Dr. Mengele and Medical Experiments
Faith Bradshaw, Lovely Lo, Grace Hovis
Dr. Mengele's Early Life
Josef Mengele was born on March 16, 1911 in Gunzburg. He was described by those who knew him in his youth as a serious student with intelligence and ambition. In 1935, he got a PhD. in physical anthropology. Two years later, he became the assistant of Dr. Otmar von Verschuer, a widely known researcher of twins. In 1937 he joined the Nazi party, a year later he join the SS (Schutzstaffel). 1940 he received his medical degree and drafted into the army and volunteered into the medical service of the Armed SS. Three years later Mengele was wounded in the war and began to work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, directed by his former mentor. April of 1943, he received a promotion to the rank of SS captain. During his time as captain in concentration camps, he started his career at Auschwitz as the medical officer responsible for “Gypsy camps”; several weeks after its liquidation, he was accommodated the position of Chief Camp Physician.
Reign of Terror
Most commonly known as the “Angel of Death” or “White Angel”, Josef Mengele was the infamous doctor of Auschwitz. Mostly known for his role as the selector on the platform, who on whim could send a person to the gas chambers or to the camps. A college of Mengele’s, Dr. Hans Munch believed Mengele had somewhat of a privileged position due to him being wounded in war and his collection of medals he had been given, especially the iron cross. Mengele chose to go to Auschwitz to continue his medical research and later it was found that he received finances for his work. Dr. Mengele had a fascination with twins, dwarfs, and heterochromia, a condition in which an individual's two irises differ in coloration. Less famously, he documented in the progression of the disease Noma, a type of gangrene which destroys the mucous membrane of the mouth and other tissues. Mengele fully endorsed the doctrine of National Socialist racial theory and engaged in a wide variety of experiments which aimed to illustrate the lack of resistance among Jews or Roma to various diseases.
The Doctors Experiments
Dr. Mengele tortured Jewish and gypsy children, along with many others. Performing both physical and psychological experiments. Some of the inhuman experiments he conducted include:
- Putting "patients" into pressure chambers
- Removed and collected limbs and organs
- Killing children with oil and evipan injections
- Rubbed ground glass and saw dust into wounds
- Performed surgeries without anesthesia
- impossible blood transfusions
- isolation endurance
- Tested reactions to various stimuli
- Performed sex change operations
- Incestuous impregnations
- Collected the eyes of his victims
- Attempting to change eye color by injecting chemicals into the iris
- Sewed two gypsy children together to create siames twins
- Dissected his dead patients
A Wanted Man
Mengele hoped to use the research he gathered at Auschwitz to help produce his habiliation, which was required for admission to a university faculty as a professor in German-speaking lands. This was never completed. In January 1945 the soviet army moved through western Poland and Mengele fled from Auschwitz. He stayed at Gross-Rosen concentration camp for a few weeks then headed towards the west to avoid being captured by the soviets. Immediatly after the war Mengele was in US custody, but was released due to not knowing he was a wanted man. From 1945 until 1949 under false papers Mengele worked as a farmhand in Bavaria, during this time his family was helping with his escape to South America. Later Mengele settled in Agentina, in 1959 he then moved to Paraguay and finally to Brazil due to the warrant for his arrest. In 1979 Mengele suffered a stroke while swimming and drowned. He was buried in a suburb of Sao Pãolo under the fictive name “Wolfgang Gerhard.”.
Victim
Life is a bad dream
Filled with pain and suffering
What have I done wrong
Forgiving Dr. Mengele Trailer
Citations
- Trueman, Chris N. "Josef Mengele." The History Learning Site. History Learning Site, 22 May 2015. Web. 2 Feb. 2016
- "Angel of Death ." The Doctor: Josef Mengele. 2015-17 Louis Bülow Privacy, 2013. Web. 5 Feb. 2016
- Levine, Jason. "Josef Mengele." Jewish Virtual Library. 2016 American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, 2016. Web. 5 Feb. 2016