People arriving in Auschwitz were greeted by a handsome man in a pressed uniform and polished shoes. Survivors mentioned that he assisted with every transport, although it was impossible - Josef Mengele had to eat and sleep once. How did this criminal deserve to be called the Angel of Death?
Years later, Mengele, who survived the war and hid in Argentina, tried to make excuses to his son, Rolf. He tried to draw attention to those prisoners whom he left alive during the selection. However, Rolf was well aware of the fate of these "chosen ones" - they died soon afterwards, exhausted by diseases, hunger, excessive work and experiments to which the Angel of Death subjected them.
The man, who was a rather average doctor, saw in his "research" the only chance for himself to be written down in the pages of history in any way. And unfortunately, he signed up for them forever.
Sick fascination with twins
Dr. Mengele was especially eager to "save" twins. Unfortunately, it did not show a compassionate human face. These particular siblings were just perfect subjects for his research.
Where did multiple pregnancies come from? - this question troubled Nazi scientists who wanted to find out how to make German women give birth to two (or more!) Little Aryans in one fell swoop. It was just a matter of improving the method of producing perfect people - no matter what the cost.
Mengele selected the victims of his pseudoscientific experiments during the selection on the ramp. Prisoners who survived the camp claimed to have been with each of them.
As Gerald Posner and John Ware write in the book "Mengele. The Hunt for the Angel of Death from Auschwitz ” , initially these children were taken care of exceptionally:
The twins intended for experiments were placed in the barracks 14 of Camp F in Birkenau, known as the "zoo". There, on Mengele's orders, they were provided with good food, comfortable beds and hygienic living conditions to strengthen their health before a key stage in the research process - a comparative assessment of their anatomy and vital functions.
The primary goal of a comfortable environment for children was to prevent infections that could distort the measurement results - with the exception of diseases such as typhus, which were deliberately induced to assess the immunity of test twins. Lots of kids loved Mengele - they called him "Uncle Pepi."
No wonder, since "Uncle Pepi" brought them clothes and sweets, and people around them were starving and freezing. Later, the little ones were transferred to the hospital, which was located in Camp B2F. It happened that 200 pairs of male twins were prepared simultaneously for "research". All external measurements were taken in the facility. After inspection, the worst began. As Posner and Were write in their book:
The twins underwent cruel surgery and painful examination, often without any anesthetic. Unnecessary amputations, lumbar punctures, typhus injections and deliberate wound infection were performed to compare the responses of the twins.
The article was based on a book by Gerald Posner and John Ware titled "Mengele. Hunt for the Angel of Death from Auschwitz ”(Znak Horizon 2019).
West German indictment considers these acts "devoid of any scientific value". Many of Mengele's guinea pigs have died at this stage ; mainly as a result of a particularly bizarre experiment involving a complete exchange of blood between two pairs of twins.
Dr. Mengele's psychopathic streak shows concrete cases apparently. One of the brothers dealt with by the Angel of Death was a humpbacked one. One day, he and his twin were taken for examination. When the boys returned to the rest of the children, they were sewn together on their backs and wrists. There was a stench around them, as gangrene had entered their soiled wounds. They cried incessantly day and night.
In turn, two sisters who managed to survive in the camp, Mengele forced them to have sexual contact with other twins to see if this would increase the probability that they would become pregnant multiple times. He also had transfusions between unrelated children who had different blood groups, which caused them severe headaches and a fever.
After he had tortured his victims to the end, he subjected them to autopsies. By no means were they aimed at broadening knowledge, but rather at satisfying sick curiosity and… avoiding responsibility for crimes. It was often stated in the documents that the death was due to natural causes even if it happened by injecting chloroform directly into the heart or by deliberately contracting typhus.
Dr. Mengele was particularly interested in the twins he subjected to his inhuman experiments. In the photo, children from Auschwitz liberated by the Red Army.
A Jewish mother targeted
If Mengele did not spare the children, why should he feel sorry for women? For him they were simply other "objects" of research. What was he doing to them? For example, he painfully depleted his ovaries - to develop the best sterilization method by which the Nazis wanted to stop the reproduction of people of Jewish and Roma origin. He also conducted experiments on the endurance of prisoners, often culminating in death preceded by cruel torture and great pain.
"Patients" were subjected to X-rays, unnecessary bone marrow transplants, unnecessary transfusions and bloodletting. Pregnant women were of particular interest to the Angel of Death. There were times when he stood on their bellies to get their fetuses out of them.
One of the mothers, Ruth Elias, Mengele taped her breasts to see how long her little daughter could survive without feeding . The child would die of starvation, if not for the doctor - also a prisoner - who took pity on the woman who saw the suffering and slow death of the newborn. She secretly handed her a morphine syringe, which shortened the girl's torment.
The cruelty of the sadistic doctor towards the babies taken from their mothers was also of a mass nature - once he had as many as 300 small prisoners under the age of 5 burned. However, Mengele reached its peak of bestiality by vivisecting (autopsy in life) one of the children.
Block 10. This is where Josef Mengele carried out his horrible experiments.
Nightmare Collector
Once, in the women's camp hospital, Mengele became furious. He did not like the fact that the prisoners were cooking stolen potatoes. Dr. Perl, one of the Oświęcim doctors, fearing that she and her companions would be sent to the gas chamber, decided to distract the Angel of Death.
She did it like a child distracted by candy or a toy, but used a much scarier object. It was a fetus in a jar that was taken out of the pregnant woman in its entirety (and it didn't happen very often). The criminal's eyes flashed with delight, his anger passed away as he took away with his hand. Within seconds, he was furious and… very pleased. He knew that such a "specimen" was worth sending to Berlin for further research.
He just loved collecting similar macabre exhibits. This degenerate had a special appreciation for the eyeballs. One night, he killed several pairs of twins simply because the children of each sibling differed in eye color. As Posner and Ware write in the already cited book "Mengele. The Hunt for the Angel of Death from Auschwitz ” :
Their eyeballs and other internal organs were removed and sent to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, where Professor von Verschuer worked, with the annotation "War material - Urgent".
Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer was a German Nazi biologist and often received such parcels from Dr. Mengele. Anyway, the Angel of Death looked after the eyes on the spot, in the camp. He was fascinated by whether it was possible to change their color and obtain the desired blue (i.e. simply Aryan) irises . To this end, he carried out very painful, blindly inducing experiments on prisoners - including children.
Josef Mengele was also obsessed with knowing how to change eye color. In the photo, the Angel of Death is standing in the center.
Witnesses saw eye samples of various colors, which were numbered, lay on the table and attached to the wall like a colorful collection of butterflies. All this in the name of pigmentation research. The fact that living people previously looked at their loved ones with these eyes did not matter in the least to the psychopathic physician.
It is hard to say what really drove Dr. Mengele, but it is known that his worst features were revealed only under the conditions of the camp. As Eva Mozes, who as a child was subjected to experiments with her twin sister, said, the Angel of Death had his favorites, but he did not treat any of them as human and easily replaced each one with another, living person. People were just objects for him, disposable objects - regardless of gender and age. That's why it's so hard to accept that he avoided the trial and enjoyed his freedom to the end.
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