Josef Mengele - Nazi Angel of Death & His Horrific Medical Experiments on Auschwitz Prisoners
Josef Mengele - Nazi Angel of Death & His Horrific Medical Experiments on Auschwitz Prisoners
Josef Mengele - Nazi Angel of Death \u0026 His Horrific Medical Experiments on Auschwitz Prisoners. On the 30th of May 1943, the SS assigned Mengele to Auschwitz where he worked as one of the camp physicians at Auschwitz-Birkenau. There is some evidence that Mengele himself requested this assignment because of the opportunities it could provide for his research.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of the Auschwitz camps and also served as a killing center for Jews deported from throughout Europe. In addition to other duties, Mengele also had responsibility for Birkenau’s so called “Gypsy Family camp”. Beginning in 1943, nearly 21,000 Romani men, women, and children were sent to Auschwitz and imprisoned in the Gypsy Camp. When this family camp was liquidated on the 2nd of August 1944, Mengele participated in selecting the 2,893 Romani prisoners who were to be murdered in the Birkenau gas chambers. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed chief physician for Auschwitz-Birkenau and in November 1944, he was assigned to the Birkenau hospital for the SS.
As part of their camp duties, medical staff at Auschwitz performed so-called selections. The purpose of the selections was to identify persons who were unable to work. The SS considered such persons as useless eaters and therefore murdered them. When transports of Jews arrived at Birkenau, the camp medical personnel selected some of the able-bodied adults to perform forced labor in the concentration camp. Those not selected for labor, including children and older adults, were murdered in the gas chambers.
All visibly pregnant women and mothers of babies and young children were sent to the gas chambers upon arrival. Mengele rationalized this as follows: “When a Jewish child is born, or a woman comes to the camp with a child already. I don’t know what to do with the child. I can’t set the child free because there are no longer any Jews who live in freedom. I can’t let the child stay in the camp because there are no facilities that would enable the child to develop normally. It would not be humanitarian to send a child to the ovens without permitting their mother to be there to witness the child’s death. That is why I send the mother and child to the gas ovens together.”
Josef Mengele was also alleged to have had affair with the infamous Irma Grese, one of the most hated and feared guards in the camp.
When Mengele discovered that she was having affairs with Jewish inmates, who were deemed racially inferior, he ended his relationship with her.
Mengele was also a sexual deviant who indulged in sexual brutality. For example, while male prisoners were left standing at assembly awaiting his arrival, he is reported to have spent one whole night engaged in recording the reactions of their Jewish women to being raped by camp functionaries.
Camp physicians at Auschwitz and at other concentration camps also conducted periodic selections in the camp infirmaries and barracks. They conducted these selections in order to identify prisoners who were either injured or had become too ill or weak to work. The SS used various methods to murder these prisoners, including lethal injections and gassing. Mengele routinely carried out such selections at Birkenau, leading some prisoners to refer to him as the “angel of death.” Prisoner Gisella Perl, a Jewish gynecologist at Birkenau, later recalled how Mengele’s appearance in the women’s infirmary filled the prisoners with terror:”
We feared these visits more than anything else, because we never knew whether we would be permitted to live. He was free to do whatever he pleased with us.” And he did.
When a typhus epidemic began in the women’s camp, Mengele cleared one block of six hundred Jewish women and sent them to their deaths in the gas chambers. The building was then cleaned and disinfected and the occupants of the neighboring block were bathed, de–loused, and given new clothing before being moved into the clean block. This process was repeated until all of the barracks were disinfected. Similar procedures were used for later epidemics of scarlet fever and other diseases, with infected prisoners being killed in the gas chambers.
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Content
1.02 -> 27th of January 1945. The Soviet army
enters Auschwitz, the largest of the
7.14 -> extermination centers located in German
occupied Poland. It is estimated that a
12.18 -> minimum 1.3 million people were deported to
this camp between 1940 and 1945 and of these,
19.08 -> at least 1.1 million were murdered. However,
not all of its prisoners died. In this Nazi
25.38 -> factory of horror, the Soviet soldiers
liberate more than 7,000 surviving inmates,
29.64 -> who are mostly ill and dying and some of them
were subjected to cruel and painful pseudo-medical
35.04 -> experiments performed by the most notorious of
the Nazi doctors. His name is Josef Mengele.
42.66 -> Josef Mengele was born on 16th of
March 1911 in the Bavarian city
48.06 -> of Günzburg, then part of the German Empire.
Young Josef, the eldest son of Karl Mengele,
53.82 -> a prosperous manufacturer of farming equipment,
studied medicine and physical anthropology at
59.04 -> several universities. In 1935, he earned a
doctorate in physical anthropology from the
64.98 -> University of Munich and in 1936,
he passed the state medical exams.
69.72 -> In 1937, Mengele began working at the
Institute for Hereditary Biology and
75.3 -> Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt. There, he
was an assistant to the director, Dr.
79.98 -> Otmar von Verschuer who was a leading
geneticist known for his research on
83.76 -> twins. Under Verschuer’s direction, Mengele
completed an additional doctorate in 1938.
89.28 -> Mengele did not actively support the Nazi
Party before it came to power in January 1933.
95.7 -> However, during his university studies, Mengele,
as with the Nazi Party, embraced racial science,
101.88 -> the false theory of biological racism. He believed
that the Germans were biologically different from
107.58 -> and superior to members of all other races.
Racial science was a fundamental tenet of Nazi
113.58 -> ideology which Hitler used to justify the forced
sterilization of persons with certain physical
118.74 -> or mental diseases or physical deformities. The
1935 Nuremberg Race Laws, which outlawed marriage
125.52 -> between Germans and Jewish, Black, or Romani
peoples, were also based upon racial science.
130.2 -> In 1938, Mengele joined the Nazi Party
and the SS. In his work as a scientist, he
137.64 -> sought to support the Nazi goal of maintaining and
increasing the supposed superiority of the German
143.22 -> “race.” Mengele’s employer and mentor, doctor
Verschuer, also embraced biological racism. In
150.06 -> addition to conducting research, Verschuer and his
staff—including Mengele—provided expert opinions
155.46 -> to Nazi authorities who had to determine whether
persons qualified as German under the Nuremberg
160.74 -> Laws. Mengele and his colleagues also evaluated
Germans whose physical or mental condition might
166.62 -> qualify them to be forcibly sterilized
or barred from marriage under German law.
170.82 -> In 1939, Mengele married Irene Schönbein.
Their only son, Rolf, was born in 1944.
178.44 -> The Second World War began on the 1st of
September, 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland.
185.28 -> In June 1940, Mengele was drafted into the
Wehrmacht – the German armed forces. A month
191.58 -> later, he volunteered for the medical service of
the Waffen-SS which was the military branch of the
196.62 -> SS. At first, Mengele worked for the SS Race and
Settlement Main Office in German-occupied Poland
202.98 -> where he evaluated the criteria and methods
used by the SS to determine whether persons
207.54 -> claiming to be of German descent were racially
and physically suitable to qualify as Germans.
212.46 -> Operation Barbarossa - the invasion of the
Soviet Union - started on the 22nd of June 1941.
219.42 -> For about 18 months after it began, he saw
extremely brutal fighting on the eastern front.
224.94 -> In addition, in the first weeks of Germany’s
attack on the Soviet Union, Mengele’s division
230.4 -> slaughtered thousands of Jewish civilians.
After Mengele rescued two German soldiers
235.2 -> from a burning tank, he was decorated with
the Iron Cross, both 2nd and 1st Class,
240.06 -> and was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer which
was the equivalent to the rank of SS captain.
245.04 -> Mengele returned to Germany in January 1943.
While awaiting his next Waffen-SS assignment,
251.94 -> he began to work again for his mentor Verschuer.
Verschuer had recently become the director of the
257.94 -> Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology,
Human Genetics, and Eugenics in Berlin.
262.68 -> On the 30th of May 1943, the SS
assigned Mengele to Auschwitz
268.32 -> where he worked as one of the camp
physicians at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
272.1 -> There is some evidence that Mengele himself
requested this assignment because of the
276.48 -> opportunities it could provide for his research.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of the
281.88 -> Auschwitz camps and also served as a killing
center for Jews deported from throughout Europe.
287.16 -> In addition to other duties, Mengele also
had responsibility for Birkenau's so called
292.08 -> “Gypsy Family camp”. Beginning in 1943, nearly
21,000 Romani men, women, and children were
299.28 -> sent to Auschwitz and imprisoned in the Gypsy
Camp. When this family camp was liquidated on
304.68 -> the 2nd of August 1944, Mengele participated in
selecting the 2,893 Romani prisoners who were to
312.42 -> be murdered in the Birkenau gas chambers. Shortly
thereafter, he was appointed chief physician for
317.94 -> Auschwitz-Birkenau and in November 1944, he was
assigned to the Birkenau hospital for the SS.
323.64 -> As part of their camp duties, medical
staff at Auschwitz performed so-called
328.44 -> selections. The purpose of the selections was
to identify persons who were unable to work.
334.08 -> The SS considered such persons as useless
eaters and therefore murdered them.
339.66 -> When transports of Jews arrived at Birkenau,
the camp medical personnel selected some of the
344.52 -> able-bodied adults to perform forced labor in the
concentration camp. Those not selected for labor,
349.86 -> including children and older adults,
were murdered in the gas chambers.
354.3 -> All visibly pregnant women and mothers of babies
and young children were sent to the gas chambers
359.34 -> upon arrival. Mengele rationalized this as
follows: “When a Jewish child is born, or a woman
365.46 -> comes to the camp with a child already. I don’t
know what to do with the child. I can’t set the
370.98 -> child free because there are no longer any Jews
who live in freedom. I can’t let the child stay
375.9 -> in the camp because there are no facilities that
would enable the child to develop normally. It
381.24 -> would not be humanitarian to send a child to the
ovens without permitting their mother to be there
385.98 -> to witness the child’s death. That is why I send
the mother and child to the gas ovens together.”
391.32 -> Josef Mengele was also alleged to have had
affair with the infamous Irma Grese, one of
397.8 -> the most hated and feared guards in the camp.
When Mengele discovered that she was having
401.82 -> affairs with Jewish inmates, who
were deemed racially inferior,
405.06 -> he ended his relationship with her.
Mengele was also a sexual deviant who
410.58 -> indulged in sexual brutality. For example,
while male prisoners were left standing at
415.56 -> assembly awaiting his arrival, he is reported to
have spent one whole night engaged in recording
420.42 -> the reactions of their Jewish women
to being raped by camp functionaries.
424.68 -> Camp physicians at Auschwitz and at other
concentration camps also conducted periodic
429.36 -> selections in the camp infirmaries and barracks.
They conducted these selections in order to
434.22 -> identify prisoners who were either injured or
had become too ill or weak to work. The SS used
440.94 -> various methods to murder these prisoners,
including lethal injections and gassing.
445.98 -> Mengele routinely carried out such selections
at Birkenau, leading some prisoners to refer to
450.96 -> him as the “angel of death.” Prisoner Gisella
Perl, a Jewish gynecologist at Birkenau, later
457.14 -> recalled how Mengele’s appearance in the women’s
infirmary filled the prisoners with terror:”
461.34 -> We feared these visits more than anything
else, because we never knew whether we
466.26 -> would be permitted to live. He was free to
do whatever he pleased with us.” And he did.
471.78 -> When a typhus epidemic began in the women's camp,
Mengele cleared one block of six hundred Jewish
477.24 -> women and sent them to their deaths in the
gas chambers. The building was then cleaned
482.22 -> and disinfected and the occupants of the
neighboring block were bathed, de–loused,
486.42 -> and given new clothing before being moved into
the clean block. This process was repeated until
492 -> all of the barracks were disinfected. Similar
procedures were used for later epidemics of
496.74 -> scarlet fever and other diseases, with infected
prisoners being killed in the gas chambers.
501.3 -> After World War II, Mengele became
infamous for his work at Auschwitz
505.68 -> thanks to the accounts of prisoner physicians
who had worked under him and of prisoners who
510.18 -> had survived his medical experiments.
These experiments had been authorized
514.56 -> by the SS which was responsible for the
management of the concentration camps.
518.4 -> Mengele was one of some 50 physicians who
served at Auschwitz. He was neither the
523.68 -> highest ranking doctor nor the commander of
the other doctors who were present. However,
527.58 -> his name is by far the best known of all the
doctors who served at the site. One reason for
532.26 -> this was Mengele’s frequent presence on the ramp
where selections took place. When Mengele did not
537.6 -> himself perform selection duty, he often
still appeared at the ramp, looking among
541.8 -> the prisoners for twins for his experiments
and physicians for the Birkenau infirmary.
545.7 -> Auschwitz not only provided prisoners for human
experiments conducted at various other camps but
551.58 -> it also served as the site of a variety
of human experiments. This is because of
556.14 -> the number of the prisoners sent there - the SS
sent 1.3 million men, women, and children from
561.72 -> many different national and ethnic backgrounds to
Auschwitz. Researchers looking for human subjects
567.12 -> who met specific criteria could more easily
find them at Auschwitz than at other camps.
572.22 -> Mengele was one of more than a dozen
SS medical personnel who conducted
575.88 -> experiments on people imprisoned at
Auschwitz. These doctors saw their
579.42 -> appointment to Auschwitz as an exciting
opportunity to advance their research.
583.02 -> The experiments in the concentration camps
permanently maimed many victims or caused them to
588.3 -> die. In some experiments, death was the intended
outcome for the victims. The medical professionals
594.78 -> who conducted experiments at Auschwitz did not
seek the prisoners’ consent or inform them of
599.52 -> their treatment or possible effects. The types
of experiments conducted at Auschwitz included:
604.11 -> - Testing methods of mass sterilization;
- Inflicting wounds on prisoners or
609 -> infecting them with diseases to study
610.92 -> the effects and test treatments;
- Conducting unnecessary surgeries
614.52 -> and procedures on patients for research
purposes or to train medical professionals;
618.66 -> And Murdering and dissecting prisoners
for anthropological and medical research.
623.16 -> Mengele’s mentor doctor Verschuer may have
arranged Mengele’s assignment to Auschwitz
628.32 -> for the purpose of supporting the research of
the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology,
632.22 -> Human Genetics, and Eugenics.
Throughout his time at Auschwitz,
636.54 -> Mengele sent his colleagues in Germany blood,
body parts, organs, skeletons, and fetuses,
643.2 -> all taken from Auschwitz prisoners.
Mengele collaborated on his colleagues’
647.4 -> research projects by conducting studies
and experiments for them using prisoners.
651.42 -> In addition to his work with the institute,
653.88 -> Mengele also conducted his own experiments
on Auschwitz prisoners hoping to publish
658.2 -> the results and thereby gain the credentials
to qualify for a university professorship.
662.52 -> In the course of his service at Auschwitz,
664.92 -> Mengele organized a research complex
located in a number of barracks.
669.66 -> He chose his staff from among the prisoners who
were medical professionals. Mengele was able to
674.64 -> obtain up-to-date instruments and equipment for
his research and even set up a pathology lab.
679.02 -> Mengele’s own research and the research he
conducted for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
684.06 -> generally focused on how genes develop
into specific physical and mental traits.
689.16 -> When conducted ethically, this is a legitimate and
important field of genetic research. However, the
694.68 -> work of Mengele, Verschuer, and their colleagues
was warped by their belief in a pseudoscientific
699.48 -> theory of race that was fundamental to Nazi
ideology. This theory held that human races
705.66 -> are genetically distinct from each other. It
established a hierarchy of races and stressed that
710.82 -> “inferior” races are genetically more likely
to exhibit negative traits than members of
715.2 -> “superior” races. These negative hereditary traits
supposedly included more than just physical and
720.96 -> mental illnesses and deficiencies. They also
supposedly included socially unacceptable or
725.88 -> immoral behaviors, such as vagrancy, prostitution,
and criminality. According to the false theory of
732.6 -> race, intermarriage between races passed negative
traits to “superior” races and undermined them.
737.94 -> Mengele sought to identify specific
physical and biochemical markers
742.26 -> that could definitively identify
the members of specific races.
746.58 -> Mengele and his colleagues believed that
finding such markers was vitally important
751.14 -> for preserving the supposed racial superiority of
the German people. For Mengele and his colleagues,
756.24 -> the importance of the research justified
conducting harmful and lethal experiments on
760.2 -> people—in this case Auschwitz prisoners—whom
they considered to be racially inferior.
764.58 -> Mengele drew his victims mainly from two ethnic
groups: Roma and Jews. These groups were of
771.84 -> particular interest to biomedical researchers
in Nazi Germany as Nazi ideology considered
776.76 -> both Roma and Jews to be “subhuman” and to pose
a threat to the German “race.” For this reason,
782.28 -> Nazi scientists did not consider medical
ethics to apply to members of these groups.
786.96 -> While Mengele served at Auschwitz-Birkenau,
more than 20,000 Roma were imprisoned there
791.7 -> and hundreds of thousands of Jews arrived
there on transports. Nowhere else in the
796.38 -> world could scientists have access to so
many members of these groups concentrated
800.46 -> in one place. And nowhere else did they have
the power to experiment on human beings in
805.68 -> whatever way they wanted. Mengele commented
to a colleague that it would be a crime not
810.84 -> to take advantage of the opportunities for
human experimentation at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
814.86 -> In addition to choosing Roma as
subjects for his medical experiments,
819 -> Mengele conducted an anthropological study of the
Roma men, women, and children in the Gypsy Camp.
824.52 -> When there was an outbreak of Noma, a gangrene
of the mouth, among Roma children in the camp,
830.1 -> he assigned prisoner physicians to study it. Noma
is a bacterial infection that primarily afflicts
836.64 -> extremely malnourished children. However, Mengele
believed that the Roma children at Auschwitz
841.26 -> suffered from Noma because of their heredity
rather than because of the conditions at the camp.
846.3 -> Several afflicted children were killed
so that their preserved heads and organs
850.32 -> could be sent to the SS Medical Academy
in Graz and other facilities for study.
854.64 -> In the end, the prisoner physicians discovered
how to cure Noma, which was normally fatal.
859.8 -> Nevertheless, all of the children who were cured
were eventually murdered in the gas chambers.
865.14 -> Mengele was particularly interested
in identical twins who in the 1930s,
870.3 -> were a major focus of human genetic
research. Before World War II,
874.38 -> Verschuer and other biomedical researchers used
twins to study the hereditary basis of diseases.
879.96 -> These earlier researchers obtained the consent of
the twins or their parents, but it was difficult
885.54 -> for researchers to enlist many twins for these
studies. At Auschwitz, however, Mengele collected
890.88 -> hundreds of pairs of twins from among the Jews
who arrived there on transports and from among
895.5 -> the Roma No researcher had ever been able to study
and experiment on such a large number of twins.
901.2 -> Mengele ordered his staff to measure and record
every aspect of the twins’ bodies. He drew large
907.38 -> amounts of blood from the twins and sometimes
performed other painful procedures on them.
911.4 -> Such was a case of Renate Guttman.
At Auschwitz, she became #70917,
917.82 -> was separated from her brother and mother and
taken to a hospital where she was measured,
922.56 -> X-rayed and blood was taken from her neck. Once,
she was strapped to a table and cut with a knife.
929.28 -> Another Holocaust survivor
Lorenc Menasche later recalled”:
933.54 -> They also gave us injections all over our
bodies. As a result of these injections,
938.88 -> my sister fell ill. Her neck swelled
up as a result of a severe infection.
943.92 -> They sent her to the hospital and operated on
her without anesthetic in primitive conditions.
948.9 -> The experiments Mengele performed on twins
included unnecessary amputation of limbs,
954.24 -> intentionally infecting one twin with
typhus or some other disease, and
958.5 -> transfusing the blood of one twin into the other.
Witness Vera Alexander described how Mengele sewed
964.2 -> two Romani twins together, back to back, in
a crude attempt to create conjoined twins;
968.76 -> both children died of gangrene after
several days of immense suffering.
973.44 -> Many of the victims died while undergoing these
procedures, and those who survived the experiments
978.54 -> were sometimes killed and their bodies dissected
once Mengele had no further use for them.
982.86 -> Miklós Nyiszli, a prisoner doctor at Auschwitz,
recalled one occasion where Mengele personally
988.86 -> killed fourteen twins in one night by injecting
their hearts with chloroform. If one twin died
994.56 -> from disease, he would kill the other twin to
allow comparative post-mortem reports. After he
1000.56 -> studied the autopsies, Mengele sent some of their
organs to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin.
1005.42 -> When Mengele conducted selections of arriving
Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau,
1010.28 -> he also looked for people with physical
abnormalities. These people included dwarfs,
1015.5 -> people with gigantism, or persons who had
a club foot. His experiments on dwarfs
1021.08 -> and people with physical abnormalities
included taking physical measurements,
1024.8 -> drawing blood, extracting healthy teeth, and
treatment with unnecessary drugs and X-rays.
1030.74 -> After Mengele studied these people, he had
them murdered and then sent their bodies
1035.36 -> to Germany for study by researchers.
Elizabeth Ovitz, a dwarf survivor of
1040.34 -> Mengele’s experiments, later remembered: “It
is impossible to put into words the intolerable
1045.56 -> pain that we suffered, which continued for
many days after the experiments ceased.”
1050.78 -> Mengele also sought out Roma and Jews with
heterochromia, a condition in which a person’s
1056 -> eyes differ from each other in color. One of
Mengele’s colleagues at Keiser Wilhelm Institute
1061.22 -> was particularly interested in this condition. He
killed people with heterochromatic eyes so that
1066.68 -> their eyes could be removed and sent to Berlin
for study. However, Mengele still kept hundreds
1071.42 -> of human eyes pinned to his lab wall ''like
a collection of butterflies” as he called it.
1075.8 -> Most of the victims of Mengele’s
medical experiments were children.
1080.3 -> Mengele was friendly toward the children, he
selected for experiments and they lived in
1084.38 -> separate barracks from the other prisoners and
received somewhat better food and treatment.
1087.74 -> Moshe Offer, a survivor of Mengele’s
experiments, later recalled:
1092.3 -> “
Mengele visited us as a good uncle,
1094.22 -> bringing us chocolate. Before applying the scalpel
or a syringe, he would say: 'Don’t be afraid,
1100.34 -> nothing is going to happen to you. Then he
injected chemical substances and performed
1105.62 -> surgery on my brother Tibi’s spine. After the
experiments he would bring us gifts. In the course
1111.5 -> of later experiments, he had pins inserted into
our heads. The puncture scars are still visible.
1117.5 -> One day he took Tibi away. My brother was gone
for several days. When he was brought back,
1122.72 -> his head was all dressed in
bandages. He died in my arms.”
1128.9 -> Mengele used children for his own experiments
and also to support the work of the Wilhelm
1133.64 -> Keiser Institute. He collaborated in
a study of the change of eye color by
1138.5 -> putting a chemical substance supplied by one
of his colleagues in the eyes of children and
1142.22 -> newborns. The results ranged from irritation
and swelling to blindness and even death.
1148.04 -> The previously mentioned Hungarian doctor
Gisela Perl described the aftermath of
1153.56 -> one brutal killing by Mengele. “He took a
piece of perfumed soap out of his bag and,
1158.66 -> whistling gaily with a smile of deep satisfaction
on his face, he began to wash his hands”.
1163.76 -> A prisoner who was assigned to care for Jewish
twins selected for Mengele’s experiments
1168.62 -> later described how the children reacted
emotionally and physically to their treatment:
1173.42 -> “Samples of blood were collected first from
the fingers and then from the arteries,
1177.38 -> two or three times from the same victims
in some cases. The children screamed and
1182.66 -> tried to cover themselves up to avoid being
touched. The personnel resorted to force. Drops
1188.06 -> were also put into their eyes. Some pairs
of children received drops in both eyes,
1192.08 -> and others in only one. The results of these
practices were painful for the victims. They
1197.06 -> suffered from severe swelling of
the eyelids, a burning sensation”
1200.12 -> The holocaust survivor Alex Dekel reported
witnessing Mengele performing a surgery
1205.16 -> without anesthesia, removing hearts
and stomachs of victims. Yitzhak Ganon,
1210.38 -> a Jewish Auschwitz survivor from northern
Greece deported to Auschwitz at the age of 20,
1215.06 -> reported in 2009 how after Mengele removed
his kidney without anesthesia, he was forced
1220.82 -> to return to work without painkillers.
Mengele also sought out pregnant women,
1225.02 -> on whom he would perform experiments before
sending many of them to the gas chambers.
1229.4 -> The Czech Holocaust survivor Ruth Elias was
pregnant when she was transferred from the
1234.56 -> Theresienstadt ghetto to Auschwitz. She later
recalled: ““I delivered a beautiful big blonde
1240.32 -> girl, but Mengele ordered that my breast be
bound so that, as he said, “We can see how
1246.08 -> long a newborn baby can survive without food””.
After watching her baby suffer for several days,
1251.84 -> a female Czech doctor gave Elias a syringe with
an overdose of morphine to end the child’s agony.
1257.78 -> Another Auschwitz survivor Dr. Olga Lengyel
recalled how after Mengele supervised the birth
1263.66 -> of a child with meticulous care, within an hour
he sent both mother and child to the gas chamber.
1269.12 -> On another occasion Mengele ripped an infant
from its mother`s womb. Having expected twins
1275.42 -> to be born, he then hurled the child into an
oven because it wasn`t a twin as he had hoped.
1280.34 -> In January 1945, as the Soviet Red Army advanced
through western Poland, Mengele fled Auschwitz
1287.06 -> with the rest of the camp’s SS personnel. He spent
the next few months serving at the Gross-Rosen
1292.22 -> concentration camp and its subcamps. In the final
days of the war, he donned a German army uniform
1297.5 -> and joined a military unit which after the
war ended surrendered to US military forces.
1302.66 -> Posing as a German army officer, Mengele
1305.66 -> became a US prisoner of war. However, the
US Army released him in early August 1945,
1311.54 -> unaware that Mengele's name was already
on a list of wanted war criminals.
1315.86 -> From late 1945 until spring 1949, Mengele
worked under a false name as a farmhand near
1323.24 -> Rosenheim in Bavaria and from there he was able
to establish contact with his family. When US war
1328.82 -> crimes investigators learned of Mengele’s crimes
at Auschwitz, they tried to find and arrest him.
1333.68 -> However, based on lies told by Mengele’s family,
the investigators concluded that Mengele was dead.
1340.28 -> The US effort to arrest him
forced Mengele to recognize
1343.58 -> that he was not safe in Germany and with
financial support from his rich family,
1347.24 -> Mengele immigrated to Argentina under
yet another false name in July 1949.
1352.88 -> By 1956, he was well established in Argentina
and felt so safe that he obtained Argentine
1359.72 -> citizenship as José Mengele. In 1959, however,
he learned that West German prosecutors knew
1366.14 -> that he was in Argentina and were seeking his
arrest. Mengele immigrated to Paraguay and
1371.36 -> obtained citizenship there. In May 1960, Israeli
intelligence agents abducted Adolf Eichmann in
1378.02 -> Argentina and took him to Israel to be tried.
Correctly guessing that the Israelis were also
1383.18 -> looking for him, Mengele fled Paraguay.
With support from his family in Germany,
1387.56 -> he spent the rest of his life under an
assumed name near São Paulo in Brazil.
1391.7 -> When his son Rolf visited him there in 1977;
he found an "unrepentant Nazi" who claimed
1398.18 -> he had never personally harmed anyone and
only carried out his duties as an officer.
1402.62 -> On the 7th of February 1979,
Mengele, then 67 years old,
1408.26 -> suffered a stroke and drowned while swimming at
a vacation resort near Bertioga in Brazil. He
1413.78 -> was buried in a suburb of São Paulo under
the assumed name of “Wolfgang Gerhard.”
1418.16 -> Mengele, the most notorious of the Nazi
doctors and one of the most infamous
1423.14 -> figures of the Holocaust, thus eluded arrest
for 34 years and was never brought to justice.
1430.28 -> There were no tears shed for Josef Mengele.
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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWw5LMwM8x8