June 12, 2012

Research Paper
Dr. Josef Mengele
Even though there are some controversial medical experiments practiced contemporarily,
they dont compare to the experiments conducted during the Holocaust by Josef Mengele. He
achieved some medical advancements but the lack of morality he had defamed his reputation
internationally. Dr. Josef Mengele was an intelligent German doctor who worked for the Nazi
Regime in the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust; he focused his inhumane
experiments on Jewish prisoners that had unique hereditary traits and was able to evade the
authorities who persecuted him for his crimes, years after the Holocaust.
Mengeles outstanding intellect allowed him to make a few improvements in medicine and
also to investigate about genetics, the career he was fascinated by. After graduating from the
University of Munich, Mengele was fortunately hired as assistant by Dr. Otmar Von Verschuer, a
Nazi doctor who was the director of the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in
Frankfurt (Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2004). There he could focus his studies on twins and
after a number of years, obtain his doctorate in medicine with a specialty in hereditary deformities.
Dr. Mengele concluded that if he found the genetic factor that causes the production of twins, he
would present it to the Aryan race in order to increase their reproduction rates.
Due to Adolf Hitlers skill of persuasion and to the conveniences he was offered, Mengele
joined the Nazi Regime to serve as a doctor. During his time as a student at the University of
Munich, Hitlers nationalistic ideas inspired the Munich citizens and became dominant, provoking
Mengeles support (Lynott, 2012). Besides this, Von Verschuers Nazi ideas highly influenced
Mengele. His nationalistic spirit arose and he entered the Nazi Party. Mengele thought that by
becoming a Nazi he would serve his country and at the same time benefit from the positions he was
proposed. He started working in the Schutzstaffel (SS), Hitlers elite organization that was in charge
of most of the matters in the Reich, and ended up working as a doctor for the SS (United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2012).
His prestige in the Nazi Reich grew, so he was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp to
perform his desired medical experiments on the prisoners. According to the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum (2012), he participated in the SS as a medical officer, but was injured during
campaigns so he returned to Germany to work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. A few months later,
he received a promotion and was given the rank of SS Captain. On May 30, 1943 Mengele was
transferred to Auschwitz. There, he was granted the power to perform any experiment he desired,
select and sometimes torture his victims, and, as he did once, eliminate a whole barrack of prisoners
if considered necessary.
Until January 20, 1945, he conducted experiments on inmates, concentrating on
twins and dwarfs. His victims were Jews and Gypsies, females as well as males,
children as well as grown-ups, (Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2004).
Mengele, also known as the Angel of Death, is remembered for his cruelty and brutality at
the time of conducting his experiments, since most of them caused severe pain in his victims. The
indefinite power he was conceded and his malevolence were the main factors that bolstered his sick
experiments. Alex Dekel, one of Mengeles subjects, once stated:
I have never accepted the fact that Mengele himself believed he was doing serious
work not from the slipshod way he went about it. He was only exercising his power.
Mengele ran a butcher shop major surgeries were performed without anesthesia.
Once, I witnessed a stomach operation Mengele was removing pieces from the
stomach, but without any anesthetic. Another time, it was a heart that was removed,
again, without anesthesia. It was horrifying. Mengele was a doctor who became mad
because of the power he was given. Nobody ever questioned him why did this one
die? Why did that one perish? The patients did not count. He professed to do what he
did in the name of science, but it was a madness on his part.
Besides this, he used Jews and gypsies as his samples to test the reaction of a human body in
conditions such as high-altitude, freezing, injections to change eye color, drinking sea-water,
Malaria, mustard gas, potential of sulfanilamide, poison, and typhus. According to Blow (2012),
Mengele collected eyes and corpses from his experiments.
Josef Mengele had a particular interest in people who suffered from distinct hereditary traits.
He was fascinated by twins, dwarfs, and people with Heterochromia, a condition in which the color
of both eyes differ, among others (Lynott, 2012). He was malevolently affectionate to the twins; he
gave them candy during their first days with him and required no hard work from them (Blow,
2012). The naive twins even called him Uncle Mengele. However, he took blood samples from
each pair of twins every day, and conducted experiments on them. Dr. Mengele carefully analyzed
their anatomy, injected chemicals into their eyes to change their color, and gave shots of diseases or
viruses to test their reaction. Around 1,400 pairs of twins were victims of Mengeles barbaric
experiments (Heflik, 2005).
Dr. Mengeles cunning permitted him to devise methods of evading the authorities which
tried to capture him due to his brutal crimes committed during the Holocaust. Before he could do a
post-doctorate with his research at Auschwitz, he had to flee from the concentration camp in 1945
when the Russian forces took control over part of Hitlers territory (United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, 2012). For the next four years he worked as a farmer in Bavaria with an illegal
identification. In 1949 he settled in Argentina, but a few months later had to escape to Brazil since a
warrant for his extradition and arrest was issued and the police had just captured the Nazi Adolf
Eichmann in Buenos Aires (Lynott, 2012). On February 7, 1979, Mengele suffered a stroke and
drowned at a beach in Brazil with the fake name of Wolfgang Gerhard (Blow, 2012). In 1992,
DNA samples finally confirmed the conclusion of German authorities that Gerghard was actually
Mengele.
In the long run, Dr. Josef Mengele was one of the most evil and sick, yet intelligent, doctors
in human history. His unethical and inhumane medical experiments have characterized him across
the world. Many remember him as an insane doctor who lost his control in the experiments for the
excessive power he was given, who focused more in torture than in his studies. Others consider him
to be a clever scientist who discovered a few medical advancements. In my opinion, he was just a
mentally ill individual who enjoyed from his cruel experiments, and whose actions cant be justified
since all the lives he took dont match the few lives he couldve saved for his innovations.

Works Cited
Blow, E. (2012). The Angel of Death, Josef Mengele. Retrieved on May 21, 2012 from
http://www.auschwitz.dk/mengele.htm.
Encyclopedia of World Biography. (2004). Josef Mengele. Retrieved on May 19, 2012 from:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Josef_Mengele.aspx.
Heflik, R. (2012). Forgiving Dr. Mengele. Retrieved on May 30, 20120 from
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,389491,00.html.
Lynott, D. (2012). Josef Mengele. Retrieved on May 16, 2012 from:
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/history/mengele/index_1.html.
Silverman, J. (2012). 10 Controversial Genetic Experiments. Retrieved on May 30, 2012 from
http://curiosity.discovery.com/topic/bioethics/10-controversial-genetic-
experiments6.htm.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (2012). Josef Mengele. Retrieved on May 16, 2012
from: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007060.