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Dr. Josef Mengele: Biography, Death, Angel of Death, & Facts

Dr. Josef Mengele: Biography, Death, Angel of Death, & Facts. The Horrifying Truth About Josef Mengele: The Angel of Death

The Biography of "Dr. Josef Mengele (The Angel of Death)" and The Depraved Life of the Monster of Auschwitz are as follows: 

Do the horrible "human body segmentation" therapy and "race improvement" surgery only appear in martial arts novels and myths and legends? 

However, in reality, there really is an "angel of death" who is proficient in this kind of therapy and surgery. Unit 731 in Japan and Mengele in Germany are examples of this.

The Horrifying Truth About Josef Mengele: The Angel of Death

Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death", was a military doctor at Auschwitz and a first-class Nazi war criminal who was finally at large.

Mengele's full name is Joseph Mengele, born into an ordinary family in Germany, and he was interested in political activities since childhood. After earning two doctorates in medical school, he joined the SS and became a specialist in anthropological ethnology.

Mengele was an officer of the Nazi German SS and a military doctor in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. He was in charge of the life and death of the prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp. 

Doctors are called "angels in white", but Mengele is an out-and-out "angel of death". In order to make these prisoners disappear as much as possible, about 400,000 innocent lives died tragically under his hands. His greatest passion was the slaughter of twins and multiples.

Joseph Mengele Biography

  • Name: Joseph Mengele
  • Alias: Angel of Death
  • Nationality: German
  • Birthplace: Gunzburg, Bavaria, German Empire
  • Date of Birth: March 16, 1911
  • Date of death: February 7, 1979
  • Occupation: Physician
  • Graduate school: University of Munich
  • Main crime: Holocaust

Related Topics: Biography

dr-josef-mengele-biography-death-angel-of-death-facts

There are many books written by various writers with various titles on Mengele. You may check it out on Amazon.

Early Life of Dr. Josef Mengele

Just the mention of his name can send a chill up the spine. In a place full of horror, he was the most feared monster of them all. We're of course talking about the Angel of Death, Josef Mengele. 

Although trained as a doctor to preserve life, he brought sadistic cruelty to the experiments that ended the lives of so many. And his victims of choice? When they were children. 

In this week's graphics, we reveal the depraved life of the monster of Auschwitz, Dr. Josef Mengele.

Birth and Childhood of Dr. Josef Mengele

Yes, Mengele entered the world on the 16th of March 1911 in the German Bavarian town of Goonsburg. After three miscarriages, he was the firstborn of Karl and Well Perga Mengele. 

Karl was the owner of a farm machine factory that turned to produce munitions when war broke out in 1914. The Mengeles would go on to have two more sons, but Joseph was the firm favorite of his mother.

Schooling and Early Adulthood of Dr. Josef Mengele

While Perga was an obese woman who had a stern reputation and a voracious appetite, she doted on her eldest son, who was much closer to him than she was to her husband. 

For his part, Josef proved to be a quiet child whose main goal was to please his overbearing mother.

At school, Josef was an average student. He struggled to keep his grades up at the standard that his mother expected, and when he was fifteen, he contracted the serious bone marrow disease osteomyelitis. 

The disease, which was often fatal in those days, kept him off school for six months. Returning to class, he was seriously behind his peers academically. Over the next two years, he showed a remarkable level of self-discipline to not only catch up but surpass many of his fellow students.

By the age of 17, he had outgrown his shyness and developed into a handsome, focused, and driven young man who was popular with both teachers and classmates. 

In April 1930, the 19-year-old passed his high school exams and gained acceptance into the medical and philosophy faculties at Munich University. He had decided to become a doctor.

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University Life and Political Views of Dr. Josef Mengele

Mengele stood out from the other men on campus. He was always impeccably dressed and had developed the air of a gentleman. He treated women with old-fashioned dignity and was a very good dancer. 

All these traits got him quickly noticed by the ladies, with the result that his social calendar was usually pretty full.

During his first year of university, Mengele began to show an interest in politics. He joined the steel helmets in March of 1931, a paramilitary group that advocated a return to the pre-war monarchy. 

The steel helmets were a stepping stone in the National Socialist or Nazi Party, which was promoted in beer halls as well as on university campuses.

Mengele's Fascination with Eugenics

The Nazis advocated a return of German pride and pureness and the removal of racial impurities. These ideas appealed to Mengele and seemed to mesh with the social Darwinism that he thought was being taught in the lecture halls. 

He became fascinated with eugenics, particularly the idea that a population could be made more perfect through selective breeding of those who had the most desirable characteristics. It would also help to weed out undesirable traits by eliminating the weak and the feeble.

While the Nazis believed in eugenics, for them, the process of generational selective breeding was too slow. They were determined to weed out the weak right now. 

The Aryan race could simply no longer stand being contaminated by inferior races such as the Slavs and the Jews, both of whom were considered Untermensch or subhuman. These beliefs were enthusiastically embraced by the young and impressionable Josef Mengele.

Academic Achievements and Employment at the Institute for Heredity, Biology, and Racial Purity

In 1935, Mengele was awarded a Ph.D. in anthropology. His thesis was entitled "Racial morphological research on the lower jaw section of four racial groups". 

The paper was free of any racial bias and set out to prove empirically, by science alone, that the German was a superior breeding and a better human being.

A year later, Mengele graduated with a medical degree. His first four months were spent as an intern at the Leipzig University clinic before joining the staff of Germany's leading racial expert. 

This was Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, and he was based at the Institute for Heredity, Biology, and Racial Purity located at the University of Frankfurt.

Mengele's job at the Institute was to examine people who were suspected of breaking the Nuremberg Laws to see whether or not they were Jews. 

He and his colleagues created thousands of files that would turn out to be devastating in future years when people were rounded up for transportation to concentration camps.

Dr. Josef Mengele's fascination with eugenics and his employment at the Institute for Heredity, Biology, and Racial Purity gives us a glimpse into the twisted ideology that would drive his horrific experiments at Auschwitz. His academic achievements and political views would eventually lead him down a path of unspeakable evil, as we will explore in the next part of our series, as we will explore in the next part of our series.

Membership in the Nazi Party and SS

In May of 1937, Mengele officially joined the Nazi Party. He became a member of the Nazi Doctors' Party and then, in May of 1938, the Schutzstaffel, or SS. The SS had been created as Hitler's personal protection squad, but it expanded its role to the running of concentration camps. 

The leader of the SS was Heinrich Himmler, a meticulous organizer who had plans to make the still-small organization as powerful as the national army. At the time Mengele joined, the SS was an elite group that only allowed the best specimens of Aryan manhood into its ranks.

Marriage and Military Service of Dr. Josef Mengele

At about the same time as he became a member of the SS, Mengele became engaged to Irene Schönbein, the daughter of a professor at Frankfurt University. Six years younger than Joseph, Irene was a blonde-haired beauty and made the perfect complement to the handsome, athletic-looking young doctor. 

When it came to getting married, however, there was a bit of a problem. While Yosef was able to show documentation of his Aryan purity, Irene could not prove that her grandfather was 100% Aryan. It was only the influence of the Mengele family that smoothed the way for the wedding, which took place in July of 1939.

The failure to fully prove Irene's ancestry precluded the Mengeles from inclusion in the Kinship Book of the SS, which included couples who could prove their Aryan ancestry back to 1750. 

As a result, Mengele was deprived of the swords and spoons wort, which was given to an SS man on the birth of a child. 

After his three months of marriage, Mengele was called for a three-month stint in the Army. He was sent to the Tyrolean mountain region. Possessing a high level of physical fitness and being an adept hiker, he excelled in his service.

Having completed his three-month service, he returned to his job at Frankfurt University. But with the coming of war in 1939, national mobilization was instituted. 

Mengele was rejected on the first draft because he had had a kidney infection as a child. In June of 1940, Mengele was finally called up, becoming a second lieutenant in the Waffen-SS. 

He was put in a non-combat position, working in the genealogical section of the race and resettlement office. By June of 1941, with the onset of Operation Barbarossa, there was an urgent need for men to serve on the Eastern Front. 

Mengele was pulled out of the office and sent to the Russian front. He proved to be a courageous soldier, winning the Iron Cross second class.

Return to Medical Career and Transfer to Auschwitz

In 1942, Mengele was wounded and declared unfit for frontline duty. He was transferred to the Waffen-SS Medical Corps and assigned to the Race and Settlement Office in Berlin. 

In 1943, he was posted to Auschwitz, where he became the chief medical officer of the Gypsy camp. Later that year, he was reassigned to the main camp, where he became known as the "Angel of Death" for his horrific medical experiments on prisoners.

Dr. Josef Mengele's membership in the Nazi Party and SS, marriage to Irene Schönbein, and military service give us a glimpse into the man who would become one of the most notorious war criminals in history. His transfer to Auschwitz and subsequent actions would cement his place in infamy. In the next part of our series, we will explore the atrocities committed by Mengele at Auschwitz and the aftermath of his actions.

Transfer to Auschwitz and Inhumane Medical Experiments

At the beginning of 1942, Mengele transferred to the Scandinavian Viking SS division, where he served as a field doctor. Again, he proved courageous under fire, winning the Iron Cross first class when he pulled two men from a burning tank. 

In November of 1942, he suffered serious wounds and was taken off the front lines. After a period of recovery, he returned to the race and resettlement office. He gained a promotion to captain and then, in mid-1943, was given what was to him a dream job: practical eugenics researcher.

Mengele's Arrival at Auschwitz and Selections

This meant that he was able to indulge all of the wackiest eugenics theories, testing them out on living human subjects. The human subjects who would be Mengele's guinea pigs were to be found at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. 

He obtained a posting at the camp and set about extending his anthropological research into heredity.

Mengele was not the first doctor to use concentration camp inmates for research purposes. In Birkenau and Dachau, Jews were injected with bacteria, exposed to all manner of deadly diseases, and struck with rifle butts repeatedly to see how long it would take for them to suffer irreversible brain damage.

At Auschwitz itself, Doctor Horst Schumann had been conducting sterilization experiments, once castrating 90 men in a single day.

Yes, Mengele was to take the scope and barbarity of his experiments to an entirely new level. Auschwitz had been selected as the venue for his work because of its out-of-the-way location and because it was close to a railway junction with tracks coming from all over Europe. 

Mengele arrived at Auschwitz on the 23rd of May 1943, the next day, he participated in his first selection. This involved selecting which of the new inmate arrivals were to live and which were to die. 

On that day alone, he sent 1035 gypsies to the gas chamber. As was his nature, Mengele was actively dressed during these selections. He wore a white SS medical uniform, white gloves, and polished black boots. 

His face was emotionless as he decided who was to die with a simple flick of his wrist. His constant chain smoking and air of nonchalance presented a mystifying yet terrifying sight for the bewildered new arrivals.

Mengele's Experiments on Inmates

During his time at Auschwitz, Mengele oversaw the selection of 74 transport. 80% of new arrivals were condemned to death immediately. All children under the age of 14 were killed, as with the old, in the inferno. 

Mengele seemed to enjoy this aspect of his job, and he was known to say, "Here the Jews go in through the doors and leave through the chimney."

Mengele's experiments were horrific and included injecting dye into the eyes of inmates to try to change their eye color, amputating limbs and organs without anesthesia, infecting inmates with diseases and then experimenting with different treatments, and subjecting twins to brutal and often deadly experiments in an attempt to unlock the secrets of genetic inheritance.

Aftermath and Legacy

Mengele fled Auschwitz in January of 1945 as the Soviet army approached. He spent the next several years on the run, moving from country to country before settling in South America. He lived under an assumed name and continued to evade justice until his death in 1979.

Dr. Josef Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz were among the most heinous acts committed during the Holocaust. His inhumane treatment of prisoners and his twisted fascination with eugenics have left a lasting legacy of horror and disgust. 

In the final part of our series, we will explore the efforts to bring Mengele to justice and the lessons that can be learned from his crimes.

Mengele's Experiments on Twins at Auschwitz

Mengele's passion was for scientific research. He instructed the guards to seek out those who were deformed, overly tall, midgets, or dwarfs. His most prized subjects were twins, especially if they were children.

Twins, Mengele's Fascination

From his earliest days at university, Mengele had a fascination with twins. He believed that by studying them, he could discover the secret to genetic manipulation. 

Indeed, it was his search for twins that motivated him to attend so many arrival selections. During his time at Auschwitz, he managed to find 1500 pairs of twins that were used as human guinea pigs. Only 100 pairs survived.

Living Conditions and Experiments

The twins and other research subjects who were selected on arrival would be marched to living quarters at Birkenau, about 2 miles away. There they lived in appalling conditions, surrounded by rotting corpses and starving adults. 

Once established in their disgraceful living quarters, the children had to complete an intensive questionnaire.

Interviews and Research

Children would then be interviewed by Mengele himself, who would take extensive notes and then have a file for each child drawn up. In preparation for experimentation, the children were cleaned, bathed, and dressed in clean pajamas. 

They were then taken by Red Cross vehicles to one of Mengele's research laboratories. He had established a number of labs around the Auschwitz-Birkenau area for these specific purposes.

Barbarism and Heinous Experiments

In other labs, the most heinous barbarism was taking place on a daily basis. Anesthesia was never used, so the pain that was inflicted on the children can hardly even be imagined. 

Experiments included the removal of specific organs or limbs, immersion in freezing water, the injection of dyes into the eyes, the castration of boys, sterilization of girls, and deliberate infection of wounds with gangrene. 

Occasionally, Mengele would organize endurance test experiments. This involved subjects being given increasingly strong voltages of electricity until they either died, became unconscious or went into a coma. 

As soon as a twin died, its sibling would immediately be killed in order to provide comparative data during the autopsies.

Mengele's Horrendous Experiments and Sadistic Nature

Despite Mengele's attempts to cloak his work in legitimacy, there was no valid scientific reason for any of these horrendous experiments. 

Doctors who assisted Mengele later recorded that it seemed as if many of the experiments were just inspired purely by sadism.

Inflicting Cruelty and Atrocities

Unlike the majority of Nazi killers, Mengele did not have to be drugged or drunk in order to carry out his murderous work. 

In fact, according to Jewish survivors who were forced to assist in the laboratory, he was enthusiastic in his infliction of cruelty. At times, his temper would flare and exhibit itself with sharp bursts of horror.

Unlimited Power and Natural Sadism

Within the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, Mengele had unlimited power. This, combined with his natural sadism, turned him into a monster. 

He was often accompanied on his rounds by his female equal, SS goddamn aggressor, a 21-year-old blonde beauty who was almost as depraved as he was.

Extreme Prejudice and Lust

Mengele's hatred for the Jews knew no bounds. He would celebrate Jewish holy days, such as Yom Kippur, by ordering the gassing of a thousand children. 

But his extreme prejudice could not prevent feelings of lust from arising within him on occasion.

Adopting Children and Letting Them Die

By early 1944, Mengele had taken to adopting a child. Invariably, the little boy would physically resemble him and would be dressed in a small white medical uniform. 

Mengele would walk around the camp, hand in hand with the child, providing him with sweets and toys. Within a month, the doctor would tire of the child and let him still hand in hand to the gas chamber.

Respect in Nazi Hierarchy

The crueler Mengele was in conducting his duties, the more respect he got in the Nazi hierarchy. 

In a report written at the end of 1944, Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Hess wrote that Mengele carried out all tasks, even "Zim," often under very difficult conditions, to the complete satisfaction of his superiors. 

He was praised for utilizing his off-duty time to make valuable contributions to anthropological science using the scientific material at his disposal to make valuable contributions to anthropological science.

Heinous Acts of Violence and Barbarism

Mengele's acts of violence and barbarism knew no limits. He delivered babies only to send them and their mothers to their deaths. 

He amused himself by taping the mother's breasts so that she would be forced to watch her baby starve to death. 

He had a pit dug and a massive violet in the yard of Birkenau where he threw 300 children, all under the age of 5, into the flames.

Mengele's Legacy

Mengele's legacy is one of horror and inhumanity. His experiments on twins and other prisoners were a grotesque violation of human rights and dignity. 

The survivors of his atrocities have spoken out about their experiences in the hope of preventing such atrocities from ever happening again. 

Mengele's name will forever be associated with the darkest period in human history, a reminder of the evil that can exist in the human heart.

Mengele's Flight and Life in Hiding

By early 1945, Mengele was at the height of his power. Yet, he could also read the writing on the wall. He knew that the war was soon lost and that the Russians would overrun the camp. 

In early January, the crematoria had been blown up, and healthy prisoners were being forced to march to new destinations in Germany.

Disappearance from Auschwitz

Mengele continued his experiments until the last minute, but then he busied himself with shipping out all of his equipment, documents, and reports. 

Then, on January 17th, 1945, Joseph Mengele simply disappeared from Auschwitz. Ten days later, the Russians arrived. 

They discovered a burnt-out horror factory. The place had been set on fire, and the Germans, like Mengele, had fled.

Life in Hiding

Mengele had fled to another concentration camp further south. His family, so he traveled around West Germany and into Soviet-occupied East Germany. 

For three years, he worked as a laborer on an Alpine farm in Bavaria. Meanwhile, the story of Mengeler's atrocities had been revealed to the world at large. 

As a result, he became the most sought-after Nazi scalp by post-war Nazi hunters.

Fleeing to Argentina

Mengele made the decision to flee Europe, walking over the absent crossing into Italy in April of 1949. 

He then made his way to South Tyrol, where he managed to obtain an International Red Cross ID card under a false name. With this, he managed to get a Swiss passport. 

Mengele then traveled to Genoa, where he set sail for Buenos Aires, Argentina. Upon arriving on Argentinean soil, Mengele finally felt safe. 

He was taken in by Argentinean President Juan Peron and lived within his palatial compound.

Life in Argentina

Mengele established a comfortable life in Argentina. He found work as a carpenter, and a trader, which he proved to be adept at. 

He was also a highly respected member of the local Nazi community. By now, his father was extremely wealthy as a result of his business ventures. The old man financed international rendezvous, usually at skiing resources.

Marriage and Extradition Attempts

On a family skiing trip to Switzerland in 1956, Mengele charmed his dead brother's widow, Martha. A year later, they were married. Martha and her son, Rolf, moved to Argentina to be with Mengele. 

With the backing of his father's money, Mengele and his new family lived very well. They moved into an upmarket villa in a luxurious suburb, ironically in the midst of many wealthy Jewish families. 

He felt so confident in his new life that in 1956, he gave up his alias and reverted to his real name.

However, a determined handful of Nazi hunters, mainly made up of Holocaust survivors, were hot on his trail. One of them, Hermann Langebeam, managed to get a hold of the divorce papers filed by Irene. 

They indicated that Mengele was living in Buenos Aires. Langebeam pressured the West German government to issue an arrest warrant, which they did on June 7th, 1959. 

The West German Foreign Ministry now demanded that Mengele be extradited to face the charges. Mengele was warned about what was happening and fled to Paraguay.

Mengele's Life in Hiding and Arrogance

A year later, he moved on to Brazil, where he settled in with a Hungarian couple on a small farm about 300 miles from Sao Paulo. 

In mid-1962, he moved again, this time to a 45-hectare farm at Sierra Negra, 150 miles north of Sao Paulo, where he boarded with the Strausses.

Arrogance and Self-centeredness

In his old age, Mengele became arrogant, surly, and self-centered. He treated other people as his intellectual and racial inferiors. In 1964, a war crime trial for Mengele was held in absentia. 

Throughout the course of the trial, the gruesome details of his experiments were related, often by surviving human guinea pigs. As a result of these revelations, he became a hated figure by the vast majority of West Germans.

Efforts to Extradite and Forgotten Life

By 1970, the efforts to get Mengele extradited had petered out, and he had largely been forgotten about. 

He continued to live an unhappy life with the Strauss family, who had grown to loathe him.

Death and Lack of Regret

In 1976, he suffered a stroke from which he only partially recovered. He finally met his end in February of 1979, suffering a fatal stroke while swimming at the beach in Bertioga. 

Until the moment he took his last breath, he never uttered a single regret about his actions at Auschwitz.

Conclusion: Josef Mengele: The Angel of Death 

In conclusion, Joseph Mengele was a notorious figure in the history of the Holocaust for his horrific experiments on prisoners, particularly twins, at Auschwitz. 

Doctors should be a life-saving profession. The increase in the average life expectancy of human beings and the significant reduction in the death rate of battlefield wounded are inseparable from the hard work of doctors. A doctor is one of the most respected professions in the world.

However, the professional characteristics of doctors themselves make them understand the structure of the human body beyond ordinary people, which leads to the fact that once doctors start doing evil, the degree of harm and cruelty will far exceed many people's imagination.

Some troops or individuals in the fascist countries of World War II may be outstanding doctors at ordinary times, but when they use their professional knowledge to massacre innocent people or conduct human experiments, they will become real demons.

Mengele's death marked the end of a long and painful chapter in history, but the memory of his atrocities lives on as a reminder of the dangers of unchecked power and hatred.

So, I really hope you enjoyed this Josef Mengele Biographies Article. If you did then don't forget to Bookmark this blog for brand-new biographies every week. And as always, thank you for reading.

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