Mengele, Josef Essay, Research Paper

MENGELE, JOSEFMengele promoted medical experimentation on inmates, especially dwarfs and twins. He is saidtohave supervised an operation by which two Gypsy children were sewn together to createSiamsestwins; the hands of the children became badly infected where the veins had been resected. (Snyder)Cohen tells us: “The only firsthand evidence on these experiments comes from a handful of survivors and from a Jewish doctor, Miklos Nyiszli, who worked under Mengele as a pathologist. Mengele subjected his victims – twins and dwarfs aged two and above – to clinical examinations, blood tests, X rays, and anthropological measurements. In the case of the twins, he drew sketches of each twin, for comparison. He also injected his victims with various substances, dripping chemicals into their eyes (apparently in an attempt to change their color). He then killed them himself by injecting chloroform into their hearts, so as to carry out comparative pathological examinations of their internal organs. Mengele’s purpose, according to Dr. Nyiszli, was to establish the genetic cause for the birth of twins, in order to facilitate the formulation of a program for doubling the birthrate of the ‘Aryan’ race. The experiments on twins affected 180 persons, adults and children. Mengele also carried out a large number of experiments in the field of contageous diseases, (typhoid and tuberculosis) to find out how human beings of different races withstood these diseases. He used Gypsy twins for this purpose. Mengele’s experiments combined scientific (perhaps even important) research with the racist and ideological aims of the Nazi regime. which made use of government offices, scientific institutions, and concentration camps. From the scanty information available, it appears that his research differed from the other medical experiments in that the victims’ death was programmed into his experiments and formed a central element in it.” (Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, 964)MENGELE, JOSEF (1911- ?). Camp doctor at Auschwitz extermination camp. ..appointed chiefdoctor in 1943 by Himmler … joined other doctors (Koenig, Thilon, Klein) in the task of choosingemployable Jews to operated the industrial machines and sending others to the gas chambers. Theselection was haphazard. The inmates were paraded before Mengele, who called either “Right!”(work squads) or “Left!” (gas chambers). …[he] promoted medical experimentation on inmates,especially twins … supervised an operation by which two Gypsy children were sewn together tocreate Siamese twins … hands of the two children became badly infected where the veins hadbeenresected. Witnesses at the Frankfurt Trial told of [his] standing before his victims with his thumb in hispistolbelt and choosing candidates for the gas chambers. When it was reported that one block wasinfected with lice, [he] solved the problem by gassing all the 750 women assigned to it. “Right, left”, what man could send people to their death with a flick ofa cane, without batting an eye? Josef Mengele. The stories andpictures of Auschwitz tell a gruesome tale of death and torture. Storiesof the abused, used, and killed, the tales of the torturees have beentold, but what about the torturers? The SS, the “doctors”, the oneswho carried out the deeds, what was their life like? That is what thispaper will focus on. What went on inside the pathology lab, and whatwent on inside the pathologist. Millions of people passed through Auschwitz, Mengele’s domain,during the Holocaust. Early in 1945, it was recorded that over700,000 people were currently “living” (dying) there. Over 1 millionpeople were killed at Auschwitz, about a fifth of all the Jews killed. People were brought to Auschwitz in cattle cars, hundreds of peoplewould be put into a car and then not let out for days, without food or water. Even when the trainsarrived at Auschwitz they would often sit on the track for days until all the many trains which hadcome before were unloaded. After this hellish journey, the first thing that people saw was JosefMengele, the angel of Auschwitz standing in his immaculate SS uniform, shining boots, perfectlybrushed and pressed shirt and pants, and glistening silver skulls. Josef Mengele was a doctor at Auschwitz, he performed experiments, made selections, and isresponsible for sending thousands of people to the crematorium. As a person he was “split”, onesideof him was the heartless, uncaring, medical-atrocities side, while the other was a gentle, almosthuman side. When these two side overlapped was when Mengele was most horrible. Often whentaking small children to the gas chamber, he would give them candy and make a game out of,”walking to the chimney”. Another example of false kindness is well put in the words of MosheOffer,a test subject of Mengele. “They took X-rays of us, then Doctor Mengele came in. And he gave us sweets. He wore a whitegown, but beneath it you could see the SS trousers. He gave us candy, and then gave us somehorribly painful injections.”Josef Mengele was very high up in Nazi status, he reported to Heinrich Himmler, who reporteddirectly to Adolf Hitler. The attraction of Auschwitz to Mengele was the limitless supply of humantest subjects. Mengele was able to perform ANYTHING he wanted on live, human subjects. Life

was good for Mengele at Auschwitz, everyday he got luxuries: a fifth of a liter of vodka, a dozencigarettes, and German sausage. Auschwitz was a regular world for SS officers, there werehouseswith white picket fences to live in, a soccer stadium, a theater, and an SS officers club where theofficers got gourmet meals. It was not uncommon for an SS officer to dine on roasted chickenandpotatoes, while the prisoners were starving and dying. Mengele served many purposes at Auschwitz, he made selections of the newly arrivingprisoners,those who could work to the right, and those who couldn’t to the left (gas chambers), and heperformed experiments. Mengele wanted to create a “pure” Aryan race, and to make Germanmothers give birth to as many German babies as possible. Doing selections gave Mengele access to any prisoner he wanted, he could hand pick his testsubjects-and he did. “Zwillinge, Zwillinge, Zwillinge!” Twins, Twins, Twins! Mengele picked twins,dwarfs, and people who had deformities to do experiments on. He wanted to erase these traitsfromthe “pure” Aryan race. Mengele was very interested in doing autopsies on twins who had died attheexact same time, in the real world one twin might die at 7 while the other might die at 77, but inthisclosed environment he could study twins who had died at the same moment. Many of Mengele’s experiments were based on literally creating a blond hair blue eyed race. Onereason why Mengele might have been obsessed with “German” looks is because his brown hairandeyes, and his gypsy-esque look didn’t define him as a “pure” Aryan. One of his most famousexperiments was with eye color. Mengele or one of his assistants would inject dyes into theunanesthetized eye of a child, preferably a set of twins. The dyes often resulted in injury,sometimescomplete blindness, not to mention excruciating pain. Another set of experiments were designed to create better equipment for German soldiers, bettergear for the cold, and for high altitudes. A set of freezing experiments were performed to makeclothing for navy crew who might fall in the water. People were placed in vats of ice water,naked, tosee the fatal temperature of a human. People were locked outside, in snow and ice, also naked,tocollect more information on human body temperature. Also sometimes after he had chilledsomeoneMengele would try to warm the person up, back to normal functioning levels-this almost neverworked. One of the more gruesome experiments was a pressure chamber. Prisoners were locked inside apressure chamber that would simulate flying at high altitudes. The person’s breathing pattern wasmeticulously recorded, until they died. People would often kill themselves by throwingthemselvesagainst the walls of the chamber, so that they would not die a more horrible death, suffocationandsometimes explosion. As in the words of Anton Pacholegg, an Austrian prisoner who assisted Dr. Rascher in the Dachau camp;”I have personally seen through the observation window of the decompression chamber, when aprisoner inside would stand a vacuum until his lungs ruptured.”One can not help but wonder what kind of a person could ever consider doing things so horrible,much less carry them out. Who could ever kill an innocent child by injecting chloroform into theirheart, causing the blood to coagulate and kill the child. Who could ever imagine sewing a set oftwinstogether to try and make siamese twins? These acts just seem to be out of the human realm. YetJosef Mengele did all of these acts, and more. When the Nazis realized that the Allied forcesweregetting closer, the Nazis covered up their deeds by destroying most of the gas chambers and thepathology lab next to them that was occupied by the “doctor” Mengele. We may never know theextent to which the experiments went. Mengele covered up his past as well as the Nazis covered up Auschwitz, and better. JosefMengeleleft Auschwitz on January 17, 1945 after being there since 1943. Mengele secretly joined anormalGerman infantry, and was released after the Allies found the soldiers in which Mengele washiding. There had always been a strong Nazi presence in South America, so with funds from his family,hewent off the Argentina. Mengele lived with a farming family in Argentina for a while, but Mengelewasvery scared of being caught, so between 1945 and 1979 Mengele moved to and from differentcountries in South America. There was a great hunt for the elusive Doctor Mengele, there wererewards, warrants, and even Nazi Hunters after him, but no one ever found him. No one knew itwhen he died. Josef Mengele was living in Brazil with the Bossert family, when for the first time,hewent out in the sun in a public place. Mengele was paranoid that he would be caught, so he oftenonly went out at night. On January 7, 1979, the Bossert family persuaded him to go for a swim toease his mind. He did, but while out at sea he had a stroke, Mengele’s body was paralyzed, andhestarted to drown. People managed to drag him out of the water, but it was too late, the infamousDoctor Mengele was dead. People didn’t find out until the mid-1980’s that Mengele was dead, I think that’s quite fitting to theseemingly ever-present Josef Mengele. People say that they saw Mengele at the selection nightandday. He was a mythological creature at Auschwitz, he could come at any time day or night totaketest subjects from the barracks. Mengele was the symbol of the Nazis, evil, lurking, and alwaysthere. Work CitedSnyder, Dr. Louis L. Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. New York: Paragon House, 1989. ISBN1-55778-144-3THE ANGEL OF DEATH: JOSEF MENGELE