Channel. 2008-07-12.
  11. ^ "Page 296-297". Holocaust-history.org. 2005-07-23. Retrieved 2010-03-01.
  12. ^ "German article at". Shoa.de. Retrieved 2010-03-01.
  13. ^ Nyiszli, Miklos (1993-09-01). Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1559702028.
  14. ^ Lagnado, Lucette Matalon (1991). Children of the Flames. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  15. ^ "Josef Mengele and Experimentation on Human Twins at Auschwitz". Longwood.k12.ny.us. Retrieved 2010-03-01.
  16. ^ "Dr. Josef Mengele, ruthless Nazi concentration camp doctor - The Crime Library on truTV.com". Crimelibrary.com. Retrieved 2010-03-01.
  17. ^ a b Chicago Tribune Magazine "How Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele cheated justice for 34 years" by Gerald L. Posner and John Ware, May 18, 1986.
  18. ^ a b c Völklein, Ulrich (1999). Josef Mengele: Der Arzt von Auschwitz. Steidl. ISBN 3882436859.
  19. ^ a b Harel, Isser (1975-06-02). The House on Garibaldi Street. Viking Press. p. 194. ISBN 0670380288.
  20. ^ Nathaniel C. Nash (1992-02-11). "Mengele an Abortionist, Argentine Files Suggest". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-07-15.
  21. ^ Israeli Mossad let Nazi Mengele get away[dead link] Replacement link: USA Today (accessible as of 12 May 2010). This news item comes from AP, but their archive fails to find it as if it never was. USA Today in Web Archive: "Blocked site error" [1]. Attempting to archive it in WebCite: "WebCite is currently under maintenance We will be back up soon." (12 May 2010)
  22. ^ [Harel, Isser (1975). The house on Garibaldi Street: the first full account of the capture of Adolf Eichmann. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-38028-8.]
  23. ^ "Scientists Decide Brazil Skeleton Is Josef Mengele". New York Times. July 22, 1985. Retrieved 2008-03-21. American, Brazilian and West German scientists announced jointly today that a skeleton recently exhumed from a graveyard near here was unquestionably that of Dr. Josef Mengele. A separate report by American experts concluded that the bones were those of the long-sought Nazi death-camp doctor 'within a reasonable scientific certainty.' ... {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  24. ^ "Josef Mengele in Brazil: "Angel of Death" Diary Shows No Regrets - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International". Spiegel.de. Retrieved 2010-03-01.
  25. ^ Evans, Nick (2009-01-21). "Nazi angel of death Josef Mengele 'created twin town in Brazil'". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-03-01.
  26. ^ Linda Geddes: Nazi 'Angel of Death' not responsible for town of twins New Scientist online, 27 January 2009
  27. ^ By MARLISE SIMONS, Special to the New York Times (1988-03-14). "Remains of Mengele Rest Uneasily in Brazil". New York Times. Retrieved 2010-03-01.
  28. ^ "Collections | Auschwitz through the lens of the SS: Photos of Nazi leadership at the camp". Ushmm.org. 1944-06-21. Retrieved 2010-03-01.

Further reading

  • Astor, Gerald (1986). LAST NAZI: LIFE AND TIMES OF DOCTOR JOSEPH MENGELE. Weidenfeld & N. ISBN 0-297-78853-1.
  • Harel, Isser (1975). The House on Garibaldi Street: the First Full Account of the Capture of Adolf Eichmann. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-38028-8.
  • Lieberman, Herbert A. (1978). The Climate of Hell. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-82236-5.
  • Levin, Ira (1991). Boys from Brazil, The. London: Bantam. ISBN 0-553-29004-5.
  • Miklos Nyiszli's At Last the Truth About Eichmann's Inferno Auschwitz and Auschwitz—A doctor’s eyewitness account describes his experience working involuntarily for Mengele.
  • Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Ausch by Lucette Matalon Lagado and Sheila Cohn Dekel—a collection of witness accounts pieced together in a biography of sorts about Dr. Mengele and his experiments.
  • Ware, John; Posner, Gerald (1986). Mengele: The Complete Story. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-050598-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Maberry, Jonathan (2010). The Dragon Factory. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0312382499.


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