Doctor death German doctor experiences. Horrible experiences of the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in a concentration camp. Experiments: increasing and limiting the birth rate
Josef Mengele
In world history, many facts are known about bloody dictators, rulers and tyrants, distinguished by particular cruelty and violence, who killed millions of innocent people. But a special place among them is occupied by a person with a seemingly peaceful and most humane profession, namely the doctor Josef Mengele, who surpassed many in his cruelty and sadism. famous killers and maniacs.
Curriculum vitae
Josef was born on March 16, 1911 in German city Gunzburg in the family of an agricultural machinery manufacturer. He was the eldest child in the family. The father was constantly busy with affairs at the factory, and the mother was distinguished by a rather strict and despotic character, both to the factory staff and to her own children.
At school, little Mengele studied well, as befits a child of a strict Catholic upbringing. Continuing his studies at the universities of Vienna, Bonn and Munich, he studied medicine and at the age of 27 he received a medical degree. Two years later, Mengele joined the ranks of the SS troops, where he was appointed to the post of doctor in the sapper unit and rose to the rank of Hauptsturmführer. In 1943, he was commissioned for injury and appointed as a doctor in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
welcome to Hell
To most of the surviving victims of the "Death Factory", as Auschwitz was called, Mengele, at their first meeting, seemed to be a fairly humane young man: tall, with a sincere smile on his face. He always smelled of expensive cologne, and his uniform was perfectly ironed, his boots were always polished. But these were only illusions about humanity.
As soon as new batches of prisoners arrived at Auschwitz, the doctor lined them up, stripped them naked and slowly walked among the prisoners, looking for suitable victims for his monstrous experiments. Those who were sick, the elderly and many women with babies in their arms, the doctor determined in the gas chambers. Only those prisoners who were able to work, Mengele left alive. Thus began hell for hundreds of thousands of people.
The "Angel of Death", as the prisoners called Mengele, began his bloody activities with the destruction of all the gypsies and several barracks with women and children. The reason for such bloodthirstiness was the typhus epidemic, with which the doctor decided to fight extremely radically. Pretending to be the arbiter human destinies, he himself chose who to take life, who to operate on, and who to leave alive. But Josef was especially interested in inhuman experiments on prisoners.
Experiments on prisoners of Auschwitz
Hauptsturmführer Mengele was very interested in genetic changes in the body. In his opinion, torture was carried out for the benefit of the Third Reich and the science of genetics. So he looked for ways to increase the birth rate of the superior race and ways to reduce the birth rate of other races.
- To study the effects of cold on German soldiers in field conditions, The "Angel of Death" surrounded the prisoners of the concentration camp with large pieces of ice and periodically measured their body temperature.
- To determine the maximum critical pressure that a person can withstand, a pressure chamber was created. In it, the prisoners were torn to pieces.
- Also, prisoners of war were given lethal injections to determine endurance.
- Inspired by the idea of destroying non-Aryan nationalities, the doctor performed operations to sterilize women by injecting various chemicals into the ovaries and exposing them to X-rays.
People for Mengele were just biomaterial for work. He easily pulled out teeth, broke out bones, pumped out blood from prisoners for the needs of the Wehrmacht, or performed sex change operations. Especially for the "Angel of Death" people with genetic diseases or deviations were of interest, for example, such as midgets
Dr. Mengele's experiments on children
Children in the activities of the Hauptsturmführer occupied a special position. Since, according to the ideas of the Third Reich, little Aryans were supposed to have only light skin, eyes and hair, the doctor injected special dyes into the eyes of Auschwitz children. In addition, he conducted experiments, introducing various injections into the heart, forcibly infected children with venereal or infectious diseases, cut out organs, amputated limbs, pulled out teeth and inserted others.
The twins were subjected to the most cruel experiments. When the twins were brought to the concentration camp, they were immediately isolated from other prisoners. Each pair was carefully examined, weighed, measured for height, length of arms, legs and fingers, as well as other physical parameters. At that time, the top leadership of Nazi Germany set the task - so that every healthy Aryan could give birth to two, three or more future Wehrmacht soldiers. "Doctor death" transplanted organs to the twins, pumped blood to each other, while he entered all the data and results of bloody operations into tables and notebooks. Enlightened by the idea of creating a Siamese pair of twins, Mengele performed an operation to sew together two little gypsies, who soon died.
All operations were performed without anesthesia. Children endured unbearable hellish pain. Most of the little prisoners did not live to see the end of the operation, and those who fell ill or were very bad condition after the operation, they were placed in the gas chambers or an anatomical autopsy was performed.
All the results of the experiments were periodically sent to the table higher ranks Germany. Josef Mengele himself often held consultations and conferences at which he read out reports on his work.
The further fate of the executioner
When Soviet troops approached Auschwitz in April 1945, Hauptsturmführer Mengele quickly left the “death factory”, taking his notebooks, notes and tables with him. Being declared a war criminal, he was able to escape to the West, disguised as an ordinary soldier's uniform. Since no one identified him, and the identity was not established, the doctor avoided arrest, wandering first in Bavaria, and then moved to Argentina. Before the court, the bloody doctor never appeared, fleeing from justice in Paraguay and Brazil. In South America, "Dr. Death" was involved in medical activities, usually illegal.
Suffering from paranoia, the "Angel of Death" died, according to some sources, on February 7, 1979. The cause of death was a stroke while swimming in the ocean. Only 13 years later, the location of his grave was officially confirmed.
Video about the terrible experiments of the Nazis on prisoners of concentration camps
2.6666666666667 Rating 2.67 (3 Votes)
Josef Mengele, the most famous of the Nazi criminal doctors, was born in 1911 in Bavaria. He studied philosophy at the University of Munich and medicine at Frankfurt. In 1934 he joined the CA and became a member of the NSDAP, in 1937 he joined the SS. He worked at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. The topic of the dissertation is “Morphological studies of the structure of the lower jaw of representatives of four races”.
During World War II he served as a military doctor in the SS division "Viking". In 1942 he received the Iron Cross for rescuing two tankers from a burning tank. After being wounded, SS Hauptsturmführer Mengele was declared unfit for military service and in 1943 was appointed chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Soon the prisoners called him "the angel of death."
//-- Sadistic scientist doctor --//
In addition to their main function - the destruction of representatives of "inferior races", prisoners of war, communists and simply dissatisfied, concentration camps in Nazi Germany also performed another function. With the arrival of Mengele, Auschwitz became a "major research center". Unfortunately, the range of "scientific" interests of Josef Mengele was unusually wide. He began with "works" to "increase the fertility of Aryan women." It is clear that non-Aryan women served as material for research. Then the fatherland set a new, directly opposite task: to find the cheapest and effective methods birth control of “subhumans” – Jews, Gypsies and Slavs. Having crippled tens of thousands of men and women, Mengele came to a “strictly scientific” conclusion: the most reliable way to avoid conception is castration.
"Research" went on as usual. The Wehrmacht ordered a topic: to find out everything about the effects of cold (hypothermia) on the body of soldiers. The “method” of the experiments was the most straightforward: a prisoner from a concentration camp was taken, covered with ice on all sides, “doctors” in SS uniform constantly measured body temperature ... When the experimental person died, a new one was brought from the barracks. Conclusion: after cooling the body below 30 degrees, it is most likely impossible to save a person. The best remedy for warming - a hot bath and "the natural warmth of the female body."
Luftwaffe - air Force Germany - commissioned research on the topic: "The impact high altitude on the performance of the pilot. A pressure chamber was built in Auschwitz. Thousands of prisoners took terrible death: at ultra-low pressure, a person was simply torn apart. Conclusion: it is necessary to build aircraft with a pressurized cabin. But none of these aircraft in Germany took off until the very end of the war.
Josef Mengele, carried away in his youth race theory, on his own initiative, conducted experiments with eye color. For some reason, he needed to prove in practice that Brown eyes Jews cannot under any circumstances become blue eyes"true Aryan". He gave hundreds of Jews injections of blue dye - extremely painful and often leading to blindness. Conclusion: it is impossible to turn a Jew into an Aryan.
Tens of thousands of people became victims of Mengele's monstrous experiments. What are some studies of the impact on human body physical and mental exhaustion! And the "study" of three thousand infant twins, of which only 200 survived! The twins received blood transfusions and transplanted organs from each other. A lot more was being done. Sisters were forced to have children from brothers. Sex reassignment operations were carried out ...
Before proceeding with your experiments, kind doctor Mengele" could pat the child on the head, treat him with chocolate ...
The concentration camp prisoners were deliberately infected with various diseases in order to test the effectiveness of new drugs on them. In 1998, one of the former prisoners of Auschwitz sued the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. The creators of aspirin were accused of using concentration camp prisoners during the war to test their sleeping pills.
Judging by the fact that shortly after the start of the “testing”, the concern additionally acquired another 150 prisoners of Auschwitz, no one could wake up after a new sleeping pill. By the way, other representatives of German business also cooperated with the concentration camp system. The largest chemical concern in Germany, IG Farbenindustry, made not only synthetic gasoline for tanks, but also Zyklon-B gas for the gas chambers of the same Auschwitz. After the war, the giant company was "unbundled". Some of the fragments of IG Farbenindustry are well known in our country. Including as drug manufacturers.
So what did Josef Mengele achieve? In medical terms, the Nazi fanatic failed in the same way as in moral, ethical, human ... Having unlimited opportunities for experiments at his disposal, he still did not achieve anything. It is impossible to consider as a scientific result the conclusion that if a person is not allowed to sleep and not fed, he will first go crazy and then die.
//-- Quiet "retirement" --//
In 1945, Josef Mengele carefully destroyed all the collected "data" and escaped from Auschwitz. Until 1949, he quietly worked in his native Gunzburg in his father's company. Then, with new documents in the name of Helmut Gregor, he emigrated to Argentina. He received his passport quite legally, through the Red Cross. In those years, this organization issued passports and travel documents to tens of thousands of refugees from Germany. Perhaps Mengele's fake ID was simply not carefully verified. Moreover, the art of forging documents reached unprecedented heights in the Third Reich.
One way or another, Mengele ended up in South America. In the early 50s, when Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest (with the right to kill him upon arrest), the Nazi criminal moved to Paraguay, where he disappeared from view. Checking all subsequent messages about him future fate showed that they are not true.
After the end of the war, many journalists were looking for at least some information that could put them on the trail of Josef Mengele ... The fact is that for forty years after the end of World War II, “fake” Mengeles appeared in the most different places. So, in 1968, a former Brazilian policeman claimed that he allegedly managed to find traces of the "angel of death" on the border of Paraguay and Argentina. Shimon Wiesenthal announced in 1979 that Mengele was hiding in a secret Nazi colony in the Chilean Andes. In 1981, a message appeared in the American Life magazine: Mengele lives in the Bedford Hills area, located fifty kilometers north of New York. And in 1985, in Lisbon, a suicide left a note in which he admitted that it was he who was the wanted Nazi criminal Josef Mengele.
//-- Where was it found --//
And only in 1985, it seems, it became known about the true whereabouts of Mengele. Or rather, his grave. An Austrian couple living in Brazil reported that Mengele was Wolfgang Gerhard, who had been their neighbor for several years. The couple claimed that six years ago he drowned, that he was then 67 years old, and indicated the location of his grave - the town of Embu.
In the same year, 1985, the remains of the deceased were exhumed. At each stage of this event, three independent teams of forensic experts participated in it, and live television broadcast from the cemetery was received in almost all countries of the world. In the coffin were only the decayed bones of the deceased. However, everyone was looking forward to the results of their identification. For millions of people wanted to know whether these remains really belong to the cruel misanthrope and executioner wanted for many years.
The chances of scientists to establish the identity of the deceased were regarded as quite high. The fact is that they had at their disposal an extensive archive of data on Mengele: since the war, the SS file contained information about his height, weight, skull geometry, and the condition of his teeth. The photographs clearly showed a characteristic gap between the front upper teeth.
Specialists who investigated the burial in Emba had to be very careful when making conclusions. The desire to find Josef Mengele was so great that there had already been cases of his erroneous identification, including falsified ones. Many such deceptions are described in the book Witness From the Grave by Christopher Joyce and Eric Stover, presenting readers with a gripping story. professional career Clyde Snow, chief investigator of the Embu remains.
//-- How he was identified --//
The bones found in the grave were subjected to a thorough and comprehensive examination, which was carried out by three independent groups of experts - from Germany, the USA and from the Shimon Wiesenthal Center, located in Austria.
At the end of the exhumation, scientists examined the grave for the second time in search of possibly fallen dental fillings and bone fragments. Then all parts of the skeleton were taken to Sao Paulo, to the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Here further research continued.
The results obtained, compared with data on the identity of Mengele from the SS file, gave the experts reason to almost certainly consider the examined remains to be those of a wanted war criminal. However, they needed absolute certainty, they needed an argument convincingly confirming such a conclusion. And then Richard Helmer, a West German forensic anthropologist, joined the work of experts. Thanks to his participation, it was possible to brilliantly complete the final stage of the entire operation.
Helmer was able to recreate the appearance of a deceased person from his skull. It was difficult and painstaking work. First of all, it was necessary to mark on the skull the points that were to serve as starting points for restoring the appearance of the face, and to accurately determine the distances between them. After that, the researcher created a computer "image" of the skull.
Further, based on his professional knowledge of the thickness and distribution of soft tissues, muscles and skin on the face, he received a new computer image that already clearly reproduced the features of the restored face. The last - and most crucial - moment of the entire procedure came when the face, recreated by computer graphics, was combined with the face in Mengele's photograph. Both images are exactly the same. So it was finally proved that a person, long years hiding in Brazil under the names of Helmut Gregor and Wolfgang Gerhard and drowned in 1979 at the age of 67, was indeed the "angel of death" of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the cruel Nazi executioner Dr. Josef Mengele
Joseph Mengele. Doctor from Auschwitz.
Josef Mengele
Congenital deformity saved an entire family from death in the gas chamber
At midnight on May 19, 1944, another train of Jews arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The SS guards habitually drove people into groups, the shepherd dogs burst into hoarse barking. And suddenly seven midgets appear at the door of the car: five women dressed as if at a ball and two men in elegant suits. Not at all embarrassed by the situation, they look around with interest, and one of them begins to distribute business cards to the stunned guards: let them know what strange place the world-famous Lilliput Troupe has arrived!
Having found out that all these kids are brothers and sisters, the SS officer ordered his subordinates to urgently wake up the doctor. Josef Mengele. Everyone knew that he "collects" his own cabinet of curiosities and simply adores all sorts of deviations from the norm. And then there are seven Lilliputian relatives at once. Mengele, after hearing what was the matter, immediately jumped out of bed.
Music connected them
The dwarfs did not yet know that the "doctor" they expected preferred to treat with radical methods. Say, when a typhus epidemic broke out in one of the women's barracks, he simply sent 498 of its inhabitants to the gas chambers. And they didn’t know about the monstrous experiments on living people either. Therefore, when Herr Mengele began to ask questions, they gladly told the story of their family.
Shimshon Ovitz from the Romanian town of Roswell was a midget, which did not prevent him from marrying women of normal height twice. Seven of his children were born small, three were ordinary. The head of the family died when the youngest, Perla, was not even two years old. The second wife of Shimshon - Batya-Berta was left alone with ten offspring in her arms. It occurred to her that children should learn music, and she did not lose. Everyone quickly mastered various instruments, created a family ensemble and began touring. Troupe Ovitsev was a great success and, accordingly, a good income. They could even afford a car, a rarity in those days. But in 1940, part of Romania came under the control of Nazi Hungary, and restrictions on Jews came into force. In particular, they were forbidden to speak in front of representatives of other nationalities. The team temporarily stopped playing concerts, and during the downtime, the Ovits were able to get fake documents for themselves in order to start performing again. But in 1944, the secret became clear, and the whole family - 12 people aged from 15 months to 58 years old - was sent to Auschwitz.
Saved by the devil
The musical abilities of Dr. Mengele's family members were of little interest. But the union of the dwarf with ordinary woman and the ratio of normal offspring to children with disabilities is incredible! Therefore, he ordered not to touch the Ovits. Confidently lying to the monster about his close relationship with an unusual family, their neighbor Simon Shlomovits saved his - ten people. All of them were settled separately from other prisoners. They were allowed to walk in their own clothes and not shave their heads. Sometimes they were even fed not with gruel, but with more or less decent food.
“Perhaps we have cheered him up and he wants us to put on a show here too,” the Ovits thought. Therefore, when they were called to the doctor, the women dressed up and put on makeup (they were allowed to keep their makeup). However, in the laboratory, they simply took blood from everyone. A week later again. And then more and more. Such volumes were pumped out of the poor Lilliputians that they fainted. But as soon as they came to their senses, the execution was repeated.
They made careless punctures, and blood splattered in all directions. We often felt sick. When we returned to the barracks, we fell on the bunk. But they did not have time to restore strength, as we were called for a new cycle, - she recalled Perla Ovitz.
Family members were tested for function internal organs, looked for typhus, syphilis and other diseases, pulled out their healthy teeth and pulled out their eyelashes. Psychiatrists asked endless questions, supposedly testing intelligence. But the most terrible torture was injections into the ears: boiling water, followed by ice water, and so on in a circle. The most annoying thing is that Josef Mengele himself did not understand how to use the results of his monstrous experiments and what they could tell him about the mystery of this family. But at the same time, he enthusiastically asked the wife of the eldest of Abraham's dwarfs, Dora (she was of normal height) about the smallest details of their sex life.
However, at least they were still alive. But another hunchback dwarf who appeared in the camp was much less fortunate. The savage doctor decided that the skeletons of little freaks should be exhibited in the Berlin Museum, ordered that the unfortunate man be thrown into a cauldron and boiled until the meat separated from the bones.
And ordinary twins were the fanatic's favorite "stuff". He transfused blood and transplanted their organs to each other, tried to change eye color with chemicals, infected with viruses. I wanted to understand how twins are made, and to make sure that German women give birth to two or three racially pure children at a time
So the Ovitz were even grateful to their "savior." And they always tried to appear before him neat and cheerful. The women even flirted with Josef, and he brought their children toys of the kids destroyed in the camp. The youngest of the family, named after his grandfather Shimshon, even once called Mengele dad. He gently corrected the one and a half year old boy: "No, I'm not dad, I'm just Uncle Josef."
With the youngest of the midgets - Perla, who was then 23, it seems that something happened that many years later will be called "Stockholm Syndrome".
Dr. Mengele looked like a movie star, only more handsome, she said. - Everyone could fall in love with him. But none of those who saw him could imagine what kind of pretty face the monster is hiding. We knew that he was merciless and capable of the most terrible forms of sadism. That when he was angry, he fell into hysterics. But, being in a bad mood, he immediately calmed down as soon as he crossed the threshold of our barracks. Seeing him in good location spirit, everyone in the camp said, “Probably visited the kids.”
Visual material
One evening the doctor looked in on the dwarfs, holding a small bundle in his hands. He told his charges that they were going to have a special trip the next day. Noticing how the Lilliputians turned pale, he reassured them with a smile. And he left a bag in which there were lipstick, blush, nail polish, eye shadow, a bottle of cologne. The women were delighted.
The next day, at dawn, all the Lilliputians were put into a truck and taken to a building located in the SS residential camp. They even fed us a hearty dinner served on china plates and silver cutlery.
Then the troupe was brought to the stage. The hall was full - entirely the leadership. The sheep drew themselves up, but then Mengele barked: “Take off your clothes!” They had no choice but to obey. Trying to cover up intimate parts, Lilliputians hunched over. "Straighten up!" the tormentor shouted at them. And then he began to give a lecture entitled "Examples of work with anthropological and hereditary biology in concentration camps”, the essence of which was that the Jewish people are degenerating, turning into a nation of freaks. Lilliputians, as well as possible, were suitable as a visual aid. So the SS officers were happy to feel the Ovits at the end of the speech.
It was another test for the family, but nevertheless Mengele saved them from death. Another camp doctor, jealous of Josef's position, sent the brothers Avraham and Mika behind his back to the gas chamber. But Mengele managed to pull them out. Therefore, the Ovitsy even took offense at the doctor, who did not take them with him when he was transferred from Auschwitz to the Gross-Rosen camp. And not in vain. The Lilliputians left without the support of the devil were going to be sent to the gas chamber. But they are lucky again. Their execution was scheduled for January 27, 1945, but on that day they entered Auschwitz soviet soldiers. A few months later, the miraculously surviving Ovits returned to their looted and destroyed house. Later they moved to Belgian Antwerp. And after the formation of Israel, they moved to Haifa. They lived long life: older sister Rozika died at the age of 98, the youngest, Perla, left at 80. She did not feel malice towards her torturer.
If the judges had asked me if he should be hanged, I would have answered that he should be released, she said. - I was saved by the grace of the devil - God will pay tribute to Mengele.
Estimate!
Prisoner of Auschwitz, Czech Dina Gottlibova, on the orders of Dr. Mengele, made drawings of the heads, auricles, noses, mouths, arms and legs of his experimental subjects, including Ovitsev. She recalled that Josef called the dwarfs the names of the seven dwarfs from the fairy tale. Ironically, Dina married an artist after the war Arthur Babbitt who drew characters for Disney's Snow White.
Bear in mind
* Josef MENGELE(1911 - 1979) - SS Hauptsturmführer, awarded the Iron Cross 1st class for rescuing two tankmen from a burning tank.
* The topic of his doctoral dissertation was "Racial differences in the structure of the lower jaw."
* In Auschwitz, dissected live babies, castrated boys and men without anesthesia, subjected women to electric shocks high voltage, to find out their endurance, sterilized a group of Polish nuns using X-rays.
* Received the nickname Angel of Death.
* Until 1949, he hid in Bavaria, from there he fled to Argentina. When he was tracked down by agents of the Israeli secret service Mossad - Mengele was the most wanted Nazi criminal after Adolf Eichmann, moved to Paraguay and later to Brazil.
* While swimming in the state of São Paulo, the ghoul suffered a stroke and drowned.
The first concentration camp in Germany was opened in 1933. The last worker was captured Soviet troops in 1945. Between these two dates - millions of tortured prisoners who died from overwork, strangled in gas chambers, shot by the SS. And those who died from "medical experiments". How many of these, the last, no one knows for sure. Hundreds of thousands. Inhuman experiments on people in Nazi concentration camps- This is also history, the history of medicine. Its blackest, but no less interesting page...
Josef Mengele, the most famous of the Nazi criminal doctors, was born in Bavaria in 1911. He studied philosophy at the University of Munich and medicine at Frankfurt. In 1934 he joined the SA and became a member of the National Socialist Party, in 1937 he joined the SS. He worked at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. Dissertation topic: "Morphological studies of the structure of the lower jaw of representatives of four races."
After the outbreak of World War II, he served as a military doctor in the SS division "Viking" in France, Poland and Russia. In 1942 he received the Iron Cross for rescuing two tankmen from a burning tank. After being wounded, SS Hauptsturmführer Mengele was declared unfit for military service and in 1943 was appointed chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The prisoners soon nicknamed him "the angel of death".
Dr. Mengele had to answer the question: how to increase the ability to reproduce in German people so that it satisfies the needs of the planned large-scale settlement by Germans of the occupied regions of the countries of Eastern Europe. His focus was on the problem of twins, as well as the physiology and pathology of dwarfism. Monozygotic twins were subjected to experiments, mainly children, dwarfs and persons with congenital disabilities. They were searched for among those arriving at the camp.
Tens of thousands of people became victims of Mengele's monstrous experiments. What are some studies of the effects of physical and mental exhaustion on the human body! And the "study" of 3,000 infant twins, of which only 200 survived! The twins received blood transfusions and transplanted organs from each other. Sisters were forced to have children from brothers. Sex reassignment operations were carried out. Before starting the experiments, the kind doctor Mengele could stroke the child on the head, treat him with chocolate ...
The twins were given blood transfusions from one to the other and x-rayed. The second stage covered comparative analysis internal organs, which was performed during the autopsy. Such an analysis would be difficult to carry out under normal conditions due to the low probability of the simultaneous death of both twins. At the camp, twin comparisons were made hundreds of times. For this purpose, Dr. Mengele killed them with phenol injections. He once led an operation in which two gypsy boys were sewn together to create Siamese twins. The children's hands turned out to be heavily infected at the sites of resection of blood vessels. Mengele usually, without any anesthesia, cut off part of the liver or other vital organs from Jewish children and killed them with monstrous blows to the head if there was a need for a just-dead "guinea pig". He injected chloroform into the hearts of many children, he infected other of his experimental subjects with typhus. Mengele injected many women with pathogenic bacteria into the ovaries. Some twins with different color colorants were injected into the eye sockets and pupils to change eye color and explore the possibility of producing blue-eyed Aryan twins. In the end, the children were left with granular clots instead of eyes.
The Wehrmacht ordered a topic: to find out everything about the effects of cold on the body of a soldier (hypothermia). The experimental methodology was the most straightforward: a prisoner from a concentration camp is taken, covered with ice on all sides, "doctors" in SS uniform constantly measure body temperature ... When an experimental person dies, a new one is brought from the barracks. Conclusion: after cooling the body below 30 degrees, it is most likely impossible to save a person. The best way to warm up is a hot bath and the "natural warmth of the female body."
In 1945, Josef Mengele carefully destroyed all the collected "data" and escaped from Auschwitz. Until 1949, Mengele worked quietly in his native Gunzburg at his father's firm. Then, according to new documents in the name of Helmut Gregor, he emigrated to Argentina. He received his passport quite legally, through... the Red Cross. In those years, this organization provided charity, issued passports and travel documents to tens of thousands of refugees from Germany. It is possible that Mengele's fake ID was simply not thoroughly verified. Moreover, the art of forging documents in the Third Reich reached unprecedented heights.
One way or another, Mengele ended up in South America. In the early 50s, when Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest (with the right to kill him upon arrest), Iozef moved to Paraguay. However, all this was, rather, a sham, a game of catching the Nazis. All with the same passport in the name of Gregor, Josef Mengele repeatedly visited Europe, where his wife and son remained. The Swiss police watched his every move - and did nothing.
The terrible experiments on people by Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death of Auschwitz", did not end after his flight to South America. His dream came true. Came out into the light A new book Argentine historian Jorge Camaraza's "Mengele: Angel of Death in South America" argues that Josef Mengele's experiments did not end after his flight to South America after the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. There is evidence that the "Angel of Death of Auschwitz" continued his terrible experiments in Brazil, in a small town that later received the nickname "Twin City".
Josef Mengele managed a lot in his life: live a happy childhood, get an excellent education at the university, make a happy family, raise children, get to know the taste of war and front-line life, work out " scientific research", many of whom had importance for modern medicine, since vaccines against various diseases have been developed, and many other useful experiments have been done that would not have been possible in a democratic state (in fact, the crimes of Mengele, like many of his colleagues, were huge contribution in medicine), finally, being already on the run, Josef received relaxing holiday on the sandy shores Latin America. Already on this well-deserved rest, Mengele was repeatedly forced to recall his past affairs - he repeatedly read articles in newspapers about his search, about a fee of 50,000 US dollars assigned for providing information about his whereabouts, about his atrocities with prisoners. Reading these articles, Josef Mengele could not hide his sarcastic sad smile, for which he was remembered by many of his victims - after all, he was in sight, swam on public beaches, conducted active correspondence, visited entertainment establishments. And he could not understand the accusations of committed atrocities - he always looked at his experimental subjects only as material for experiments. He did not see the difference between the experiments he did at school on beetles and those he did at Auschwitz.
In Brazil, he lived until February 7, 1979, when he suffered a stroke while swimming in the sea, as a result of which he drowned.
During the war, the name of Josef Mengele (photo in the article) was little known, so he managed to escape punishment and quietly leave Germany after the war. Much later, he turned into a symbol of a killer doctor who performed crazy experiments on prisoners. Later it became clear that Mengele was not alone - he fulfilled the requests of other doctors and scientists, including world famous ones.
Origin
The biography of Josef Mengele began in 1911 in the German state of Bavaria. He was born into a family of an ordinary farmer. The father of the future Nazi executioner founded the company for the production of agricultural equipment "Karl Mengele and Sons". The mother took care of the children. Josef had two younger brother Carl Jr. and Alois.
The wealthy Mengele family began to support Hitler immediately after he came to power, because the Fuhrer protected the interests of those peasants on whom the family's well-being depended. Josef's father quickly joined the party, and when Hitler arrived in the city, he spoke at the Karl Mengele factory. When the Nazis came to power, the company received a good order.
Early biography
As a child, Josef was a rather curious, ambitious and talented child. One day he told his parents that someday they would see his name in an encyclopedia. He studied well at school, was interested in art and sports. After leaving school, the young man refused to follow in his father's footsteps and decided to get medical education. At first he wanted to become a dentist, but then he found it too boring. He studied at the Munich and Military Universities.
AT student years joined the Steel Helmet organization. Formally, it was not a Nazi movement. The members of the group were ultra-patriots and adhered to conservative views, there were also monarchists. Soon, the little organized street detachments of the Steel Helmet were absorbed by the stormtroopers.
In the ranks of the SA, Josef Mengele did not even think of conducting experiments on people. There he did not remain long. Street fights did not inspire the intelligent young doctor, so he soon left the organization, citing poor health. After receiving a diploma (the young man studied anthropology at the university), Mengele began working at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene.
There he became an assistant to the physician Otmar von Verschuer, who was considered an authority on genetics. The doctor specialized in twins, genetic abnormalities and hereditary diseases. Under Verschuer's guidance, Josef Mengele completed his doctoral dissertation. He was then less than thirty years old. Mengele filed big hopes.
Military service
The doctor Josef Mengele was supposed to join the SS and the party for career development. This often happens in totalitarian states. At the end of the thirties, Mengele first joined the NSDAP, and then the SS. In 1940, when the war was already in full swing, he was drafted into the army. Mengele did not stay long in the Wehrmacht. He transferred to the racial medical battalion of the Waffen-SS.
The doctor did not take a direct part in the hostilities. Soon he was transferred to the SS Headquarters for Settlement. Mengele's job was to evaluate Poles for suitability for further Germanization according to the racial standards of the Nazi state. After the start of the war with Soviet Union the future Doctor Death was transferred to tank division SS, where he served as a medical officer. He was awarded the Iron Cross for rescuing two tankers from a tank.
In the summer of 1942, the service ended. In the Rostov-on-Don area, Josef Mengele was seriously wounded. After his recovery, he was declared unfit for service. With the rank of captain, the doctor returned to Germany, where he continued to work in the SS administration for settlement issues.
Doctor Death
During this period, a sharp turn took place in the life of Dr. Josef Mengele. His longtime mentor became head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics and Heredity. The Kaiser had nothing to do with this institution. The Institute was founded long before the start of the war with the money of the John Rockefeller Foundation.
The institution dealt with eugenics, which was extremely popular throughout the world after the First World War. Eugenics is the science of selection, ways to improve hereditary qualities. This was of great interest to the then Nazi state. With the advent of the fascists to power, the institute was rebuilt on their ideology.
It was Verschuer who suggested that Josef Mengel work in a concentration camp for the benefit of German science. In 1942, a decision was made to transfer all Jews from the occupied territory to camps in Poland. The Germans had already decided to completely get rid of all the Jews, so they did not see anything reprehensible in experimenting on living subjects, who in any case were doomed to death.
Duties in Auschwitz
The scientific director convinced Josef Mengele that the camps offer great opportunities for scientific breakthroughs. After that, the doctor wrote a statement to the head physician of Auschwitz about his desire to serve in a concentration camp. The request was granted. Mengele was appointed chief doctor of the gypsy camp on the grounds of Auschwitz. He later became chief physician of a large camp in the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.
His duty was to inspect the arriving prisoners. Based on the results of the inspections, the commission decided who was fit for work for the benefit of the camp and would remain alive for a while, and who was too sick, old or weak for overwork. The second group was immediately sent to the gas chambers. The management did not have much confidence in the workers, so Mengele had to make sure that the attendants did not appropriate valuable items that the arrivals had with them.
He had permission to research, that is, he could leave any prisoners for experiments. The experiments of the doctor Josef Mengele were horrific. The doctor's test subjects had some privileges, for example, they received improved nutrition and were exempted from heavy work. The people selected for the experiments could not be sent to the gas chambers.
At the very beginning of work, Josef Mengele "saved" the camp from the epidemic - he immediately sent a batch of gypsies to the gas chamber, among whom the sick were found. Later he got rid of the party of women in the same way. If Mengele knew how to stop the epidemic, he would have conducted experiments on these people.
Mengele's experiments
It was impossible to predict the consequences of Josef Mengele's experiments. No one knew also how long it would last. Often, in the process of experiments, the experimental people became sick or crippled, so that Mengele completely lost interest in them. Everything depended on physical condition victims. If the subject did not suffer severe damage, he could be transferred to ordinary prisoners.
"Salvation" could only happen if the customers of the Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele did not need new people. During the war, Verschuer received from the ward a huge number of reports, blood samples, skeletons and internal organs of prisoners. Mengele actively collaborated with Adolf Butenandt. This is one of the world's largest biochemists, laureate Nobel Prize, an outstanding researcher of sex hormones. Butenandt developed a substance that was supposed to improve the quality of the blood of the military, their resistance to the influence of cold and altitude. This required liver preparations, which the scientist was supplied by Doctor Death.
Josef Mengele did not suffer any punishment for his experiments. The same applies to scientists with whom he collaborated. Verschuer became one of the largest geneticists and escaped denazification, and Butenandt headed the Max Planck Society. It was the most influential and prestigious German organization. It was not until the 2000s that organizations associated with Mengele made a formal apology to the victims of the experiments.
The exact number of victims of Dr. Josef Mengele is difficult to calculate. Almost all documents were destroyed either by the doctor himself, or by retreating SS troops, or by customers. On the conscience of Mengel were not only the victims of the experiments, but also the murdered disabled prisoners.
Experiments on twins
The doctor was not at all a psychopath, as one might assume, although Josef Mengele's experiments were insane. He personally visited his experimental subjects, treated the smallest to chocolates. He asked the children to call himself "Uncle Mengele." This most amazed people, judging by the recollections of those who managed to survive. Doctor Death was kind to the children, courteous, forced the little prisoners to go to a kindergarten organized by him, although he well understood that most of subordinates will die.
Mengele was interested in people with genetic abnormalities and twins. The most exciting moment for him is the arrival of a new batch of prisoners. He personally examined the newcomers in search of something unusual. Trains arrived at night too, so he demanded that the attendants immediately wake him up if there was something “interesting”.
A laboratory was built for the doctor near one of the crematoria. The laboratory was equipped with the most modern equipment. Then the party set before science the task of raising the birth rate. The goal was to increase the likelihood of twins and triplets, of course, if the children were "pure blood". Josef Mengele's experiments were terrible. He found out how twins react to the same intervention. At the same time, he had about two hundred pairs at his disposal. Only in Auschwitz could such unique conditions be created for his work.
Saved by the Devil
Interested in Mengele and the Ovitz family. Before the war, Romanian Jews were itinerant musicians. They were saved by the fact that large family both dwarfs and children of normal growth were born. This unusually interested Mengele. He immediately transferred the family to his part of the camp and completely delivered them from forced labor.
Over time, the family became the favorites of Josf Mengele. He visited the prisoners and was always in good mood. Over time, this was noticed by the camp staff and prisoners. A close relationship developed between the doctor and the subjects. He called them after the seven dwarfs from the Snow White cartoon.
Josef Mengele's experiments on people have almost come to a standstill. The doctor simply did not know what to do with this family. He took all kinds of tests from them: blood, hair and teeth. The doctor became attached to the subjects. He brought toys and sweets to the youngest, joked with the older ones. The whole family survived. After being released from the concentration camp, they said they were "saved by the will of the devil."
Flight of Mengele
In January 1945, Mengele left Auschwitz under the roar of the artillery of the Red Army. All materials were ordered to be destroyed, but the doctor took the most valuable with him. Soviet soldiers entered Auschwitz on January 27. They found the bodies of the executed prisoners. Mengele, on the other hand, was sent to a camp in Silesia, where experiments were carried out in the preparation of bacteriological warfare. But it was no longer possible to stop the offensive of the Red Army.
Mengele was captured by the Americans, he was captured near Nuremberg. He was saved by the fact that he did not have the typical Nazi blood type tattoo under his arm. At one time, he managed to convince his superiors that there was no point in this, because a professional doctor would in any case do an analysis before starting a transfusion. They released him soon after. He changed his name to play it safe and became Fritz Holmann.
Josef Mengele was included in the list of war criminals compiled by the UN commission. The list was distributed among the camps for Wehrmacht soldiers, but not all Allied officers carefully studied it, so the doctor could not be found. Old friends supplied the doctor with false documents and sent him to the village, where he would hardly be looked for. Mengele lived in a Spartan setting. The owners remembered him as a man who ate everything on the table and drank a liter of milk. They even sympathized with him, because Josef was forced to hide.
In 1946, a trial began of doctors who conducted experiments on people in concentration camps. But Josef Mengele was not in the dock, although his name was repeatedly mentioned in the case file. They did not actively look for him because it was believed that the doctor died or committed suicide in last days war. His wife also claimed that he was dead.
At this time, Mengele even went to the zone of occupation of the USSR to return some of the records lost during the offensive of the Red Army. Three years later, the Nazi doctor decided to flee their country. He used the cover of the Red Cross to emigrate to Argentina. Then the doctor took the name of a certain Helmut Gregor. At the same time, in Argentina, for some time he lived under his real name and surname. From time to time Mengele even visited European countries to meet his wife and son who refused to leave Germany.
In the fifties he got into trouble with the law in Argentina. A former Nazi doctor was interrogated about illegal activities after a girl died due to an abortion. The doctor moved to Paraguay under the name José Mengele. Due to his carelessness, he was in the field of view of those who hunted for the Nazis. In 1959, the process of extradition of a war criminal began in Germany. By this time, the former Nazi doctor had already managed to move to Paraguay.
A few months later, with the help of friends who sympathized with the Nazis, he moved to Brazil. There he got a job working on a farm under the name of his friend Wolfgang Gerhard. At the turn of the fifties and sixties, Mengele successfully lay down on the bottom. AT last years The doctor's health deteriorated. He suffered from hypertension, and a few days before his death, he had a stroke. Josef Mengele died while swimming in the ocean in 1979.
Life after death
The Nazi doctor who conducted experiments on people was buried in Brazil under a false name. At the same time, articles appeared in various newspapers with information that Josef Mengele was seen in different parts world alive. In the eighties, a new interest arose in the affairs of the Nazis, it again became an interesting topic for everyone, Mengele's name began to be often mentioned again. In addition to Israel and Germany, the Americans joined the search. Several countries, public organizations and popular newspapers promised rewards for information about the doctor's whereabouts.
In 1985, a search was carried out in the house of one of the doctor's old friends. Correspondence with the fugitive and information about his death were found. At the request of the German authorities, the Brazilian police interviewed one of the local residents who knew where Mengele was buried. In the same year, the body was exhumed. The study gave a rather high probability that Josef Mengele was buried there.
The identification process, however, dragged on. Only in 1992 was it possible to prove that the remains really belonged to the criminal. Up to this point, the newspapers now and then appeared information that the doctor from Auschwitz faked his death, but in reality continues to hide in one of the Latin American countries.
The story of Josef Mengele became the basis of many documentaries and discussions. This is a war criminal who did terrible things. At the same time, many documentaries (for example, "Mysteries of the Century. Dr. Death Josef Mengele" with Sergei Medvedev) admit that he achieved truly phenomenal results as a doctor. For example, in a small town in southern Brazil, where Mengele continued his experiments on twins, 10% of the population are twins of Aryan appearance. By ethnotype, these people were more like Europeans than the local population.