The Case of Dr. Josef Mengele: An Ordinary Man who Became Evil

Of all the people that were part of the nazi concentration camps, Dr. Josef Mengele was one of the most interesting cases. Dr. Mengele was one of the men in charge of Auschwitz, and conducted cruel experiments to people of all ages. Dr. Mengele worked in Auschwitz, and despite not having evidence of a horrific background, Killed many people in the gas chambers and preformed evil experiments on children. Josef Mengele was a normal young boy born into a normal German family. He was a very bright and smart child, and went on to be very successful in his university years. He was the oldest of three boys in a completely normal German family. (Bülow Web) Josef was not put where he was because of a rich family, or a militarily involved family. “Josef was refined, intelligent and popular in his town.

He studied philosophy at Munich and medicine at Frankfurt University.” (Bülow Web) This illustrates the fact that the real reason for his rise to power in Auschwitz was because of the fact that he was actually quite smart. In the end, he earned his way into power using his smarts. It also shows that he most likely did not have any sort of traumatic experiences that would cause him to want to do what he did in the camps, which makes all the things that he did that much more strange. He was the one who oversaw the gassing of over 1 million Jewish people.

He was very intolerant of resistance, and went to very great lengths to establish his power. “In one case in which a mother did not want to be separated from her thirteen-year-old daughter, and bit and scratched the face of the SS man who tried to force her to her assigned line, Mengele drew his gun and shot both the woman and the child. As a blanket punishment, he then sent to the gas chamber all people from that transport who had previously been selected for work” (Bülow Web) This helps to prove the great lengths he went to in order to show his authority. He was the one that oversaw the gas chambers, and liked to send as many people as he possibly could there, just for the fun of murder. (Bülow Web) This helps to prove that he wanted everyone to live in fear of him, so that they would not step out of line. These things that he did were evil, but they were not as gruesome as the next topic. He performed terrible surgeries on people of all ages while they were completely awake.

He loved to draw blood, and loved to perform experiments on young twins. “Mengele placed them on his polished marble dissection table and put them to sleep. He then proceeded to inject chloroform into their hearts, killing them instantaneously” (Bülow Web) This shows how insane he seemed to be, as this is the perfect image of a “mad scientist” of sorts. He loved to draw blood to the point of people bleeding out, as it was believed that the plasma contained all the answers to medical issues, and he wanted to produce some sort of helpful research. (Bülow Web) This shows how he may have had a little bit of good intent, but took it way, way too far, and ended up making whatever research he might have gotten look less valid because of his moral infringements. This is the more horrific part of him, but he also did a few strange things too. He also had a group of “Dwarves” who seemed to be one of the most interesting cases that came out of Auschwitz.“

The survival of the Ovitz family from the village of Rozavlea in northern Romania is unique: twelve members, the youngest, eighteen months, the oldest, fifty-eight, were deported to the camp and all emerged unscathed. Seven of them -- five sisters and two brothers -- were dwarfs, less than three feet tall, the largest recorded dwarf family in the world. ” (Koren Web) This helps to illustrate how careful he was with this family, and how rare of a case his was. “Descending the ramp, the seven dwarfs and their five relatives were immediately separated from the others. As well as selecting people for the gas chambers, SS doctor Josef Mengele was also using his service in the death camp as a springboard toward an academic career. Like a demonic impresario casting the ultimate freak show, SS doctor Josef Mengele plucked out from the masses that passed before him, twins, and unusual mutations” (Koren Web)

This also helps to illustrate how important these people were to him, and the fact that he may have had some morality in him. (But not much) This and the things earlier in this essay are only the tip of the iceberg in his nightmarish world. Dr. Mengele affected Auschwitz by killing countless people in the gas chambers and performing sick and twisted experiments on kids, all while not having any trace of a horrific background. He was raised as a normal boy, and was smart enough to get into university and be pretty successful in his more early years.

Then his life changed for the worse, and he became one of the most hated war criminals with his extreme amounts of cruelty, and his horrific experiments. He was an evil, evil man, and to some, maybe even worse than Hitler himself because of his gruesome, inhumane experiments.