The sickening actions of Dr. Josef Mengele during WWII
Dr. Josef Mengele was brought up in a rich family and was admired throughout his school life for always achieving high grades and being an all round success. Whatever he put his mind to he was able to achieve and he graduated university with a doctorate in anthropology before being sent to the front line and receiving awards for bravery and then being sent to work as a doctor at the infamous Nazi concentration camp – Auschwitz. Mengele had previously been an assistant to Dr. Otmar von Verschuer, who carried out a large amount of research on twins, which could have been what inspired him to experiment in the way he did at Auschwitz.
Mengele was assigned the role of a medical officer at the time when the rate of killing at Auschwitz began to increase drastically. According to accounts from both guards and survivors, he was very enthusiastic and happily took on extra roles without a pay increase. His uniform was always perfect and he seemed to enjoy what he was doing, making sure every task was done with a smile. He readily volunteered to take other people’s shifts as a selection officer, choosing which new arrivals would live or die, which most officers found to be difficult and depressing. Mengele also started the human experiment programme while he was at Auschwitz which allowed him to carry out research on inmates he selected.
To begin with Mengele continued the work on heredity and physical traits which he had started in Frankfurt, experimenting on identical twins as because they have identical genes any differences are because of environmental factors. He measured the bodies of hundreds of pairs of twins for hours on end taking notes. He would inject one twin with a harmful substance to monitor the effects it caused, induce gangrene, dye their eyes and give them spinal taps just as a few examples of his cruel work. When the twin being tested on died, the second was injected with chloroform to kill them instantly and Mengele would proceed to dissect the two bodies and compare them. Through his experiments, Mengele was trying to prove the Nazi theories about race. He sewed twins together, removed the eyes of people with different coloured irises and asked children to call him “Uncle Papi” before performing vivisections on them. Nothing of great use has been discovered through Mengele’s experiments, meaning he tortured these subjects without good reason.
Mengele appeared to show no appreciation for the value of life: on one occasion he shot a mother and child to resolve an argument over whether they should live or die after a guard had received a scratch from the mother. Another time, a young boy who the guards had liked was thought to be infected with tuberculosis and an argument ensued over whether he should be killed. Mengele left the room, shot the boy, and went back to apologise for being wrong as he had found no signs of the disease during dissecting his body. After being promoted to a management position, Mengele ordered the death of 600 women immediately during a typhus outbreak to fumigate their barracks and make space for new inmates. He repeated this process again only a few months later when people became infected with scarlet fever.
In 1945 Mengele managed to escape capture and fled to the USA under his own name where he worked on a farm until 1949. He then travelled to Brazil using an alias, however the government was happy to provide safety for Nazis seeking refuge. Although he was on the run, Mengele could not resist and so opened an unlicensed medical clinic in Buenos Aires performing illegal abortions. He was found out when one of his patients died and was put on trial however he managed to pay off the judge and once again avoid any punishment.
Eventually, in 1979, Mengele suffered a stroke while swimming and drowned aged 68. His family then admitted that they had always known his location and identity and had chosen to shelter him for his entire life despite his horrific actions. In 2016 a Brazilian court ruled that his remains could be used for research by student doctors.
Poppy Fleming. Year 12.