Dr. Mengele: Angel of Death
Perhaps no single man of World War II, besides Hitler, is more infamous than Dr. Mengele, and it is almost no surprise that this man carried out his work at the equally infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. Known as the “Angel of Death,” Dr. Mengele earned this nickname by frequently sorting arriving prisoners into either the gas chambers or work camps. His omnipresence in determining the fate of others is one reason why Dr. Mengele is referenced so often in survivors’ diaries and why he has become the face of Nazi cruelty even though it is often forgotten how many other Nazi doctors acted similarly.
With a seemingly endless flow of prisoners available to experiment on, Dr. Mengele took advantage of this opportunity to conduct research with large sample sizes. Throughout the one and a half years he worked at Auschwitz, Dr. Mengele took a keen interest on identical twins and how environmental factors influenced the expression of their genes. In his various experiments, Dr. Mengele would inject children with chemicals in order to change the color of their eyes, perform surgeries, and induce diseases such as gangrene or Noma. If a twin died, the other was killed with a chloroform injection to the heart. In a particularly horrific experiment, Dr. Mengele attempted to artificially create Siamese twins by sewing two children back to back and connecting their blood vessels and organs. All of these experiments were done without anaesthetic.
After all of these examples, one has to wonder what Dr. Mengele’s motivation was. In short, it stemmed from the Nazi racial belief that Aryans were the master race and that people belonging to other races were therefore inferior--even subhuman. By now, a clear theme of World War II should be forming: when a people are portrayed as beasts, only atrocities towards these men, women, and children will follow.
Sources:
http://all-that-is-interesting.com/josef-mengele-nazi-experiments
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007060
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-angel-of-death-dies
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30933718
Very interesting and horrifying post giving details to the Holocaust, which we didn't talk very much about in class. It also is a horrific cross section of Nazi ideology. I had a few questions I was wondering if you could clear up. Is it know what percentage of Mengele's victims survived? Also how did discoveries such as these affect the Allied forces who discovered them?
ReplyDeleteIn answer to your question, I have read estimates saying there were 3,000 individual twins studied by Mengele, but less than 200 survived.
DeleteAs for your second question, I am not exactly sure, but I can imagine how it would have provoked outrage.
I found your article quite interesting, that there was a scientist that was so infamous for what he did in the concentration camps. Looking further into him, I was curious if he was ever punished for his crime, and I found an article about a trial that survivors of his experiments created. Though he was not present, believed to be hiding in Argentina, their goal was to meet up and raise awareness that might hopefully lead to his capture. The reward for his capture was at once even $300,000. There were about 1,500 pairs of twins that attended, and about 20 gave personal testimony during the trial. One man even told the story of being in line for the gas chambers when Dr. Mengele realized he was a twin and quickly moved him back in order to conduct research, and that was the reason he is alive today. Though those 20 offered there stories, there were many survivors who were asked to testify but declined, wanting to keep their stories and memories private given the horrible experiences they went through.
ReplyDeleteRead more about this trial they put on here:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1985-02-04/news/8501070490_1_auschwitz-jewish-twins-dr-josef-mengele/2
This article was very interesting and informative. I find it interesting how Dr. Mengele stood out so much more than all of the other physicians at the camp and how he was mentioned so much more even though there were 30 other physician at Auschwitz and Birkenau. Additionally, he inspected the prisoners on the ramp/gas chambers no more than the other physicians. Some have said it was because of his postwar notoriety. Additionally Mengele was never captured and lived out his life until he had a stroke in Brazil in 1979.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting and slightly disturbing post. The experiments done by Mengele were truly horrifying. You bring up a good point about how the Germans did not see the prisoners as equals or even people. This sort of dehumanizing could also be seen in the WWII American propaganda regarding their Japanese enemies. Do you think Hitler and the American government had the same strategy of dehumanizing their opponents to make it easier for their own troops to kill?
ReplyDelete