With rare exceptions such as Hitler and Himmler, no person has been so denigrated as the “Nazi devil” in recent decades. Dr. Josef Mengele. The legend of Mengele became the basis for two short stories, on which Hollywood made two popular films: "Marathon Man" by William Goldman and "The Boys From Brazil" by Ira Levin.
In the latest film, Gregory Peck plays ruthlessly evil doctor Mengele, who cloned dozens of baby Hitlers as part of a diabolical Latin American conspiracy.
In countless newspapers and magazines articles dr. Mengele was systematically accused of murdering 400,000 people in gas chambers during his tenure as chief physician at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943 and 1944. The man nicknamed the "Angel of Death" allegedly carried out gruesome "experiments" on Jewish victims while reveling in his sadistic atrocities.
For example, U.S. News and World Report on June 24, 1985, stated that he rejoiced "giving candy to children whom he, for fun, sent alive to crematorium ovens while listening to Mozart and Wagner." The Washington Post wrote on March 8, 1985 that Mengele "routinely sent babies into ovens alive" and "knocked pregnant women down and trampled them until they miscarried."
The media campaign reached its climax in June 1985, when Mengele's name was repeated many times daily both in the pages of the press and on the evening television news. Mengele's face stared out from the cover of the gossip-loving weekly People. Years of persecution subsided when an international team of forensic experts identified remains exhumed in Brazil as those of Dr Josef Mengele. Testimony from relatives and friends confirmed that Mengele drowned in February 1979.
The basic claim that Mengele "gassed 400,000 Jews at Auschwitz" is a lie based in part on distortions. It is true that, along with other camp doctors, Dr. Mengele examined new arrivals to the camp.
Holocaust “exterminators” (“exterminists”) claim that all Jews arriving at Auschwitz who were unable to work were immediately killed in gas chambers. The figure of 400,000 is a rough estimate of the number of disabled Jews who arrived in Birkenau in 1943-1944, when Mengele was chief physician.
Indeed, many disabled Jews were interned in the camp. Official German records, consistent with other evidence, state that a very significant proportion of the Jews who arrived in Birkenau in 1943-1944 were disabled. (See G. Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p. 125, and A. Butz, Hoax, p. 124).
Many Jews survived the war thanks to treatment in the camp isolation ward under the direction of Dr. Mengele. One of these patients was Otto Frank, the father of the famous Anne Frank. The sick Otto was transferred to the camp hospital. where he remained until the entry of Soviet troops into Auschwitz in January 1945.
For example, Time magazine wrote on June 24, 1985, that Mengele "had a penchant for sophistication and gallantry: after sending a pregnant Jewish doctor to Krakow to do research for him, Mengele sent her flowers on the occasion of the birth of her son." Camp personnel who committed crimes were subject to severe persecution. For example, the Buchenwald doctor Waldemar Hoven was sentenced to death by an SS court for killing prisoners.
International columnist Geoffrey Hart told readers that he doubts the "Monster Mengele" stories peddled in the media... As a professional historian, I am prejudiced against many anecdotes commonly accepted as fact," Hart wrote. "My Experience as a Historian indicates that most of them are myths, deliberately concocted... I do not believe that he killed women with blows to the throat with his boot. This kind of thing was done long before historians began to sift out the truth from the lies about Dr. Mengele." (The Washington Times, July 9, 1985)
And if Hart deliberately shielded Mengele, then how can one evaluate his views on the Holocaust in general? What about his support for the popular Holocaust tale, announced at Nuremberg, about the Nazis producing soap from the corpses of Jews? What about the tales of gassing in Dachau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Auschwitz?
Witnesses claim that Dr. Mengele performed medical research operations on Auschwitz prisoners. However, similar “research” conducted by the United States both during and after the Second World War did not create any resonance. For example, American military doctors infected blacks with syphilis to develop new ways to treat sexually transmitted diseases.
And in the 1950s, CIA-funded psychiatric experiments included administering LSD, sleep deprivation, mass shock therapy, and attempts to brainwash hospital patients without their consent or knowledge.
One victim, Louis Weinstein, is described as "a human guinea pig, a miserable, pathetic man with no memory, no life." The US government was forced by court to pay damages to Winstein and eight other patients. (The Washington Post, August 1, 1985, editorial).
An informative article about Dr. Mengele by New York University professor Robert Lay Lifton appeared on July 21, 1985 in The New York Times Magazine. The lengthy article began with the statement that "Mengele has long been the focus of all that is the cult of the demonic personality. He is represented as the embodiment of absolute evil ..." But, as Lifton explains, he was not "neither superhuman nor superhuman." depicted in the media.
As a young man, Mengele was popular, intelligent and serious. IN within three years of service, mainly for eastern front, he proved himself a brave and diligent soldier and received five decorations, including the Iron Crosses First and Second Class. As chief physician of Auschwitz-Birkenau, he was part of a large staff of doctors, most of whom were Jews.
Lifton notes that the "witness" testimony about Mengele, as well as the published materials from the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, are riddled with errors. For example, although Mengele was one of many doctors who made decisions about the working capacity of Jews newly arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Jewish prisoners at the trial insisted that Mengele always made the selection alone. To the judge's comment: "Mengele could not have been there all the time," the witness replied: "According to my observations, always. Night and day."
Other former prisoners described Mengele as having a "very Aryan appearance" or a "tall blond man", although in reality he was a medium-height brunette.
Lifton writes that among the many myths about Mengele are stories that he advised Paraguayan President Stroessner on how to destroy indigenous people Paraguay, and that he succeeded in organizing a successful drug trade with former Nazis.
Significant information about the character and qualities of Dr. Mengele from his contemporaries during his work at Auschwitz is contained in the “Evaluation of SS Captain Dr. Josef Mengele,” dated August 19, 1944, prepared by the Auschwitz medical department. (The original is kept in the Berlin Central Archives). The report is very flattering:
Dr. Mengele has an open, honest, integrity character. He is absolutely reliable, straightforward and purposeful. He does not show any weaknesses of character, bad passions or inclinations. His emotional and physical makeup is outstanding. During his service in the Auschwitz concentration camp, he used his practical and theoretical knowledge to prevent several serious epidemics.
With prudence and persistent energy, and often under the most difficult conditions, he carried out the most difficult tasks manuals. He has shown himself capable of handling any situation. In addition, he used his meager personal time to improve his knowledge in the field of anthropology. His tactful and moderate behavior is characteristic of a good soldier. Because of his behavior, he is especially respected by his comrades. He treats his subordinates with absolute fairness and the necessary severity, without allowing any exclusivity or preference.
With all your behavior and attitude towards work dr. Mengele demonstrates an absolutely integral and mature attitude to life. He is a Catholic. His manner of speech is spontaneous, free, persuasive and lively.
The personal assessment ends with the remark that Mengele “made an invaluable contribution to the fight against typhus in Auschwitz.” She lists the awards he has received for his bravery and selfless service and concludes that he is worthy of promotion.
After fleeing to South America To avoid trial, Mengele lived for 10 years in Argentina and Paraguay under his own name. There is no evidence that he was ashamed or hid anything about what he did at Auschwitz. On the contrary, in a letter to his son Ralph, he wrote: “I have not the slightest reason to justify or be ashamed of my decisions or actions.” (Time, July 1, 1985).
Among his personal papers found by Brazilian police in June 1985 was a scattered semi-biographical essay entitled in Latin: "Fiat Lux" - "Let there be Light", apparently written by Mengele while he was living on a farm in Bavaria immediately after the war. The contents of the essay have not yet been published. (The New York Times, June 23, 1985).
Mengele spoke occasionally about his past with Mr. and Mrs. Stammer, the couple with whom he lived for 13 years on their farm near Sao Paulo, Brazil. Mr. Stammer recalls that Mengele said that the Jews were an alien social group working against Germany, which the Germans wanted to remove from their country. Mengele repeatedly insisted that he had not committed any crimes, but, on the contrary, was the victim of the greatest injustice. (New York Times, June 14, 1985; Baltimore Sun, June 14, 1985).
IN last years Mengele lived with an Austrian couple, Wolfram and Liselotte Bossert, on their farm in Brazil. In the interview, the Bosserts expressed great admiration and great affection for their humble guest. In response to a question about Mengele's alleged crimes at Auschwitz, Wolfram Bossert said: "I admire him as a person with exuberance positive qualities, and not the crimes charged to him, the reality of which I strongly doubt." (Washington Post, June 10, 1985).
An old friend of Dr. Mengele and the Mengele family in Germany, Hans Saddlemeier, told this reporter:
“I can tell you what Mengele did, what he did in Auschwitz, what he did after Auschwitz, but you won’t believe me. The newspapers don’t want to print the truth because it’s not in the interests of the Jews... I don’t want to talk about Mengele’s stories, journalists wrote so many lies that were spread by the Jewish press...” Clearly outraged, he did not finish his sentence. (New York Times, June 13, 1985).
Mark Weber
The Journal of Historical Review, Fall 1985 (Vol. 6, No. 3), pages 377 ff.
P.S. While in Auschwitz, the Jewish woman Sadovskaya was seriously injured at work and lost her ability to work. Here's what she said:
"Since I could no longer work, I was afraid that I would be sent to the gas chamber. Everyone knew that everyone who was unable to work was sent to the gas chamber."
In the end, Sadovskaya was sent - no, not to the gas chamber, which she was so afraid of and what was sure to happen according to legend - but to the camp hospital, where she remained until she recovered. Seven days later she was sent to Dr. Mengele himself. He allegedly began to conduct very painful experiments on Sadovskaya; She did not specify which ones exactly. As she claimed, these experiences left her crippled.
In this case, according to legend, she certainly should have been sent to the gas chamber, since now she was not only incapacitated, but also unsuitable for experiments, as she herself stated. But then another “miracle” happened: they began to look after her again until she finally recovered.
Just think about it all: a Jewish prisoner from Auschwitz had a serious accident and was sent to a hospital where she was cared for for a week. Then the SS doctor began performing unpleasant surgical operations on her, after which she made a full recovery.
This clearly proves that the SS did everything possible (including surgery) to restore this woman to health and ability to work. However, at the post-war inquiry, Sadovskaya tried to turn everything upside down: they allegedly did not treat her, but tried to kill her.
Please also note that the investigator who conducted this inquiry in 1959 did not even try to find out what kind of experiment (that is, surgery) was performed on her. This once again confirms the childish gullibility of these investigators.
…
1285. Staatsanwaltschaft beim LG Frankfurt (Main), ibid. (note 462); Bd. 1, S. 132.
1286. Copy of witness statements dated August 30; there, Bd. 2, S. 223ff.
1287. Letter from the Auschwitz Committee, October 20, 1958; there, Bd. 2, S. 226.
1288. Ibid., Bd. 2, S. 250.
1289. Interrogation dated November 7, 1958; there, Bd. 2, S. 279f.
1290. Interrogation dated November 14, 1958; there, Bd. 2, S. 283.
1291. Ibid., Bd. 3, S. 437R.
1292. See the verdict at the Frankfurt trial, ibid. (note 1041).
1293. Interrogation of March 5, 1959 in Stuttgart, ibid., Bd. 3, S. 571-576.
1294. Interrogation of March 6, 1959, ibid., S. 578-584.
1295. Ibid., Bd. 5, S. 657, 684, 676, 678f.
1296. Ibid., S. 684.
P.P.S. The creator of the “myth of Mengele” was his assistant, the Hungarian Jew Dr. Miklos Nyisli, according to whose testimony 22 million people were killed in Auschwitz. And the last point: arbitrary beatings and murders of prisoners in the camps. Upon entering service in the concentration camp, each SS man had to sign a statement with the following content:
“I know that only the Fuhrer has power over the life and death of the enemy of the state. I have no right to physically harm or kill an enemy of the state (prisoner) ... I know that I will be immediately held accountable if I violate this obligation.”
State Archive of the Russian Federation. 7021–107-11, S. 30.
In 1979, a certain Wolfgang Gerhard, a quiet 67-year-old German emigrant who settled here after the Second World War, drowned off the coast of Brazilian Sao Paulo. The old man was buried in a local cemetery and soon forgotten about him. However, 7 years later, Wolfgang’s neighbors accidentally received folders with his archive. Opening the papers, the neighbors gasped - these were descriptions of inhumane experiments on children. Their author was the most wanted Nazi criminal Josef Mengele, a doctor whose medical experiments included thousands of Auschwitz prisoners. Just think: the monster who created a real hell on earth, sending hundreds of people to the next world every day, lived in a real paradise on the Brazilian coast for 35 post-war years. This is the very case when there is no talk of justice.
Josef Mengele was the eldest son in the family. Known fact, the child is formed in the image and likeness of the parents. Looking at them, he acquires certain traits and qualities that will be fully revealed in adulthood. This is what happened with Joseph. His father paid practically no attention to the children, and his mother was a despotic fury prone to sadism. So the question arises, how should a child grow up when the father pays practically no attention, and the mother does not skimp on beatings at the slightest disobedience or poor grades? The result was a brilliant doctor and a cruel sadist.
Josef was barely 32 years old when he entered service at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The first thing he did was eliminate the typhus epidemic. In a peculiar way, of course: Josef ordered the complete burning of several barracks where the disease was noticed. Effective, to say the least.
But the main thing that Mengele became famous for was his interest in genetics. The Nazi doctor's stumbling block was the twins. Perform experiments without anesthetics? Easily. Dissect still living babies? Exactly what is needed. You can also sew twins together and change their eye color using chemicals, develop a substance that causes infertility, and so on. The list of inhumane experiments can be continued endlessly.
Another question arises, why was the doctor from hell most interested in the twins? Let's go back to basics. Even in pre-war Germany, the authorities noticed that the birth rate was decreasing and infant mortality was increasing; this pattern was true for representatives of the Aryan nation. Other races and nationalities living in Germany had no problems with fertility at all. Then the German government, frightened by the prospect of the extinction of the “chosen” race, decided to do something. Joseph was one of the scientists tasked with increasing the number of Aryan children and reducing their mortality. Scientists have focused on artificially breeding twins or triplets. However, the offspring of the Aryan race had to have blond hair and blue eyes - hence Mengele's attempts to change the eye color of children through various chemicals.
First, the experimental children underwent careful selection. The assistants of the 'Angel of Death' measured the height of the children and recorded their similarities and differences. The children then met Josef in person. He infected them with typhus, gave them blood transfusions, amputated limbs and transplanted various organs. Mengele wanted to track how the identical organisms of twins would react to the same intervention in them. Then the experimental subjects were killed, after which the doctor carried out a thorough analysis of the corpses, examining the internal organs.
Mengele himself believed that he was acting for the benefit of science.
Naturally, many legends have developed around such a colorful character. One of them, for example, says that Dr. Mengele’s office was decorated with the eyes of children. However, these are just fairy tales. Josef could simply spend hours looking at body parts in test tubes or spending time doing anatomical research, dissecting bodies, wearing an apron stained with blood. Colleagues who worked with Josef noted that they hated their jobs, and in order to somehow relax, they got completely drunk, which could not be said about the ‘Angel of Death’. It seemed that his work not only did not tire him, but even gave him great pleasure.
Now many are wondering whether the doctor was an ordinary sadist, covering up his atrocities with scientific activity. According to the recollections of his colleagues, Mengele often took part in executions himself: he beat people, threw them into pits with lethal gas.
When the war ended, a manhunt was announced for Joseph, but he managed to escape. He spent the rest of his days in Brazil, eventually taking up medicine again. He made his living mainly by performing abortions, which were officially prohibited by the country's authorities. Retribution overtook him only nearly 35 years after the war.
The most amazing thing is that the story of “Doctor Death” does not end there. A few years ago, Argentine historian Jorge Camaraza wrote a book in which he claimed that Mengele took up fertility experiments again after escaping from justice. As an example, the researcher cited strange story the Brazilian town of Candido Godoy, where the birth rate of twins suddenly jumped sharply. Every fifth woman in labor gave birth to twins, and blonde ones at that! Kamarasa was sure that this was Mengele’s machinations. Local residents really remembered the strange veterinarian Rudolf Weiss, who came to the city to treat livestock, but examined not only animals, but also people. Whether Doctor Death has anything to do with this phenomenon is not known for certain.
During the war, the name of Josef Mengele (photo in the article) was not known to many people, so he managed to avoid punishment and quietly leave Germany after the war. Much later, he became the symbol of a killer doctor who performed insane experiments on prisoners. Later it became clear that Mengele was not a loner - he fulfilled the requests of other doctors and scientists, including world-famous ones.
The biography of Joseph Mengele began in 1911 in the German state of Bavaria. He was born into the family of an ordinary farmer. The father of the future fascist executioner founded the agricultural equipment company Karl Mengele and Sons. The mother was raising children. Joseph had two younger brothers - Karl Jr. and Alois.
The wealthy Mengele family began to support Hitler immediately after he came to power, because the Fuhrer defended the interests of those peasants on whom the family's well-being depended. Joseph's father quickly joined the party, and when Hitler came to the city, he spoke at Karl Mengele's factory. When the Nazis came to power, the enterprise received good order.
As a child, Josef was quite curious, ambitious and talented child. One day he told his parents that one day they would see his name in an encyclopedia. He did well at school and was interested in art and sports. After graduating from school, the young man refused to follow in his father’s footsteps and decided to get a medical education. At first he wanted to become a dentist, but then he found it too boring. Studied at Munich and Military Universities.
During his student years he joined the Steel Helmet organization. Formally, it was not a Nazi movement. The group members were ultra-patriots and held conservative views; there were also monarchists. Soon, the loosely organized street troops of the Steel Helmet were absorbed into the stormtroopers.
In the ranks of the SA, Joseph Mengele had not yet thought of conducting experiments on people. He did not stay there long. Street fights did not inspire the intelligent young doctor, so he soon left the organization, citing poor health. After receiving his diploma (the young man studied anthropology at the university), Mengele began working at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene.
There he became an assistant to physician Othmar von Verschuer, who was considered an authority in the field of genetics. The doctor specialized in twins, genetic abnormalities and hereditary diseases. Under Verschuer's guidance, Joseph Mengele defended his doctoral dissertation. He was then less than thirty years old. Mengele showed great promise.
The doctor Joseph Mengele had to join the SS and the party for career advancement. This often happens in totalitarian states. At the end of the thirties, Mengele first joined the NSDAP, and then the SS. In 1940, when the war was already in full swing, he was drafted into the army. Mengele did not stay in the Wehrmacht for long. He transferred to the racial medical battalion of the Waffen-SS.
The doctor did not take direct part in the fighting. He was soon transferred to the SS Main Directorate for Settlement Affairs. Mengele's duties included assessing Poles for suitability for further Germanization according to the racial standards of the Nazi state. After the start of the war with Soviet Union the future Doctor Death was transferred to an SS Panzer Division, where he served as a medic. He was awarded the Iron Cross for saving two tank crews from a tank.
In the summer of 1942, the service ended. In the Rostov-on-Don area, Josef Mengele was seriously wounded. After recovery, he was declared unfit for service. With the rank of captain, the doctor returned to Germany, where he continued to work in the SS department on settlement issues.
During this period, Dr. Josef Mengele's life took a sharp turn. His longtime mentor became head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics and Heredity. The Kaiser had no connection with this institution. The institute was founded long before the start of the war with money from the John Rockefeller Foundation.
The institution dealt with issues of eugenics, which was extremely popular throughout the world after the First World War. Eugenics is the science of selection, ways to improve hereditary qualities. This aroused great interest of the then Nazi state. With the coming to power of the fascists, the institute was restructured according to their ideology.
It was Verschuer who suggested that Joseph Menge work in a concentration camp for the benefit of German science. In 1942, a decision was made to move all Jews from the occupied territory to camps in Poland. The Germans had already decided to completely get rid of all Jews, so they saw nothing reprehensible in experimenting on living subjects, who were doomed to die in any case.
The scientific director convinced Joseph Mengele that the camps offered enormous opportunities for making scientific breakthroughs. After this, the doctor wrote a statement to the chief physician of Auschwitz about his desire to serve in the concentration camp. The request was granted. Mengele was appointed senior doctor of the gypsy camp on the territory of Auschwitz. He later became the senior doctor of a large camp in the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.
His duties included inspecting arriving prisoners. Based on the results of the inspections, the commission decided who was fit to work for the benefit of the camp and would remain alive for some time, and who was too sick, old or weak for backbreaking work. The second group immediately went to the gas chambers. The management did not have much confidence in the workers, so Mengele had to make sure that the workers on duty did not steal valuables that the arrivals had with them.
He had permission for research, that is, he could leave any prisoners for experiments. The experiments of the doctor Joseph Mengele were terrifying. The doctor's subjects had some privileges, for example, they received improved nutrition and were exempt from hard work. People selected for experiments could not be sent to gas chambers.
At the very beginning of his work, Joseph Mengele “saved” the camp from the epidemic - he immediately sent a batch of gypsies to the gas chamber, among whom the sick were found. Later he got rid of a party of women in the same way. If Mengele knew how to stop the epidemic, he would have conducted experiments on these people.
It was impossible to predict the consequences of Josef Mengele's experiments. No one also knew how long it would last. Often, during the experiments, experimental people became sick or crippled, so Mengele completely lost interest in them. Everything depended on the physical condition of the victim. If the subject did not suffer severe damage, he could be transferred to regular prisoners.
“Rescue” could only happen if the clients of the Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele did not need new people. During the war, Verschuer received from his ward a huge number of reports, blood samples, skeletons and internal organs prisoners. Mengele also actively collaborated with Adolf Butenandt. This is one of the world's largest biochemists, laureate Nobel Prize, a distinguished researcher of sex hormones. Butenandt developed a substance that was supposed to improve the quality of the blood of the military, their resistance to the effects of cold and altitude. This required liver preparations, which were supplied to the scientist by Doctor Death.
Josef Mengele did not suffer any punishment for his experiments. The same applies to the scientists with whom he collaborated. Verschuer became one of the most prominent geneticists and avoided denazification, and Butenandt headed the Max Planck Society. It was the most influential and prestigious German organization. Only closer to the 2000s, organizations that were associated with Mengele made official apologies to the victims of the experiments.
The exact number of victims of Dr. Josef Mengele is difficult to calculate. Almost all documents were destroyed either by the doctor himself, or by the retreating SS troops, or by the customers. Mengele was responsible not only for the victims of the experiments, but also for the murdered disabled prisoners.
The doctor was not at all a psychopath, as one might assume, although Josef Mengele's experiments were crazy. He personally visited his subjects and treated the little ones to chocolates. He asked himself to call his children “Uncle Mengele.” This struck people most of all, judging by the recollections of those who managed to survive. Doctor Death was kind to children, courteous, forced little prisoners to go to kindergarten, organized by him, although he well understood that most of the wards would die.
Mengele's subjects of interest were people with genetic abnormalities and twins. The most exciting moment for him is the arrival of a new batch of prisoners. He personally examined the newcomers, looking for anything unusual. The trains also arrived at night, so he demanded that those on duty immediately wake him up if there was anything “interesting.”
A laboratory was built for the doctor near one of the crematoria. The laboratory was equipped with the most modern equipment. Then the party set the task of raising the birth rate to science. The goal was to increase the likelihood of twins and triplets, of course, if the children were of “pure blood.” Josef Mengele's experiments were terrible. He found out how twins react to the same intervention. At the same time, he had about two hundred pairs at his disposal. Only in Auschwitz could such unique conditions for his work be created.
Mengele and the Ovitz family also became interested. Before the war, Romanian Jews were traveling musicians. What saved their lives was that large family both dwarfs and children of normal height were born. This interested Mengele extraordinarily. He immediately transferred the family to his part of the camp and completely freed them from forced labor.
Over time, the family became the favorites of Josf Mengele. He visited prisoners and was always in good mood. Over time, camp staff and prisoners noticed this. A close relationship developed between the doctor and the subjects. He called them after the seven dwarfs from the cartoon about Snow White.
Josef Mengele's experiments on people have almost reached a dead end. The doctor simply did not know what to do with this family. He took all kinds of tests from them: blood, hair and teeth. The doctor became attached to the experimental subjects. He brought toys and sweets to the youngest, and joked with the older ones. The whole family survived. After their release from the concentration camp, they said that they were “saved by the will of the devil.”
In January 1945, Mengele left Auschwitz amid the roar of Red Army artillery. All materials were ordered to be destroyed, but the doctor took the most valuable things with him. USSR soldiers entered Auschwitz on January 27. They discovered the bodies of executed prisoners. Mengele was sent to a camp in Silesia, where experiments were carried out in the preparation of bacteriological warfare. But it was no longer possible to stop the advance of the Red Army.
Mengele was captured by the Americans, he was captured near Nuremberg. What saved him was that he did not have the typical Nazi blood type tattoo under his arm. At one time, he managed to convince his superiors that there was no point in this, because a professional doctor would in any case do an analysis before starting a transfusion. He was soon released. He changed his name to be on the safe side and became Fritz Hollman.
Josef Mengele was included in the list of war criminals compiled by a UN commission. The list was distributed throughout the camps for Wehrmacht soldiers, but not all Allied officers studied it carefully, so the doctor could not be found. Old friends provided the doctor with false documents and sent him to the village, where they were unlikely to look for him. Mengele lived in spartan surroundings. The owners remembered him as a man who ate everything on the table and drank a liter of milk. They even sympathized with him, because Joseph was forced to hide.
In 1946, a trial began against doctors who conducted experiments on people in concentration camps. But Josef Mengele was not in the dock, although his name was repeatedly mentioned in the case file. They did not actively search for him because they believed that the doctor had died or committed suicide in last days war. His wife also claimed that he was dead.
At this time, Mengele even went to the USSR occupation zone to return some of the records lost during the advance of the Red Army. Three years later, the Nazi doctor decided to flee their country. He used the cover of the Red Cross to emigrate to Argentina. Then the doctor took the name of a certain Helmut Gregor. At the same time, in Argentina he lived for some time under his real name and surname. From time to time, Mengele even visited European countries to meet with his wife and son, who refused to leave Germany.
In the fifties, he began to have problems with the law in Argentina. A former Nazi doctor was questioned over illegal activities after a girl died due to an abortion. The doctor moved to Paraguay under the name Jose Mengele. Because of his carelessness, he found himself on the radar of those who were hunting the Nazis. In 1959, the process of extradition of a war criminal began in Germany. By this time, the former Nazi doctor had already moved to Paraguay.
A few months later, with the help of friends who sympathized with the Nazis, he moved to Brazil. There he got a job on a farm under the name of his friend Wolfgang Gerhard. At the turn of the fifties and sixties, Mengele successfully lay low. In recent years, the doctor's health has deteriorated. He suffered from hypertension and suffered a stroke a few days before his death. Josef Mengele died while swimming in the ocean in 1979.
A Nazi doctor who conducted experiments on people was buried in Brazil under a false name. At the same time, articles appeared in various newspapers every now and then with information that Joseph Mengele was seen in different parts light alive. In the eighties, there was a new interest in the affairs of the Nazis, it again became a topic of interest to everyone, the name Mengele was again often mentioned. In addition to Israel and Germany, the Americans joined the search. Several countries offered rewards for information about the doctor’s whereabouts, public organization and popular newspapers.
In 1985, a search was carried out in the house of one of the doctor's old friends. Correspondence with the fugitive and information about his death were discovered. At the request of German authorities, Brazilian police interviewed one of the local residents who knew where Mengele was buried. The body was exhumed that same year. The study gave quite high probability that it was Joseph Mengele who was buried there.
The identification process, however, took a long time. Only in 1992 was it possible to prove that the remains actually belonged to the criminal. Up until this point, information appeared in the newspapers every now and then that the doctor from Auschwitz faked his death, but in reality continued to hide in one of the Latin American countries.
The story of Josef Mengele has become the basis of many documentaries and discussions. This is a war criminal who has done terrible things. At the same time, many documentary programs (for example, “Mysteries of the Century. Doctor Death Joseph Mengele” with Sergei Medvedev) admit that he achieved truly phenomenal results as a doctor. For example, in a small town in southern Brazil, where Mengele continued his experiments on twins, 10% of the population are Aryan-looking twins. By ethnic type, these people were more like Europeans than the local population.
Now many are wondering whether Joseph Mengele was a simple sadist who, in addition to his scientific work, enjoyed watching people suffer. Those who worked with him said that Mengele, to the surprise of many of his colleagues, sometimes himself administered lethal injections to test subjects, beat them and threw capsules of lethal gas into the cells, watching as the prisoners died.
On the territory of the Auschwitz concentration camp there is big pond, where the unclaimed ashes of prisoners burned in the crematorium ovens were dumped. The rest of the ashes were transported by wagon to Germany, where they were used as soil fertilizers. The same carriages carried new prisoners for Auschwitz, who were personally greeted upon arrival by a tall, smiling young man who was barely 32 years old. This was the new Auschwitz doctor, Josef Mengele, who, after being wounded, was declared unfit for service in the active army. He appeared with his retinue in front of newly arrived prisoners to select “material” for his monstrous experiments. The prisoners were stripped naked and lined up along which Mengele walked, every now and then pointing at suitable people with its immutable stack. He decided who would be immediately sent to the gas chamber, and who could still work for the benefit of the Third Reich. Death is to the left, life is to the right. Sickly-looking people, old people, women with infants - Mengele, as a rule, sent them to the left with a careless movement of a stack squeezed in his hand.
Former prisoners, when they first arrived at the station to enter the concentration camp, remembered Mengele as smart, well-groomed man with a kind smile, in a well-fitted and ironed dark green tunic and a cap, which he wore slightly on one side; black boots polished to perfect shine. One of the Auschwitz prisoners, Krystyna Zywulska, would later write: “He looked like a film actor - a sleek, pleasant face with regular features. Tall, slender...”. For his smile and pleasant, courteous manners, which in no way correlated with his inhuman experiences, the prisoners nicknamed Mengele the “Angel of Death.” He conducted his experiments on people in block no.
10. “No one ever came out of there alive,” says former prisoner Igor Fedorovich Malitsky, who was sent to Auschwitz at the age of 16.
The young doctor began his activities in Auschwitz by stopping an epidemic of typhus, which he discovered in several gypsies. To prevent the disease from spreading to other prisoners, he sent the entire barracks (more than a thousand people) to the gas chamber. Later, typhus was discovered in the women's barracks, and this time the entire barracks - about 600 women - also went to their deaths. Mengele could not figure out how to deal with typhus differently in such conditions.
Before the war, Josef Mengele studied medicine and even defended his dissertation on “Racial differences in the structure of the lower jaw” in 1935, and a little later received his doctorate. Genetics was of particular interest to him, and at Auschwitz he showed the greatest degree of interest in twins. He conducted experiments without resorting to anesthetics and dissected living babies. He tried to stitch twins together, change their eye color using chemicals; he pulled out teeth, implanted them and built up new ones. In parallel with this, the development of a substance capable of causing infertility was carried out; he castrated boys and sterilized women. According to some reports, he managed to sterilize an entire group of nuns using X-rays.
Mengele's interest in twins was not accidental. The Third Reich set scientists the task of increasing the birth rate, as a result of which artificially increasing the birth of twins and triplets became the main task of scientists. However, the offspring of the Aryan race must certainly have blond hair and blue eyes - hence Mengele’s attempts to change the eye color of children through
vom of various chemicals. After the war, he was going to become a professor and was ready to do anything for the sake of science.
The twins were carefully measured by the assistants of the “Angel of Death” in order to record common signs and differences, and then the experiments of the doctor himself came into play. Children had their limbs amputated and various organs were transplanted, they were infected with typhus, and they received blood transfusions. Mengele wanted to track how the identical organisms of twins would react to the same intervention in them. Then the experimental subjects were killed, after which the doctor carried out a thorough analysis of the corpses, examining the internal organs.
He launched quite a vigorous activity and therefore many mistakenly considered him the chief doctor of the concentration camp. In fact, Josef Mengele held the position of senior doctor in the women's barracks, to which he was appointed by Eduard Virts - chief physician Auschwitz, later described by Mengele as a responsible employee who sacrificed personal time to devote it to self-education, exploring the material that the concentration camp had.
Mengele and his colleagues believed that hungry children had very pure blood, which meant that it could greatly help wounded German soldiers in hospitals. Someone else mentioned this former prisoner Auschwitz Ivan Vasilievich Chuprin. The newly arrived very young children, the eldest of whom were 5-6 years old, were herded into block number 19, from which screams and crying could be heard for some time, but soon there was silence. The blood was completely pumped out of the young prisoners. And in the evening, prisoners returning from work saw piles of children's bodies, which were later burned in dug holes, the flames from which were escaping several meters upward.
For Mengele, work in
concentration camp was a kind of scientific mission, and the experiments that he performed on prisoners were, from his point of view, carried out for the benefit of science. There are many tales told about Doctor “Death” and one of them is that his office was “decorated” by the eyes of children. In fact, as one of the doctors who worked with Mengele in Auschwitz recalled, he could stand for hours next to a row of test tubes, examining the obtained materials through a microscope, or spend time at the anatomical table, opening up bodies, in an apron stained with blood. He considered himself a real scientist, whose goal was something more than eyes hung throughout his office.
The doctors who worked with Mengele noted that they hated their work, and in order to somehow relieve stress, they got completely drunk after a working day, which could not be said about Doctor “Death” himself. It seemed that the work did not tire him at all.
Now many are wondering whether Joseph Mengele was a simple sadist who, in addition to his scientific work, enjoyed watching people suffer. Those who worked with him said that Mengele, to the surprise of many of his colleagues, sometimes himself administered lethal injections to test subjects, beat them and threw capsules of lethal gas into the cells, watching as the prisoners died.
After the war, Josef Mengele was declared a war criminal, but he managed to escape. He spent the rest of his life in Brazil, and February 7, 1979 was his last day - while swimming he suffered a stroke and drowned. His grave was found only in 1985, and after the exhumation of the remains in 1992, they were finally convinced that it was Joseph Mengele, who had earned himself a reputation as one of the most terrible and dangerous Nazis, who lay in this grave.
He was born on March 16, 1911 in Bavaria in the family of a large businessman, as they say now. His father founded a farming equipment company called Karl Mengele and Sons. Yes, the Angel of Death had a full-fledged family, there were parents, there were brothers. Father - Karl Mengele, mother - Walburgi Hapfaue, two brothers - Alois and Karl. From the memoirs of the scientist himself, if you can call him that, a cruel matriarchy reigned in the family. Everything was subject to the routine established by the mother of the family. She often humiliated her husband in front of her children and argued with him over financial and social issues. There is information that when Karl bought a car, his wife nagged him for a long time and cruelly for wasting family funds. Joseph also recalls that both parents did not show much love for their children and demanded unquestioning obedience, diligence and diligence in their studies. Maybe this is one of the reasons why Mengele’s experiments will make entire generations of people terrified in the future.
That same year, the doctor joined the SS Army, where he was awarded the Iron Cross and the title of Hauptsturmführer for saving two wounded soldiers from a burning tank. A year later, he was wounded and was transferred to the reserve due to poor health. He became a doctor at Auschwitz in 1943 and in twenty-one months managed to kill and torture hundreds of prisoners.
Naturally, the root cause of such a brutal attitude towards people was ideology. At that time, many questions worried the German authorities, and they gave various scientific tasks to their wards, fortunately there was more than enough material for conducting experiments - there was a war. Joseph believed that the only worthy race, the Aryans, should become the leading race on the planet and rule over all others,
I do not have the education to give a doctor any diagnosis. I'll just list a few psychological characteristics his behavior and you will understand everything. Josef was very meticulous. When twins were brought to his laboratory, assistants measured all parts of their bodies down to the millimeter, physical and psychological indicators, the doctor himself compiled this data into huge tables filled with calligraphic even handwriting. There were hundreds of such tables. He did not drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. He often looked in the mirror, because he considered his appearance ideal, and even refused to get a tattoo, which at that time was given to all purebred Aryans. The reason is the reluctance to spoil perfect skin.To write this article, I dug through a lot of information on the Internet and was surprised by what people write about Joseph. Yes, he was a ruthless psychopath who destroyed hundreds of people, but the results of many experiments are still used in medical textbooks. Thanks to pedantry and developed intelligence, he made great contributions to the science of the human body. And his activities concerned not only dwarfs and twins. At the beginning of his, so to speak, career, Mengele conducted experiments to find out the limits of human capabilities and options for resuscitating victims. The laboratory was interested in frostbite, when a person was covered with ice and biometric indicators were measured until death, and sometimes they tried to resuscitate him. When one of the prisoners died, they brought another.
Above is one of the experiments with cold water.
Much data on dehydration, drowning and the effects of overload on human body were received precisely during that dark time. Mengele's experiments also concerned various diseases, for example cholera and hepatitis. Obtaining such results would not have been possible without an incredible amount of human sacrifice.
The Ovitz family is pictured above. It is unclear what could make these people smile.
In general, his latest works were divided into two types: how to make an Aryan woman give birth to two children at once instead of one, and how to limit the birth rate of unwanted races. People were castrated without anesthesia, changed gender, sterilized with X-rays, and shocked to understand the limit of endurance. The twins were stitched together, blood was transfused and organs were transplanted from one to the other. There is a known case of two twins from a gypsy family being stitched together; the children experienced incredible torture and soon died from blood poisoning. During the entire experiment, out of more than sixteen thousand twins, no more than three hundred remained alive.
Human nature demands that those who commit such acts be punished, but Joseph avoided this. Fearing that the enemies of the Aryan race would use the results of the experiments, he collected invaluable data and, dressed in a soldier's uniform, left the camp. All wards should have been destroyed, but Cyclone-B ended, and then Soviet troops saved the lucky ones. This is how the Ovitz family of dwarfs and 168 other twins received their long-awaited freedom. What about our doctor? He left Germany and went to South America using fake passports. There he developed paranoia, he moved from place to place, and even a $50,000 reward did not force the intelligence services to catch him. I think the reason for such leniency was the very medical data that he possessed. Thus, the tanned and happy doctor died in Brazil in 1979 from a stroke in the water. Mengele never received punishment. Could the intelligence services have repeatedly turned a blind eye to his presence, because according to some sources, Josef still has family in Europe and he visited them? We will never know this again. In any case, Mengele’s experiments, the results of which are still recorded in medical publications, make hair move in all places. Sometimes sadism, developed intelligence and power give rise to a truly explosive cocktail of cruelty and impunity.
