Joseph Mengele: Cruelty of The Angel of Death

When we think of Angels, we think of holy spirits, but this Angel was at one point the cruelest person alive. Josef Mengele was a despicable monster who performed inhumane experiments on innocent people with peculiar traits. He used his authority to target innocent Jews being unloaded at the Railyard. Afterwards he fled from his past and died a coward. Josef Mengele treated the Jews like he did because of his education and access of specimens to experiment on.

The monster’s creation started in a calm environment. In the relaxed town of Günzburg Germany, Mengele was born on March 16, 1911. Josef was the eldest son of Karl Mengele, a prosperous manufacturer of Farming Implements. His father's success allowed Mengele to travel to the choice school of the University of Munich. He received his Ph. D in Physical Anthropology in 1935. This pushed him towards being the assistant of Dr. Otmar von Verschuer, who was well known for his work with twins. The same year as his work with Dr. Otmar, Mengele joined the SS Regime in 1937. Mengele served in the military from the aforementioned date until the end of the war. Mengele joined a rather executive part of the Nazi army resulting in his fast advancing. The SS was a protection squadron and was responsible for ethnicity identification. His involvement in the SS was voluntary until June of 1940. Upon the June draft he volunteered to join the medical service of the Waffen-SS, where he worked as a medical expert for the Race and Settlement main office. Eventually he served on the East front, he was injured in 1943, which allowed him to provide his efforts in mainland Germany (ushmm Web).

From there on he became one of thirty selectors at Auschwitz. The inhumane travesties began with the selection, where those with peculiar features were sanctioned off from the other camp inhabitants. Any peculiarity from a copy of yourself to discolored eyes would result in special treatment until endless torture and death. Mengele oversaw the unloading ramp for the trains; some parents would see the Nazis searching for peculiar traits and would willingly announce their child. The parents had no way of knowing and hoped this would mean their child would survive. His two main interests were twins and Heterochromia, a genetic mutation that resulted in the eyes presenting as two different colors. Many other mutations were sought out by Mengele, in an effort to correct or prevent the mutations from occurring in Hitler's “perfect aryan race”. 200 of the total 3, 000 survived, but all of them suffered awful experiments. The time before experimentation was debatably the best time for some of the children. Candy was given and games were played during free time. On the first day a special number was tattooed on and files were filled out on the children This was the beginning of the end for these children. The average day was 6 o’clock wake up, breakfast, instruction classes, and then playtime; Mengele had earned the name ‘Uncle Mengele’. The final step of the fun was big trucks, arriving to take the children off to be experimented on. After the grey sky became gray ceiling, the experimenting was much worse than the backbreaking labor. From the beginning of the experimenting there were mass casualties. At the start of the day there were mandatory blood drawings. The massive list of experiments consisted of mass blood transfusions, eye color altering chemicals ( most of which caused pain and blindness), surgeries such as organ removal, castration, and amputation ( all without anesthesia.

These experiments and many more were the result of one twisted man, Josef Mengele. The autopsies were performed by Miklos Nyiszli; some of his autopsies were to compare infected and non-infected twins, so often a twin would would receive an injection of chloroform or phenol directly into the heart (library. eb. com AVL). After all of the process, tissue samples were sent to Dr. Verschuer for further analysis. Mengele continued until the war finally ended in 1945. The killing of the innocents did not go without a purpose for Mengele. A 2, 800 kill count was all for Mengele to earn a faculty job at a German university. The first thing he wanted to do was to author a Post Doctoral Dissertation. This was his master work to submit, in order to receive his University job. His dream was short lived; he was in United States custody after the war, but he was released because the United States did not know of his involvement. After his release, Mengele had to disappear from the face of the earth, for he would surely receive the death penalty if located. The first step was to travel somewhere remote and make a small and unbeknownst name for himself. A series of moving and marriage allowed Mengele to remain undiscovered until after death. His first hideout was four years as a stableman in Bavaria.

Many years later he moved to Brazil where he became friends with Wolfgang Gerhard, an old-time war Nazi. Upon Wolfgang’s death, Mengele hid his corpse and took his identity. He lived with this identity until he suffered a stroke and drowned, thereafter he was buried under Wolfgang's name. It was not until 1985 when Mengele's corpse was exhumed and his identity was confirmed in 1992. While Mengele was surrounded by death for a period of his life, he enjoyed his full lifespan, unlike the children he experimented on. Mengele treated the Jews so inhumanely because they were not viewed as people. The segregation of the Jews provided ‘specimens’ to experiment on. As time trudged on, Mengele was allowed the components to do his inhumane experiments and escape punishment free.

As long as humans are capable of demonizing, or downplaying the humanity of another race or ethnicity, we are capable of repeating Menegele’s atrocities. If a race or ethnicity is considered ‘lesser’ - whether that be propaganda or not - it is easy to forget they are of the same species; making them targets for inhumane atrocities.