JOSEF MENGELE
It can be argued that Josef Mengele is one of the most evil humans of all time. Nicknamed the “Angel of Death” Mengele earned this name because of the horrid experimentation that he performed on Jewish twins in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. [1]
Mengele was born into a wealthy, catholic family in Gunzburg, Germany in 1911. He eventually went to school at University of Munich, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, and a PhD in anthropology in 1935. [1] It wasn't until he was working on his medical degree two years later, that Mengele met the individual who ultimately shaped his future career. [2]
Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer with female twins and calipers
After volunteering in the Nazi army (Schutzstaffel) for a few years, Mengele sustained a war injury, and he could no longer serve. He then took a post in the women’s section of Auschwitz; a decision which ultimately lead to immeasurable pain, anguish, and death for the hundreds of twin subjects experimented on by Mengele and the thousands that were sent by him to the gas chambers. [2] A crowd of prisoners are on the Birkenau ramp as the guards make selections for the gas chambers
Mengele’s lab in the Auschwitz Birkenau camp was fitted with modern equipment for its time. Certain inmates were forced to help him with his studies. It was in this lab that Mengele performed his bizarre experiments, hoping that his studies could one day yield enlightening information on human hereditary processes as well as the secret to promoting certain inheritable features of the Aryan race. [1] |
Black and white portrait of Josef Mengele
At the University of Frankfurt’s Institute of Hereditary Biology and Race Research, Mengele was studying under the direction of one of Germany’s top geneticists: Dr. Otmar von Verschuer. [1] He became von Verschuer’s first assistant, and the two worked on a variety of projects even after Mengele received his degree in 1938. von Verschuer had a very strong interest in twins, and he studied them to examine certain hereditary phenomena. [2]
After Mengele graduated from medical school the two mainly worked together in racial courts, which were created under the Nuremberg race laws. These laws required that civilians underwent medical examinations to evaluate racial and hereditary characteristics to identify civilians who were Jewish. von Verschuer and Mengele were considered “racial experts” and distinguished jews vs. non-jews based off of hereditary and physical features. [2]
Train tracks leading to the entrance gate to Auschwitz Birkenau
In 1943 Mengele acted as the chief physician the women’s section of the Auschwitz concentration camp. His job duties were twofold: to select prisoners to be put to death in the gas chambers, and to perform medical experimentation on twin subjects. Unlike many doctors working for the SS at the time, separate accounts have stated that Mengele appeared to enjoy the act of delegating prisoners to the gas chambers. He consistently met and exceeded his quota for sending prisoners to their death. Many prisoners were mystified by Mengele, as he would act incredibly kind and friendly with the children, only to later experiment and sometimes even murder them. [1]
Block 10, where Mengele's lab was located in Auschwitz Birkenau
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The reason Mengele was so interested in working with twins was because one twin could be used as a control, while the other could be subject to the experimentation. The experimentation often resulted in the death of the prisoner who underwent the procedures. When this happened, the control twin was also killed via lethal injection so Mengele could compare biopsies to see the results of the experimentation. [1]
Procedures included injections of various chemicals, substances, and toxins into prisoners, as well as injections of dye into eyes, blood transfusions between twins, and in some cases, amputation and experimental surgery. [1] [2] In addition, there were an estimated 75 subjects exposed to increasing voltage shocks to determine if there was a limit of human endurance. Mengele even went as far as forcing male and female twins to copulate to determine if they would have twin offspring. Arguably the worst experiment that Mengele ever performed was a documented case where two fraternal twin children had their backs and wrists surgically grafted together in an attempt to create conjoined twins. [3]
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An illustration of Noma, a disease Mengele sometimes inflicted on his subjects via vaccination
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Once Mengele was done analyzing the results of his experimentation, he would send his results to von Verschuer, as he was overseeing the project. Additionally, Mengele would sometimes send samples such as human eyes, human heads, and blood samples to von Verschuer for further analysis. [2]
In 1945, the war was coming to a close and Mengele knew that for Germany the war was lost. His dreams of being a hero in the academic community were crushed. This prompted him to flee days before his camp was liberated. He escaped to South America, where he lived as a fugitive and a war criminal. He drowned in 1979, suffering from a stroke as he was swimming in the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil, where he was buried under a false name. It wasn’t until his body was exhumed and identified in 1985 that anyone had any closure of what happened to the so called “Angel of Death”. [1]
In 1945, the war was coming to a close and Mengele knew that for Germany the war was lost. His dreams of being a hero in the academic community were crushed. This prompted him to flee days before his camp was liberated. He escaped to South America, where he lived as a fugitive and a war criminal. He drowned in 1979, suffering from a stroke as he was swimming in the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil, where he was buried under a false name. It wasn’t until his body was exhumed and identified in 1985 that anyone had any closure of what happened to the so called “Angel of Death”. [1]
A Chart Showing the Nuremberg Laws |
The freedom of the prisoners of Auschwitz was clearly quite diminished, seeing as they were forced to live in a camp where they received inadequate amounts of food and intolerable living conditions. That being said, Mengele’s twin studies took this lack of freedom one step further, by removing the prisoner’s consent to medical procedure. This concept of unethical medical treatment is part of a host of unjust medical procedures which lead to the creation of the “Nuremberg Code”. Researchers and doctors around the world are bound by this code, which necessitates multiple stipulations. Some of these stipulations include consent from the individual, beneficence to humanity, and an avoidance of unnecessary suffering along with other guidelines to keep scientific participants safe from harm. [4]
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