In the circle of Joseph Mengele's acquaintances, the name was Beppe (Italian Beppe, the Italian diminutive of Giuseppe - Joseph), but he became known to the world as the “Angel of Death from Auschwitz” (the prisoners nicknamed him the Angel of Death).
Biography
Josef Mengele was the eldest son in the family. In 1932 he joined the Steel Helmet organization, which merged with the Nazi Stormtroopers (SA) in 1933. Mengele left the organization due to health problems. He studied medicine and anthropology at the universities of Munich, Vienna and Bonn. The topic of his doctoral dissertation (1935) was “Racial differences in the structure lower jaw" In 1938 he received his doctorate.
In 1938, Mengele joined the Nazi Party and the SS. In 1939 he married Irene Schoenbein (German: Irene Schoenbein). In 1940 he joined the reserve medical forces, where he served as a doctor in the sapper battalion of the 5th SS Wiking Panzer Division, a unit of the Waffen-SS (German: Waffen-SS). Received the rank of SS Hauptsturmführer and the Iron Cross 1st class award for rescuing two tank crews from a burning tank.
In 1942, he was wounded on the Eastern Front and declared unfit for service in the active army. After recovery, on May 24, 1943, he received the position of doctor of the “gypsy camp” in Auschwitz. In August 1944, this part of the camp was closed, and all its prisoners were exterminated in gas chambers. After this, Mengele was appointed chief physician of Birkenau (one of the inner camps of Auschwitz).
Much of Mengele's work involved experiments on prisoners, including dissecting live babies; castration of boys and men without the use of anesthetics; subjected women to high voltage shocks to test their endurance. He once even sterilized a group of Polish nuns using x-ray radiation.
During his 21 months of work in Auschwitz, he earned a reputation as one of the most dangerous Nazis and received the nickname “Angel of Death.” I personally met trains of prisoners arriving at the camp, and he himself decided which of them would work in the camp, who would go to his experiments, and who would immediately go to gas chamber.
Special interest Dr. Mengele was called by the twins. In 1943, Mengele selected twins from the total number of those arriving at the camp and settled them in special barracks. Out of 3 thousand twins, only 300 survived. Among his experiments were attempts to change the color of a child's eyes by injecting various chemicals into the eyes, amputation of organs, attempts to sew twins together, etc. The people who survived after these experiments were killed. Mengele also took an interest in physiological anomalies, particularly dwarfs. Conducted experiments on the Ovitz family, Jewish midget musicians from Romania, who found themselves in Auschwitz.
At the end of the war, Mengele was transferred to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. In April 1945, dressed in a soldier's uniform, he fled to the west. He was detained and held as a prisoner of war near Nuremberg, but was released because his identity was not established. He hid in Bavaria for a long time, and in 1949 he moved to Argentina using the " rat trails" In 1958, he divorced his first wife and married his brother's widow, Martha. Joseph Mengele's family helped him financially, he was even able to open a small medicine factory.
After the Israeli intelligence service Mossad kidnapped Adolf Eichmann, who was living under an assumed name, in Buenos Aires, Mengele fled to Paraguay and then to Brazil. He lived in Brazil until February 7, 1979, when he suffered a stroke while swimming in the sea, causing him to drown.
For almost 35 years, Mengele hid from persecution; several times Simon Wiesenthal and the Mossad came very close to finding him. After the capture of Adolf Eichmann, Mengele was considered the most wanted criminal. His grave was discovered only in 1985, and only in 1992 was it finally proven that it contained his remains. In 2008 former head Mossad Rafi Eitan said that the Israeli intelligence services, which were simultaneously on the trail of Mengele and Eichmann, refused to “kill two birds with one stone,” because this posed too great a risk.
With rare exceptions such as Hitler and Himmler, no person has been so denigrated as the “Nazi devil” in recent decades. Dr. Josef Mengele. The legend of Mengele became the basis for two short stories, on which Hollywood made two popular films: "Marathon Man" by William Goldman and "The Boys From Brazil" by Ira Levin.
In the latest film, Gregory Peck plays ruthlessly evil doctor Mengele, who cloned dozens of baby Hitlers as part of a diabolical Latin American conspiracy.
In countless newspapers and magazines articles dr. Mengele was systematically accused of murdering 400,000 people in gas chambers during his tenure as chief physician at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943 and 1944. The man nicknamed the "Angel of Death" allegedly carried out gruesome "experiments" on Jewish victims while reveling in his sadistic atrocities.
For example, U.S. News and World Report on June 24, 1985, stated that he rejoiced "giving candy to children whom he, for fun, sent alive to crematorium ovens while listening to Mozart and Wagner." The Washington The Post on March 8, 1985 wrote that Mengele "regularly sent children to ovens alive" and "knocked down pregnant women and trampled them until they miscarried."
The media campaign reached its climax in June 1985, when Mengele's name was repeated many times daily both in the pages of the press and on the evening television news. Mengele's face stared out from the cover of the gossip-loving weekly People. Years of persecution subsided when an international team of forensic experts identified remains exhumed in Brazil as those of Dr Josef Mengele. Testimony from relatives and friends confirmed that Mengele drowned in February 1979.
The basic claim that Mengele "gassed 400,000 Jews at Auschwitz" is a lie based in part on distortions. It is true that, along with other camp doctors, Dr. Mengele was engaged in examining new arrivals to the camp.
Holocaust “exterminators” (“exterminists”) claim that all Jews arriving at Auschwitz who were unable to work were immediately killed in gas chambers. The figure of 400,000 is a rough estimate of the number of disabled Jews who arrived in Birkenau in 1943-1944, when Mengele was chief physician.
Indeed, many disabled Jews were interned in the camp. Official German records, consistent with other evidence, state that a very significant proportion of the Jews who arrived in Birkenau in 1943-1944 were disabled. (See G. Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 125, and A. Butz, Hoax, p. 124).
Many Jews survived the war thanks to treatment in the camp isolation ward under the direction of Dr. Mengele. One of these patients was Otto Frank, the father of the famous Anne Frank. The sick Otto was transferred to the camp hospital. where he stayed before joining Soviet troops to Auschwitz in January 1945.
For example, Time magazine wrote on June 24, 1985, that Mengele "had a penchant for sophistication and gallantry: after sending a pregnant Jewish doctor to Krakow to do research for him, Mengele sent her flowers on the occasion of the birth of her son." Camp personnel who committed crimes were subject to severe persecution. For example, the Buchenwald doctor Waldemar Hoven was sentenced to death by an SS court for killing prisoners.
International columnist Geoffrey Hart told readers that he doubts the "Monster Mengele" stories peddled in the media... As a professional historian, I am prejudiced against many anecdotes commonly accepted as fact," Hart wrote. "My Experience as a Historian indicates that most of them are myths, deliberately concocted... I do not believe that he killed women with blows to the throat with his boot. This kind of thing was done long before historians began to sift out the truth from the lies about Dr. Mengele." (The Washington Times, July 9, 1985)
And if Hart deliberately shielded Mengele, then how can one evaluate his views on the Holocaust in general? What about his support for the popular Holocaust tale, announced at Nuremberg, about the Nazis producing soap from the corpses of Jews? What about the tales of gassing in Dachau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Auschwitz?
Witnesses claim that Dr. Mengele performed medical research operations on Auschwitz prisoners. However, similar “research” conducted by the United States both during and after the Second World War did not create any resonance. For example, American military doctors infected blacks with syphilis to develop new ways to treat sexually transmitted diseases.
And in the 1950s, CIA-funded psychiatric experiments included administering LSD, sleep deprivation, mass shock therapy, and attempts to brainwash hospital patients without their consent or knowledge.
One victim, Louis Weinstein, is described as "a human guinea pig, unfortunate, pathetic man without memory, without life." The US government was forced to judicial procedure for damages against Winstein and eight other patients. (The Washington Post, August 1, 1985, editorial).
An informative article about Dr. Mengele by New York University professor Robert Lay Lifton appeared July 21, 1985 in The New York Times Magazine. The lengthy article began with the statement that "Mengele has long been the focus of all that is the cult of the demonic personality. He is represented as the embodiment of absolute evil ..." But, as Lifton explains, he was not "neither superhuman nor superhuman." depicted in the media.
As a young man, Mengele was popular, intelligent and serious. During three years service, mainly on the eastern front, he proved himself a brave and diligent soldier and received five decorations, including the Iron Cross, First and Second Class. As chief physician of Auschwitz-Birkenau, he was part of large staff doctors, most of whom were Jews.
Lifton notes that the "witness" testimony about Mengele, as well as the published materials from the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, are riddled with errors. For example, although Mengele was one of many doctors who made decisions about the working capacity of Jews newly arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Jewish prisoners at the trial insisted that Mengele always made the selection alone. To the judge’s comment: “Mengele could not have been there all the time,” the witness replied: “According to my observations, always. Night and day.”
Other former prisoners described Mengele as having a "very Aryan appearance" or a "tall blond man", although in reality he was a medium-height brunette.
Lifton writes that among the many myths about Mengele are stories that he advised Paraguayan President Stroessner on how to destroy indigenous people Paraguay, and that he succeeded in organizing a successful drug trade with former Nazis.
Significant information about the character and qualities of Dr. Mengele from his contemporaries during his work at Auschwitz is contained in the “Evaluation of SS Captain Dr. Josef Mengele,” dated August 19, 1944, prepared by the Auschwitz medical department. (The original is kept in the Berlin Central Archives). The report is very flattering:
Dr. Mengele has an open, honest, integrity character. He is absolutely reliable, straightforward and purposeful. He does not show any weaknesses of character, bad passions or inclinations. His emotional and physical makeup is outstanding. During his service in the Auschwitz concentration camp, he applied its practical and theoretical knowledge to prevent several serious epidemics.
With prudence and persistent energy, and often under the most difficult conditions, he carried out the most difficult tasks manuals. He has shown himself capable of handling any situation. In addition, he used his meager personal time to improve his knowledge in the field of anthropology. His tactful and moderate behavior is characteristic good soldier. Because of his behavior, he is especially respected by his comrades. He treats his subordinates with absolute fairness and the necessary severity, without allowing any exclusivity or preference.
With all your behavior and attitude towards work dr. Mengele demonstrates an absolutely integral and mature attitude to life. He is a Catholic. His manner of speech is spontaneous, free, convincing and lively.
The personal assessment ends with the remark that Mengele “made an invaluable contribution to the fight against typhus in Auschwitz.” She lists the awards he has received for his bravery and selfless service and concludes that he is worthy of promotion.
After fleeing to South America to avoid trial, Mengele lived for 10 years in Argentina and Paraguay under his own name. There is no evidence that he was ashamed or hid anything about what he did at Auschwitz. On the contrary, in a letter to his son Ralph, he wrote: “I have no the slightest reason justify or be ashamed of one's decisions or actions." (Time, July 1, 1985).
Among his personal papers found by Brazilian police in June 1985 was a scattered semi-biographical essay entitled in Latin: "Fiat Lux" - "Let there be Light", apparently written by Mengele while he was living on a farm in Bavaria immediately after the war. The contents of the essay have not yet been published. (The New York Times, June 23, 1985).
Mengele spoke occasionally about his past with Mr. and Mrs. Stammer, the couple with whom he lived for 13 years on their farm near Sao Paulo, Brazil. Mr. Stammer recalls that Mengele said that the Jews were alien social group, who worked against Germany, which the Germans wanted to remove from their country. Mengele repeatedly insisted that he had not committed any crimes, but, on the contrary, was the victim of the greatest injustice. (New York Times, June 14, 1985; Baltimore Sun, June 14, 1985).
IN last years Mengele lived with an Austrian couple, Wolfram and Liselotte Bossert, on their farm in Brazil. In the interview, the Bosserts expressed great admiration and great affection for their humble guest. In response to a question about Mengele's alleged crimes at Auschwitz, Wolfram Bossert said: "I admire him as a person with exuberance positive qualities, and not the crimes charged to him, the reality of which I strongly doubt." (Washington Post, June 10, 1985).
An old friend of Dr. Mengele and the Mengele family in Germany, Hans Saddlemeier, told this reporter:
“I can tell you what Mengele did, what he did in Auschwitz, what he did after Auschwitz, but you won’t believe me. The newspapers don’t want to print the truth because it’s not in the interests of the Jews... I don’t want to talk about history of Mengele. Journalists wrote so many lies that were spread by the Jewish press...". Clearly outraged, he did not finish his sentence. (New York Times, June 13, 1985).
Mark Weber
The Journal of Historical Review, Fall 1985 (Vol. 6, No. 3), pages 377 ff.
P.S. While in Auschwitz, the Jewish woman Sadovskaya was seriously injured at work and lost her ability to work. Here's what she said:
"Since I could no longer work, I was afraid that I would be sent to the gas chamber. Everyone knew that everyone who was unable to work was sent to the gas chamber."
In the end, Sadovskaya was sent - no, not to the gas chamber, which she was so afraid of and what was sure to happen according to legend - but to the camp hospital, where she remained until she recovered. Seven days later she was sent to Dr. Mengele himself. He allegedly began to conduct very painful experiments on Sadovskaya; She did not specify which ones exactly. As she claimed, these experiences left her crippled.
In this case, according to legend, she certainly should have been sent to the gas chamber, since now she was not only incapacitated, but also unsuitable for experiments, as she herself stated. But then another “miracle” happened: they began to look after her again until she finally recovered.
Just think about it all: a Jewish prisoner from Auschwitz had a serious accident and was sent to a hospital where she was cared for for a week. Then the SS doctor began performing unpleasant surgical operations on her, after which she made a full recovery.
This clearly proves that the SS did everything possible (including surgery) to restore this woman to health and ability to work. However, at the post-war inquiry, Sadovskaya tried to turn everything upside down: they allegedly did not treat her, but tried to kill her.
Please also note that the investigator who conducted this inquiry in 1959 did not even try to find out what kind of experiment (that is, surgery) was performed on her. This once again confirms the childish gullibility of these investigators.
…
1285. Staatsanwaltschaft beim LG Frankfurt (Main), ibid. (note 462); Bd. 1, S. 132.
1286. Copy of witness statements dated August 30; there, Bd. 2, S. 223ff.
1287. Letter from the Auschwitz Committee, October 20, 1958; there, Bd. 2, S. 226.
1288. Ibid., Bd. 2, S. 250.
1289. Interrogation dated November 7, 1958; there, Bd. 2, S. 279f.
1290. Interrogation dated November 14, 1958; there, Bd. 2, S. 283.
1291. Ibid., Bd. 3, S. 437R.
1292. See the verdict at the Frankfurt trial, ibid. (note 1041).
1293. Interrogation of March 5, 1959 in Stuttgart, ibid., Bd. 3, S. 571-576.
1294. Interrogation of March 6, 1959, ibid., S. 578-584.
1295. Ibid., Bd. 5, S. 657, 684, 676, 678f.
1296. Ibid., S. 684.
P.P.S. The creator of the “myth of Mengele” was his assistant, the Hungarian Jew Dr. Miklos Nyisli, according to whose testimony 22 million people were killed in Auschwitz. And the last point: arbitrary beatings and murders of prisoners in the camps. Upon entering service in the concentration camp, each SS man had to sign a statement with the following content:
“I know that only the Fuhrer has power over the life and death of the enemy of the state. I have no right to apply physical harm enemy of the state (prisoner) or kill him... I know that I will be immediately brought to justice if this obligation is violated.”
State Archives of the Russian Federation. 7021–107-11, S. 30.
ALL PHOTOS
Josef Mengele, the most famous Nazi criminal doctors, born in Bavaria in 1911. Mengele studied philosophy at University of Munich and medicine in Frankfurt. In 1934 he joined the SA and became a member of the National Socialist Party
von Verschuer is a world authority in the field of twin research, from Mengele he received a large number of human specimens: eyes of twin children, blood samples of “people of a different race,” heads of beheaded children, skeletons of Jews
Until recently, they thought that he was a doctor, a Nazi criminal who used thousands and thousands of Auschwitz prisoners for terrible and lethal experiments, acted alone. On the contrary, he was a performer and diligent employee of some of the leading German scientists of that time. At least two of them quietly continued their careers after the war: laureate Nobel Prize Adolf Butenandt and Dr. Othmar von Verschuer. The weekly magazine talks about this Der Spiegel, publishing the results of an investigation conducted by a commission of historians, writes the Italian newspaper La Repubblica (The translation of the article is published by the website Inopressa.ru).
The subject of the investigation was Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Germany's leading institute for biological, medical and biotechnological research. Before the war, this establishment was called Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft. “The red bloody thread of prisoners linked the splendor of Villa Dahlem, a wealthy quarter of Berlin, with the barracks of Auschwitz.” A German institute conducted experiments on organs that were cut out from children by “Doctor Death.”
Butenandt, whose research into sex hormones and proteins ranks among the most important scientific achievements of the 20th century, is accused of conducting human experiments: we're talking about about the effects of certain types of mold on liver cells. Heavy clouds of doubt also hung over his “hemopetin project,” research into substances that could improve the blood quality of Luftwaffe pilots and allow them to survive in cold water or cold climates.
There is no doubt that von Verschuer, a world authority in the field of twin research, received a large number of human specimens from Mengele: eyes of twin children, blood samples of “people of a different race,” heads of beheaded children, skeletons of Jews, newborns in formaldehyde. Mengele usually cut off part of the liver or other vital parts without any anesthesia. important organs Jewish children and killed them with monstrous blows to the head, if there was a need for the recently deceased “guinea pig.” He injected chloroform into the hearts of many children; he infected his other subjects with typhus or terrible diseases, destroying tissue. Mengele injected deadly bacteria into the ovaries of many Jewish women.
Some twins with different colors Eye colorants were injected into the eye sockets and pupils to change eye color and explore the possibility of producing Aryan twins with blue eyes. In the end, the children were left with granular clumps instead of eyes. The kids died in terrible agony. "Mengele, through criminal methods, turned Auschwitz into the largest biotechnology laboratory in the world with human beings instead of experimental animals,” says expert Ernst Klee. The experiments on the twins at Auschwitz were followed with great interest in Berlin.
Of the 900 pairs of twins handed over to Mengele at Auschwitz, only 50 survived. Many died as a result of the experiments. Many of them were killed by lethal injections by Mengele in the summer of 1944. A Nazi doctor handed over their eyes, carefully preserved in formaldehyde, to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft.
Adolf Butenandt and Dr. Othmar von Verschuer were renowned as world-class scientists and science editors of the New York Times. The first was president of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in 1972, the second headed the German Society of Anthropology in the new Federal Republic. Neither of them was ever responsible for the notorious connections with Mengele. "Doctor Death" fled to South America, lived calmly and happily, in abundance, and died by accident, drowning a few meters from the shore of one of the beautiful Brazilian beaches.
Josef Mengele, the most famous of the Nazi doctor-criminals, was born in Bavaria in 1911. Mengele studied philosophy at the University of Munich and medicine at Frankfurt University. In 1934 he joined the SA and became a member of the National Socialist Party, and in 1937 he joined the SS. He worked at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. Dissertation topic: "Morphological studies of the structure of the lower jaw of representatives of four races."
After the outbreak of World War II, he served as a military doctor in the SS Viking division in France, Poland and Russia. In 1942, he received the Iron Cross for saving two tank crews from a burning tank. After being wounded, SS-Hauptsturmführer Mengele was declared unfit for combat service and in 1943 was appointed chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The prisoners soon nicknamed him the “angel of death.”
In addition to its main function - the destruction of "inferior races", prisoners of war, communists and simply dissatisfied - concentration camps were carried out in Nazi Germany and one more function. With the arrival of Mengele, Auschwitz became a "major scientific research center." The range of "scientific" interests of Joseph Mengele was unusually wide. He began with work on “increasing the fertility of Aryan women.” Then the leadership of the Nazi Party gave the doctor a new, directly the opposite problem: find the cheapest and effective methods restrictions on the birth rate of “subhumans” - Jews, Gypsies and Slavs. Having maimed tens of thousands of men and women, Mengele came to the conclusion: the most reliable way avoiding conception is castration.
“Research” went on as usual. The Wehrmacht ordered a topic: to find out everything about the effects of cold on a soldier’s body (hypothermia). The experimental methodology was very simple: a concentration camp prisoner is taken, covered with ice on all sides, and “doctors” in SS uniform constantly measure body temperature. When a test subject dies, a new one is brought from the barracks. Conclusion: after the body has cooled below 30 degrees, it is most likely impossible to save a person. The best way to warm up is a hot bath and the “natural warmth of the female body.”
Luftwaffe, air Force Germany, commissioned research
2.6666666666667 Rating 2.67 (3 Votes)
Josef Mengele, the most famous of the Nazi doctor-criminals, was born in 1911 in Bavaria. He studied philosophy at the University of Munich and medicine at the University of Frankfurt. In 1934 he joined the CA and became a member of the NSDAP, and in 1937 he joined the SS. He worked at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. The topic of the dissertation is “Morphological studies of the structure of the lower jaw of representatives of four races.”
During World War II he served as a military doctor in the SS Viking division. In 1942, he received the Iron Cross for rescuing two tank crews from a burning tank. After being wounded, SS-Hauptsturmführer Mengele was declared unfit for combat service and in 1943 was appointed chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Soon the prisoners nicknamed him “the angel of death.”
//-- Sadistic scientist doctor --//
In addition to its main function - the extermination of representatives of “inferior races”, prisoners of war, communists and simply dissatisfied people, concentration camps in Nazi Germany also performed another function. With the arrival of Mengele, Auschwitz became a "major scientific research center." Unfortunately, the range of Joseph Mengele’s “scientific” interests was unusually wide. He began with “work” to “increase the fertility of Aryan women.” It is clear that the material for research was non-Aryan women. Then the Fatherland set a new, directly opposite task: to find the cheapest and most effective methods of limiting the birth rate of “subhumans” - Jews, Gypsies and Slavs. Having mutilated tens of thousands of men and women, Mengele came to a “strictly scientific” conclusion: the most reliable way to avoid conception is castration.
“Research” went on as usual. The Wehrmacht ordered a topic: to find out everything about the effects of cold (hypothermia) on the body of soldiers. The “methodology” of the experiments was the most simple: they took a concentration camp prisoner, covered them with ice on all sides, “doctors” in SS uniforms constantly measured their body temperature... When a test subject died, a new one was brought from the barracks. Conclusion: after the body has cooled below 30 degrees, it is most likely impossible to save a person. The best way to warm up is a hot bath and the “natural warmth of the female body.”
The Luftwaffe - the German air force - commissioned research on the topic: "The influence of high altitude on the pilot's performance." A pressure chamber was built in Auschwitz. Thousands of prisoners were taken terrible death: at ultra-low pressure, a person simply burst. Conclusion: it is necessary to build aircraft with a pressurized cabin. But not a single one of these aircraft took off in Germany until the very end of the war.
Joseph Mengele, having become fascinated by racial theory in his youth, on his own initiative conducted experiments with eye color. For some reason, he needed to prove in practice that the brown eyes of a Jew under no circumstances could become blue eyes." true Aryan" He gave hundreds of Jews injections of blue dye - extremely painful and often leading to blindness. Conclusion: it is impossible to turn a Jew into an Aryan.
Tens of thousands of people became victims of Mengele’s monstrous experiments. What is the cost of impact studies alone? human body physical and mental exhaustion! And the “study” of three thousand young twins, of which only 200 survived! The twins received blood transfusions and organ transplants from each other. There was a lot more going on. Sisters were forced to bear children from their brothers. Forced gender reassignment operations were carried out...
And before starting his experiments, “good Doctor Mengele” could pat the child on the head, treat him with chocolate...
Concentration camp prisoners were deliberately infected various diseases to test the effectiveness of new drugs on them. In 1998, one of the former prisoners of Auschwitz sued the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. The creators of aspirin were accused of using concentration camp prisoners during the war to test their sleeping pill.
Judging by the fact that soon after the start of the “approbation” the concern additionally purchased 150 more Auschwitz prisoners, no one was able to wake up after the new sleeping pills. By the way, other representatives of German business also collaborated with the concentration camp system. The largest chemical concern in Germany, IG Farbenindustri, made not only synthetic gasoline for tanks, but also Zyklon-B gas for the gas chambers of the same Auschwitz. After the war, the giant company was “disintegrated.” Some of the fragments of IG Farbenindustry are well known in our country. Including as drug manufacturers.
So what did Joseph Mengele achieve? Medically, the Nazi fanatic failed in the same way as in moral, ethical, human... Having at his disposal unlimited possibilities for experiments, he still achieved nothing. You can't count scientific result the conclusion is that if a person is not allowed to sleep and not fed, he will first go crazy and then die.
//-- Quiet “retirement” --//
In 1945, Josef Mengele carefully destroyed all the collected “data” and escaped from Auschwitz. Until 1949, he worked quietly in his native Günzburg in his father’s company. Then, with new documents in the name of Helmut Gregor, he emigrated to Argentina. He received his passport quite legally, through the Red Cross. During those years, this organization issued passports and travel documents to tens of thousands of refugees from Germany. Perhaps Mengele's fake ID was simply not thoroughly checked. Moreover, the art of forging documents reached unprecedented heights in the Third Reich.
One way or another, Mengele ended up in South America. In the early 50s, when Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest (with the right to kill him upon arrest), the Nazi criminal moved to Paraguay, where he disappeared from view. A check of all subsequent reports about his further fate showed that they were untrue.
After the end of the war, many journalists were looking for at least some information that could lead them to the trail of Joseph Mengele... The fact is that for forty years after the end of World War II, “fake” Mengeles appeared in the most different places. Thus, in 1968, a former Brazilian policeman claimed that he allegedly managed to discover traces of the “angel of death” on the border of Paraguay and Argentina. Shimon Wiesenthal announced in 1979 that Mengele was hiding in a secret Nazi colony in the Chilean Andes. In 1981, a message appeared in the American Life magazine: Mengele lives in the Bedford Hills area, located fifty kilometers north of New York. And in 1985, in Lisbon, a suicide bomber left a note admitting that he was the wanted Nazi criminal Josef Mengele.
//-- Where was he found --//
It was only in 1985, it seems, that Mengele's true whereabouts became known. Or rather, his graves. An Austrian couple living in Brazil reported that Mengele was Wolfgang Gerhard, who had been their neighbor for several years. The couple claimed that he drowned six years ago, that he was then 67 years old, and indicated the location of his grave - the town of Embu.
Also in 1985, the remains of the deceased were exhumed. Three independent teams of forensic experts participated at every stage of the event, and live television coverage from the cemetery was received in almost every country in the world. The coffin contained only the decayed bones of the deceased. However, everyone was eagerly awaiting the results of their identification. For millions of people wanted to know whether these remains really belonged to the cruel misanthrope and executioner who had been wanted for many years.
The scientists' chances of identifying the deceased were considered quite high. The fact is that they had at their disposal an extensive archive of data about Mengele: the SS file cabinet from the war contained information about his height, weight, skull geometry, and condition of his teeth. The photographs clearly showed the characteristic gap between the upper front teeth.
The specialists who examined the Embu burial had to be very careful when drawing conclusions. The desire to find Josef Mengele was so great that there have already been cases of his erroneous identification, including falsified ones. Many such deceptions are described in the book Witness From the Grave by Christopher Joyce and Eric Stover, which presents readers with a fascinating history of the professional career of Clyde Snow, the main expert who studied the remains of Embu.
//-- How he was identified --//
The bones discovered in the grave were subjected to a thorough and comprehensive examination, which was carried out by three independent groups of experts - from Germany, the USA and from the Shimon Wiesenthal Center, located in Austria.
After the exhumation was completed, scientists examined the grave a second time, looking for possibly fallen dental fillings and bone fragments. Then all parts of the skeleton were delivered to Sao Paulo, to the Institute forensic medicine. Here further research continued.
The results obtained, compared with data on the identity of Mengele from the SS file, gave experts the basis to almost certainly consider the examined remains to belong to a wanted war criminal. However, they needed absolute confidence, an argument was needed to convincingly support such a conclusion. And then Richard Helmer, a West German forensic anthropologist, joined the experts’ work. Thanks to his participation, it was possible to brilliantly complete the final stage of the entire operation.
Helmer was able to recreate the appearance of a deceased person from his skull. It was difficult and painstaking work. First of all, it was necessary to mark the points on the skull that were supposed to serve as starting points for restoring the appearance of the face, and accurately determine the distances between them. The researcher then created a computer “image” of the skull.
Further, based on his professional knowledge of the thickness and distribution of soft tissues, muscles and skin on the face, he received a new computer image that clearly reproduced the features of the face being restored. The last - and most crucial - moment of the entire procedure came when the face, recreated using computer graphics methods, was combined with the face in Mengele's photograph. Both images matched exactly. Thus it was finally proven that man, long years hiding in Brazil under the names of Helmut Gregor and Wolfgang Gerhard and drowning in 1979 at the age of 67, was really the “angel of death” of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the cruel Nazi executioner Dr. Josef Mengele
Joseph Mengele. Doctor from Auschwitz.
Joseph Mengele
During the war, the name of Josef Mengele (photo in the article) was not known to many people, so he managed to avoid punishment and quietly leave Germany after the war. Much later, he became the symbol of a killer doctor who performed insane experiments on prisoners. Later it became clear that Mengele was not a loner - he fulfilled the requests of other doctors and scientists, including world-famous ones.
Origin
The biography of Joseph Mengele began in 1911 in German soil Bavaria. He was born into the family of an ordinary farmer. The father of the future fascist executioner founded the agricultural equipment company Karl Mengele and Sons. The mother was raising children. Joseph had two younger brothers - Karl Jr. and Alois.
The wealthy Mengele family began to support Hitler immediately after he came to power, because the Fuhrer defended the interests of those peasants on whom the family's well-being depended. Joseph's father quickly joined the party, and when Hitler came to the city, he spoke at Karl Mengele's factory. When the Nazis came to power, the company received a good order.
Early biography
As a child, Josef was a rather curious, ambitious and talented child. One day he told his parents that one day they would see his name in an encyclopedia. He did well at school and was interested in art and sports. After graduating from school, the young man refused to follow in his father’s footsteps and decided to get medical education. At first he wanted to become a dentist, but then he found it too boring. Studied at Munich and Military Universities.
IN student years joined the Steel Helmet organization. Formally, it was not a Nazi movement. The group members were ultra-patriots and held conservative views; there were also monarchists. Soon, the loosely organized street troops of the Steel Helmet were absorbed into the stormtroopers.
In the ranks of the SA, Joseph Mengele had not yet thought of conducting experiments on people. He did not stay there long. Street fights did not inspire the intelligent young doctor, so he soon left the organization, citing poor health. After receiving his diploma (the young man studied anthropology at the university), Mengele began working at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene.
There he became an assistant to physician Othmar von Verschuer, who was considered an authority in the field of genetics. The doctor specialized in twins, genetic abnormalities and hereditary diseases. Under Verschuer's guidance, Joseph Mengele defended his doctoral dissertation. He was then less than thirty years old. Mengele served big hopes.
Military service
The doctor Joseph Mengele had to join the SS and the party for career advancement. This often happens in totalitarian states. At the end of the thirties, Mengele first joined the NSDAP, and then the SS. In 1940, when the war was already in full swing, he was drafted into the army. Mengele did not stay in the Wehrmacht for long. He transferred to the racial medical battalion of the Waffen-SS.
The doctor did not take direct part in the fighting. He was soon transferred to the SS Main Directorate for Settlement Affairs. Mengele's duties included assessing Poles for suitability for further Germanization according to racial standards Nazi state. After the start of the war with Soviet Union the future Doctor Death was transferred to tank division SS, where he served as a medic. He was awarded the Iron Cross for saving two tank crews from a tank.
In the summer of 1942, the service ended. In the Rostov-on-Don area, Josef Mengele was seriously wounded. After recovery, he was declared unfit for service. With the rank of captain, the doctor returned to Germany, where he continued to work in the SS department on settlement issues.
Doctor Death
During this period, Dr. Josef Mengele's life took a sharp turn. His longtime mentor became head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics and Heredity. The Kaiser had no connection with this institution. The institute was founded long before the start of the war with money from the John Rockefeller Foundation.
The institution dealt with issues of eugenics, which was extremely popular throughout the world after the First World War. Eugenics is the science of selection, ways to improve hereditary qualities. This aroused great interest of the then Nazi state. With the coming to power of the fascists, the institute was restructured according to their ideology.
It was Verschuer who suggested that Joseph Menge work in a concentration camp for the benefit of German science. In 1942, a decision was made to move all Jews from the occupied territory to camps in Poland. The Germans had already decided to completely get rid of all Jews, so they saw nothing reprehensible in experimenting on living subjects, who were doomed to die in any case.
Duties at Auschwitz
The scientific director convinced Joseph Mengele that the camps offered enormous opportunities for making scientific breakthroughs. After this, the doctor wrote a statement to the chief physician of Auschwitz about his desire to serve in the concentration camp. The request was granted. Mengele was appointed senior doctor of the gypsy camp on the territory of Auschwitz. He later became the senior doctor of a large camp in the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.
His duties included inspecting arriving prisoners. Based on the results of the inspections, the commission decided who was fit to work for the benefit of the camp and would remain alive for some time, and who was too sick, old or weak for backbreaking work. The second group immediately went to the gas chambers. The management did not have much confidence in the workers, so Mengele had to make sure that the workers on duty did not steal valuables that the arrivals had with them.
He had permission for research, that is, he could leave any prisoners for experiments. The experiments of the doctor Joseph Mengele were terrifying. The doctor's subjects had some privileges, for example, they received improved nutrition and were exempt from heavy work. People selected for experiments could not be sent to gas chambers.
At the very beginning of his work, Joseph Mengele “saved” the camp from the epidemic - he immediately sent a batch of gypsies to the gas chamber, among whom the sick were found. Later he got rid of a party of women in the same way. If Mengele knew how to stop the epidemic, he would have conducted experiments on these people.
Mengele's experiments
It was impossible to predict the consequences of Josef Mengele's experiments. No one also knew how long it would last. Often, during the experiments, experimental people became sick or crippled, so Mengele completely lost interest in them. Everything depended on physical condition victims. If the subject did not suffer severe damage, he could be transferred to regular prisoners.
“Rescue” could only happen if the clients of the Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele did not need new people. During the war, Verschuer received from his ward a huge number of reports, blood samples, skeletons and internal organs prisoners. Mengele also actively collaborated with Adolf Butenandt. This is one of the world's leading biochemists, a Nobel Prize laureate, and an outstanding researcher of sex hormones. Butenandt developed a substance that was supposed to improve the quality of the blood of the military, their resistance to the effects of cold and altitude. This required liver preparations, which were supplied to the scientist by Doctor Death.
Josef Mengele did not suffer any punishment for his experiments. The same applies to the scientists with whom he collaborated. Verschuer became one of the most prominent geneticists and avoided denazification, and Butenandt headed the Max Planck Society. It was the most influential and prestigious German organization. Only closer to the 2000s, organizations that were associated with Mengele made official apologies to the victims of the experiments.
The exact number of victims of Dr. Josef Mengele is difficult to calculate. Almost all documents were destroyed either by the doctor himself, or by the retreating SS troops, or by the customers. Mengele was responsible not only for the victims of the experiments, but also for the murdered disabled prisoners.
Experiments on twins
The doctor was not at all a psychopath, as one might assume, although Josef Mengele's experiments were crazy. He personally visited his subjects and treated the little ones to chocolates. He asked himself to call his children “Uncle Mengele.” This struck people most of all, judging by the recollections of those who managed to survive. Doctor Death was kind to children, courteous, forced little prisoners to go to kindergarten, organized by him, although he well understood that most of wards will die.
Mengele's subjects of interest were people with genetic abnormalities and twins. The most exciting moment for him is the arrival of a new batch of prisoners. He personally examined the newcomers, looking for anything unusual. The trains also arrived at night, so he demanded that those on duty immediately wake him up if there was anything “interesting.”
A laboratory was built for the doctor near one of the crematoria. The laboratory was equipped with the most modern equipment. Then the party set the task of raising the birth rate to science. The goal was to increase the likelihood of twins and triplets, of course, if the children were of “pure blood.” Josef Mengele's experiments were terrible. He found out how twins react to the same intervention. At the same time, he had about two hundred pairs at his disposal. Only in Auschwitz could such unique conditions for his work be created.
Saved by the "devil"
Mengele and the Ovitz family also became interested. Before the war, Romanian Jews were traveling musicians. What saved their lives was that large family both dwarfs and children of normal height were born. This interested Mengele extraordinarily. He immediately transferred the family to his part of the camp and completely freed them from forced labor.
Over time, the family became the favorites of Josf Mengele. He visited prisoners and was always in good mood. Over time, camp staff and prisoners noticed this. A close relationship developed between the doctor and the subjects. He called them after the seven dwarfs from the cartoon about Snow White.
Josef Mengele's experiments on people have almost reached a dead end. The doctor simply did not know what to do with this family. He took all kinds of tests from them: blood, hair and teeth. The doctor became attached to the experimental subjects. He brought toys and sweets to the youngest, and joked with the older ones. The whole family survived. After their release from the concentration camp, they said that they were “saved by the will of the devil.”
Mengele's flight
In January 1945, Mengele left Auschwitz amid the roar of Red Army artillery. All materials were ordered to be destroyed, but the doctor took the most valuable things with him. USSR soldiers entered Auschwitz on January 27. They discovered the bodies of executed prisoners. Mengele was sent to a camp in Silesia, where experiments were carried out in the preparation of bacteriological warfare. But it was no longer possible to stop the advance of the Red Army.
Mengele was captured by the Americans, he was captured near Nuremberg. What saved him was that he did not have the typical Nazi blood type tattoo under his arm. At one time he managed to convince his superiors that there was no point in this, because professional doctor In any case, he will do a test before starting the transfusion. He was soon released. He changed his name to be on the safe side and became Fritz Hollmann.
Josef Mengele was included in the list of war criminals compiled by a UN commission. The list was distributed throughout the camps for Wehrmacht soldiers, but not all Allied officers studied it carefully, so the doctor could not be found. Old friends provided the doctor with false documents and sent him to the village, where they were unlikely to look for him. Mengele lived in spartan surroundings. The owners remembered him as a man who ate everything on the table and drank a liter of milk. They even sympathized with him, because Joseph was forced to hide.
In 1946, a trial began against doctors who conducted experiments on people in concentration camps. But Josef Mengele was not in the dock, although his name was repeatedly mentioned in the case file. They did not actively search for him because they believed that the doctor had died or committed suicide in the last days of the war. His wife also claimed that he was dead.
At this time, Mengele even went to the USSR occupation zone to return some of the records lost during the advance of the Red Army. Three years later, the Nazi doctor decided to flee their country. He used the cover of the Red Cross to emigrate to Argentina. Then the doctor took the name of a certain Helmut Gregor. At the same time, in Argentina he lived for some time under his real name and surname. From time to time Mengele even visited European countries to meet his wife and son, who refused to leave Germany.
In the fifties, he began to have problems with the law in Argentina. A former Nazi doctor was questioned over illegal activities after a girl died due to an abortion. The doctor moved to Paraguay under the name Jose Mengele. Because of his carelessness, he found himself on the radar of those who were hunting the Nazis. In 1959, the process of extradition of a war criminal began in Germany. By this time, the former Nazi doctor had already moved to Paraguay.
A few months later, with the help of friends who sympathized with the Nazis, he moved to Brazil. There he got a job on a farm under the name of his friend Wolfgang Gerhard. At the turn of the fifties and sixties, Mengele successfully lay low. In recent years, the doctor's health has deteriorated. He suffered from hypertension and suffered a stroke a few days before his death. Josef Mengele died while swimming in the ocean in 1979.
Life after death
A Nazi doctor who conducted experiments on people was buried in Brazil under a false name. At the same time, articles appeared in various newspapers every now and then with information that Joseph Mengele was seen in different parts light alive. In the eighties arose new interest to the affairs of the Nazis, this again became a topic of interest to everyone, the name Mengele began to be mentioned often again. In addition to Israel and Germany, the Americans joined the search. Several countries offered rewards for information about the doctor’s whereabouts, public organization and popular newspapers.
In 1985, a search was carried out in the house of one of the doctor's old friends. Correspondence with the fugitive and information about his death were discovered. At the request of the German authorities, Brazilian police interviewed one of the local residents, who knew where Mengele was buried. The body was exhumed that same year. The study gave a fairly high probability that it was Joseph Mengele who was buried there.
The identification process, however, took a long time. Only in 1992 was it possible to prove that the remains actually belonged to the criminal. Up until this point, information appeared in the newspapers every now and then that the doctor from Auschwitz faked his death, but in reality continued to hide in one of the Latin American countries.
The story of Josef Mengele has become the basis of many documentaries and discussions. This is a war criminal who has done terrible things. At the same time, many documentary programs (for example, “Mysteries of the Century. Doctor Death Joseph Mengele” with Sergei Medvedev) admit that he achieved truly phenomenal results as a doctor. For example, in a small town in southern Brazil, where Mengele continued his experiments on twins, 10% of the population are Aryan-looking twins. By ethnic type, these people were more like Europeans than the local population.