PRESENTATION OUTLINE
DR. MENGELE
- Born on March 16, 1911
- Earned a Ph. D for physical anthropology in 1935
- Assisted Dr. Otmar Von Vershuer of hereditary biology in 1937
- Known as 'The Angel of Death'
- He was one of the most prominent men that stood on the ramp
May 1943, Mengele entered Auschwitz as an educated, experienced, medical researcher. With funding for his experiments, he worked alongside some of the top medical researchers of the time. Anxious to make a name for himself, Mengele searched for the secrets of heredity. The Nazi ideal of the future would benefit from the help of genetics: if Aryan women could assuredly give birth to twins who were sure to be blond and blue eyed - then the future could be saved.
Dr. Mengele is largely associated with choosing who would be gased and who wouldn't. He also spent most of his time experimenting on twins. It is said that this fascination is inspired with the work he did with Vershuer.
At first the twins were treated well, most got to keep their clothes and keep their hair and they got sweets and called Dr. Mengele 'uncle'. Then in the blink of an eye everything changed for the sets of twins.
Mengele did many experiments on twins. He tried injecting their eyes to change their color, he would inject one twin with tuberculoses and then would send both to be gases so he could study the way each of them died, experimental surgeries performed without anesthesia, transfusions of blood from one twin to another, injections with lethal germs, sex change operations, the removal of organs and limbs, and incestuous impregnations.
Although many of Mengeles twins were treated badly, some were just used as workers like Stephanie Heller and Annetta Able Heilbrunn, two survivors of Mengele.Mengele used the sisters as nurse aides, but they also had harder tasks. "We had to load corpses on trucks to go to the crematorium," Stephanie recalls. "We worked like robots. We could not afford the luxury of being emotional. We tried not to look at the bodies in case it was anyone we knew."
"Our only goal was to survive," Annetta adds. "Day to day, minute to minute."
Dr. Mengele was have said to give pregnant women abortions and to cut them open with no pain meds and take out their reproductive systems. He also surgically conjoined twins, the twins eventually died short after due to infections.
Mengele sent all his findings to his mentor Dr Verschuer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. It took two trucks to carry all of his 'findings'. Verschuer destroyed them - so the full extent of what Mengele did at Auschwitz will never be known. If Mengele himself kept any notes, they have never been found.
As the Russians advanced towards Poland, and it became clear that the Germans were losing the war on the Eastern Front, many records at Auschwitz-Birkenau were destroyed by the SS guards there. They then disguised themselves in a variety of ways. Mengele became a German infantry soldier as he moved west. As he moved west away from the Russians, he also did work at camps at Gross-Rosen and Matthausen. Mengele was captured as a German infantry soldier near Munich. The Allies released him as there seemed little point in keeping in custody an infantryman. Mengele had managed to disguise himself well. After the war, Mengele managed to avoid arrest by keeping a very low profile. However, by 1948, he decided that his future lay elsewhere and not Germany.
Mengele decided to go to Argentina. He was unwittingly helped in this by the International Committee of the Red Cross who provided travel papers for people as a humanitarian gesture. With a false name, identity and Italian residency papers, Mengele moved to Argentina in 1949. He moved from one South American country to another to avoid being captured like Adolf Eichmann. He also lived under a number of aliases. He later died while swimming in 1949.
