FREE ESSAY ON MENGELE

MENGELE

Mengele promoted medical experimentation on inmates, especially dwarfs
and twins. He is said 
to 
have supervised an operation by which two Gypsy children were sewn
together to create 
Siamses 
twins; 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 chief 
doctor in 1943 by Himmler ... joined other doctors (Koenig, Thilon,
Klein) in the task of choosing 
employable Jews to operated the industrial machines and sending others
to the gas chambers. 
The 
selection 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 to 
create Siamese twins ... hands of the two children became badly infected
where the veins had 
been 
resected. 
Witnesses at the Frankfurt Trial told of [his] standing before his victims
with his thumb in his 
pistol 
belt and choosing candidates for the gas chambers. When it was reported
that one block was 
infected with lice, [he] solved the problem by gassing all the 750 women
assigned to it. 
Work Cited 
Snyder, Dr. Louis L. Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. New York:
Paragon House, 1989. ISBN 
1-55778-144-3 
THE ANGEL OF DEATH: JOSEF MENGELE 
Right, left, what man could send people to their death with a flick of 
a cane, without batting an eye? Josef Mengele. The stories and 
pictures of Auschwitz tell a gruesome tale of death and torture. Stories 
of the abused, used, and killed, the tales of the torturees have been 
told, but what about the torturers? The SS, the doctors, the ones 
who carried out the deeds, what was their life like? That is what this 
paper will focus on. What went on inside the pathology lab, and what 
went on inside the pathologist. 
Millions of people passed through Auschwitz, Mengele's domain, 
during the Holocaust. Early in 1945, it was recorded that over 
700,000 people were currently living (dying) there. Over 1 million 
people were killed at Auschwitz, about a fifth of all the Jews killed. 
People were brought to Auschwitz in cattle cars, hundreds of people 
would be put into a car and then not let out for days, without food or
water. Even when the trains 
arrived at Auschwitz they would often sit on the track for days until all the
many trains which had 
come before were unloaded. After this hellish journey, the first thing that
people saw was Josef 
Mengele, the angel of Auschwitz standing in his immaculate SS uniform,
shining boots, perfectly 
brushed and pressed shirt and pants, and glistening silver skulls. 
Josef Mengele was a doctor at Auschwitz, he performed experiments,
made selections, and is 
responsible for sending thousands of people to the crematorium. As a
person he was split, one 
side 
of him was the heartless, uncaring, medical-atrocities side, while the other
was a gentle, almost 
human side. When these two side overlapped was when Mengele was
most horrible. Often when 
taking 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 Moshe 
Offer, 
a test subject of Mengele. 
They took X-rays of us, then Doctor Mengele came in. And he gave us
sweets. He wore a white 
gown, but beneath it you could see the SS trousers. He gave us candy,
and then gave us some 
horribly painful injections. 
Josef Mengele was very high up in Nazi status, he reported to Heinrich
Himmler, who reported 
directly to Adolf Hitler. The attraction of Auschwitz to Mengele was the
limitless supply of human 
test 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 dozen 
cigarettes, and German sausage. Auschwitz was a regular world for SS
officers, there were 
houses 
with white picket fences to live in, a soccer stadium, a theater, and an SS
officers club where the 
officers got gourmet meals. It was not uncommon for an SS officer to
dine on roasted chicken 
and 
potatoes, while the prisoners were starving and dying. 
Mengele served many purposes at Auschwitz, he made selections of the
newly arriving 
prisoners, 
those who could work to the right, and those who couldn't to the left (gas
chambers), and he 
performed experiments. Mengele wanted to create a pure Aryan race,
and to make German 
mothers give birth to as many German babies as possible. 
Doing selections gave Mengele access to any prisoner he wanted, he
could hand pick his test 
subjects-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 traits 
from 
the pure Aryan race. Mengele was very interested in doing autopsies on
twins who had died at 
the 
exact same time, in the real world one twin might die at 7 while the other
might die at 77, but in 
this 
closed 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. One 
reason why Mengele might have been obsessed with German looks is
because his brown hair 
and 
eyes, and his gypsy-esque look didn't define him as a pure Aryan. One
of his most famous 
experiments was with eye color. Mengele or one of his assistants would
inject dyes into the 
unanesthetized eye of a child, preferably a set of twins. The dyes often
resulted in injury, 
sometimes 
complete blindness, not to mention excruciating pain. 
Another set of experiments were designed to create better equipment for
German soldiers, better 
gear for the cold, and for high altitudes. A set of freezing experiments
were performed to make 
clothing for navy crew who might fall in the water. People were placed in
vats of ice water, 
naked, to 
see the fatal temperature of a human. People were locked outside, in
snow and ice, also naked, 
to 
collect more information on human body temperature. Also sometimes
after he had chilled 
someone 
Mengele would try to warm the person up, back to normal functioning
levels-this almost never 
worked. 
One of the more gruesome experiments was a pressure chamber.
Prisoners were locked inside a 
pressure chamber that would simulate flying at high altitudes. The person's
breathing pattern was 
meticulously recorded, until they died. People would often kill themselves
by throwing 
themselves 
against the walls of the chamber, so that they would not die a more
horrible death, suffocation 
and 
sometimes 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 a 
prisoner 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 their 
heart, causing the blood to coagulate and kill the child. Who could ever
imagine sewing a set of 
twins 
together to try and make siamese twins? These acts just seem to be out of
the human realm. Yet 
Josef Mengele did all of these acts, and more. When the Nazis realized
that the Allied forces 
were 
getting closer, the Nazis covered up their deeds by destroying most of the
gas chambers and the 
pathology lab next to them that was occupied by the doctor Mengele.
We may never know the 
extent to which the experiments went. 
Mengele covered up his past as well as the Nazis covered up Auschwitz,
and better. Josef 
Mengele 
left Auschwitz on January 17, 1945 after being there since 1943.
Mengele secretly joined a 
normal 
German infantry, and was released after the Allies found the soldiers in
which Mengele was 
hiding. 
There had always been a strong Nazi presence in South America, so with
funds from his family, 
he 
went off the Argentina. Mengele lived with a farming family in Argentina
for a while, but Mengele 
was 
very scared of being caught, so between 1945 and 1979 Mengele moved
to and from different 
countries in South America. There was a great hunt for the elusive Doctor
Mengele, there were 
rewards, warrants, and even Nazi Hunters after him, but no one ever
found him. No one knew it 
when he died. Josef Mengele was living in Brazil with the Bossert family,
when for the first time, 
he 
went out in the sun in a public place. Mengele was paranoid that he would
be caught, so he often 
only went out at night. On January 7, 1979, the Bossert family persuaded
him to go for a swim to 
ease his mind. He did, but while out at sea he had a stroke, Mengele's
body was paralyzed, and 
he 
started to drown. People managed to drag him out of the water, but it
was too late, the infamous 
Doctor Mengele was dead. 
People didn't find out until the mid-1980's that Mengele was dead, I think
that's quite fitting to the 
seemingly ever-present Josef Mengele. People say that they saw Mengele
at the selection night 
and 
day. He was a mythological creature at Auschwitz, he could come at any
time day or night to 
take 
test subjects from the barracks. Mengele was the symbol of the Nazis,
evil, lurking, and always 
there.