'Angel of Death' from Auschwitz. Nazi criminals. Angel of Death from Auschwitz

18.10.2019

We can all agree that the Nazis did terrible things during World War II. The Holocaust was perhaps their most famous crime. But terrible and inhuman things happened in the concentration camps that most people did not know about. Prisoners of the camps were used as test subjects in a variety of experiments, which were very painful and usually resulted in death.
Experiments with blood clotting

Dr. Sigmund Rascher conducted blood clotting experiments on prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp. He created a drug, Polygal, which included beets and apple pectin. He believed that these tablets could help stop bleeding from battle wounds or during surgery.

Each test subject was given a tablet of this drug and shot in the neck or chest to test its effectiveness. Then the prisoners' limbs were amputated without anesthesia. Dr. Rusher created a company to produce these pills, which also employed prisoners.

Experiments with sulfa drugs

In the Ravensbrück concentration camp, the effectiveness of sulfonamides (or sulfonamide drugs) was tested on prisoners. Subjects were given incisions on the outside of their calves. Doctors then rubbed a mixture of bacteria into the open wounds and stitched them up. To simulate combat situations, glass shards were also inserted into the wounds.

However, this method turned out to be too soft compared to the conditions at the fronts. To simulate gunshot wounds, blood vessels were ligated on both sides to stop blood circulation. The prisoners were then given sulfa drugs. Despite the advances made in the scientific and pharmaceutical fields due to these experiments, prisoners suffered terrible pain that resulted in severe injury or even death.

Freezing and hypothermia experiments

The German armies were ill-prepared for the cold they faced on the Eastern Front, from which thousands of soldiers died. As a result, Dr. Sigmund Rascher conducted experiments in Birkenau, Auschwitz and Dachau to find out two things: the time required for body temperature to drop and death, and methods for reviving frozen people.

Naked prisoners were either placed in a barrel of ice water or forced outside in sub-zero temperatures. Most of the victims died. Those who had just lost consciousness were subjected to painful revival procedures. To revive the subjects, they were placed under sunlight lamps that burned their skin, forced to copulate with women, injected with boiling water, or placed in baths of warm water (which turned out to be the most effective method).

Experiments with incendiary bombs

For three months in 1943 and 1944, Buchenwald prisoners were tested on the effectiveness of pharmaceuticals against phosphorus burns caused by incendiary bombs. The test subjects were specially burned with the phosphorus composition from these bombs, which was a very painful procedure. Prisoners suffered serious injuries during these experiments.

Experiments with sea water

Experiments were carried out on prisoners at Dachau to find ways to turn sea water into drinking water. The subjects were divided into four groups, the members of which went without water, drank sea water, drank sea water treated according to the Burke method, and drank sea water without salt.

Subjects were given food and drink assigned to their group. Prisoners who received seawater of one kind or another eventually began to suffer from severe diarrhea, convulsions, hallucinations, went crazy and eventually died.

In addition, subjects underwent liver needle biopsies or lumbar punctures to collect data. These procedures were painful and in most cases resulted in death.

Experiments with poisons

At Buchenwald, experiments were conducted on the effects of poisons on people. In 1943, prisoners were secretly injected with poisons.

Some died themselves from poisoned food. Others were killed for the sake of dissection. A year later, prisoners were shot with bullets filled with poison to speed up the collection of data. These test subjects experienced terrible torture.

Experiments with sterilization

As part of the extermination of all non-Aryans, Nazi doctors conducted mass sterilization experiments on prisoners of various concentration camps in search of the least labor-intensive and cheapest method of sterilization.

In one series of experiments, a chemical irritant was injected into women's reproductive organs to block the fallopian tubes. Some women have died after this procedure. Other women were killed for autopsies.

In a number of other experiments, prisoners were exposed to strong x-rays, which resulted in severe burns on the abdomen, groin and buttocks. They were also left with incurable ulcers. Some test subjects died.

Experiments on bone, muscle and nerve regeneration and bone transplantation

For about a year, experiments were carried out on prisoners in Ravensbrück to regenerate bones, muscles and nerves. Nerve surgeries involved removing segments of nerves from the lower extremities.

Experiments with bones involved breaking and setting bones in several places on the lower limbs. The fractures were not allowed to heal properly because doctors needed to study the healing process as well as test different healing methods.

Doctors also removed many fragments of the tibia from test subjects to study bone tissue regeneration. Bone transplants included transplanting fragments of the left tibia onto the right and vice versa. These experiments caused unbearable pain and severe injuries to the prisoners.

Experiments with typhus

From the end of 1941 to the beginning of 1945, doctors carried out experiments on prisoners of Buchenwald and Natzweiler in the interests of the German armed forces. They tested vaccines against typhus and other diseases.

Approximately 75% of test subjects were injected with trial typhus vaccines or other chemicals. They were injected with the virus. As a result, more than 90% of them died.

The remaining 25% of experimental subjects were injected with the virus without any prior protection. Most of them did not survive. Doctors also conducted experiments related to yellow fever, smallpox, typhoid, and other diseases. Hundreds of prisoners died, and many more suffered unbearable pain as a result.

Twin experiments and genetic experiments

The goal of the Holocaust was the elimination of all people of non-Aryan origin. Jews, blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals and other people who did not meet certain requirements were to be exterminated so that only the "superior" Aryan race remained. Genetic experiments were carried out to provide the Nazi Party with scientific evidence of Aryan superiority.

Dr. Josef Mengele (also known as the "Angel of Death") was greatly interested in twins. He separated them from the rest of the prisoners upon their arrival at Auschwitz. Every day the twins had to donate blood. The actual purpose of this procedure is unknown.

Experiments with twins were extensive. They had to be carefully examined and every inch of their body measured. Comparisons were then made to determine hereditary traits. Sometimes doctors performed massive blood transfusions from one twin to the other.

Since people of Aryan origin mostly had blue eyes, experiments were done with chemical drops or injections into the iris to create them. These procedures were very painful and led to infections and even blindness.

Injections and lumbar punctures were done without anesthesia. One twin was specifically infected with the disease, and the other was not. If one twin died, the other twin was killed and studied for comparison.

Amputations and organ removals were also performed without anesthesia. Most twins who ended up in concentration camps died in one way or another, and their autopsies were the last experiments.

Experiments with high altitudes

From March to August 1942, prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp were used as test subjects in experiments testing human endurance at high altitudes. The results of these experiments were supposed to help the German air force.

The test subjects were placed in a low-pressure chamber in which atmospheric conditions were created at altitudes of up to 21,000 meters. Most of the test subjects died, and the survivors suffered from various injuries from being at high altitudes.

Experiments with malaria

For more than three years, more than 1,000 Dachau prisoners were used in a series of experiments related to the search for a cure for malaria. Healthy prisoners became infected with mosquitoes or extracts from these mosquitoes.

Prisoners who fell ill with malaria were then treated with various drugs to test their effectiveness. Many prisoners died. The surviving prisoners suffered greatly and basically became disabled for the rest of their lives.

Among all the Nazi criminals from the Third Reich, one stands out in particular, who, perhaps, even among the most vile murderers and vile sadists, rightfully takes the place of the most vile of the vile. Some of the Nazis can, albeit with great stretch, be classified as lost sheep who turned into wolves. Others take their place as ideological criminals. But this one... This one did his dirty work with obvious pleasure, even with pleasure, satisfying his basest, wildest desires. This complexed, sick creature combined Nazi ideas with obvious mental disorders and earned the nickname “Doctor Death.” Sometimes, however, he was called almost the “angel of death.” But this is too flattering a nickname for him. We are talking about the so-called Dr. Josef Mengele, the executioner from Auschwitz, who miraculously escaped human trial, but, it seems, only to await a higher trial.

Joseph Mengele received Nazi training from childhood. The fact is that he, born in 1911 in Günzburg, Bavaria, was the son of the founder of an agricultural equipment company, Karl Mengele. The company was called “Karl Mengele and Sons” (Joseph had two brothers - Karl and Alois). Naturally, the prosperity of the company depended on how the farmers felt. Farmers, like, in fact, millions of other Germans, after the defeat of Germany in the First World War and the most severe political and economic sanctions imposed against it, as they would say now, did not feel well. And it is not surprising that when Hitler came to power with his Nazi party and his unbridled populism, who promised mountains of gold to shopkeepers and the average bourgeoisie, seeing his electoral base in them, Karl Mengele supported the Nazis with all his heart and part of his wallet. So the son was brought up in “appropriate” conditions.

Misanthropic dissertation

By the way, Joseph Mengele did not immediately go to study medicine (yes, he refused to continue his father’s work, apparently, from a young age he was drawn to experiments on people), no. First, he plunged into the activities of the right-wing conservative-monarchist organization "Steel Helmet", which had two wings - political and military. However, many political organizations in Germany in those years had their own fighters on hand. Including communists. Later, namely in 1933, the “Steel Helmet” successfully joined the terrible SA (the organization of Nazi stormtroopers). But something went wrong. Perhaps Mengele sensed what the matter smelled like (the SA was subsequently virtually destroyed by Hitler, and the leadership led by Rehm was destroyed - such was the internal Nazi competition). Or maybe, as the biographers of this fiend of hell claim, he actually developed health problems. Josef left the Steel Helm and went to study medicine. By the way, about passions and ideology. The topic of Mengele's doctoral dissertation was “Racial differences in the structure of the lower jaw.” So it was originally still that “scientist”.

The usual path of an ideological Nazi

Then Mengele did everything that a “righteous” Nazi was supposed to do. He joined, of course, the NSDAP. He didn't stop there. Became a member of the SS. Then he even ended up in the SS Viking tank division. Well, like in a tank division. Of course, Mengele was not sitting in the tank. He was a doctor in the sapper battalion of this division and even received the Iron Cross. Reportedly for saving two tank crews who were pulled out of a burning tank. The war, or rather its active, risky phase, ended for Mengele already in 1942. He was wounded on the eastern front. He received treatment for a long time, but became unfit for service at the front. But they found him a “job,” as they say, “to his liking.” The one to which he had been heading his entire adult life. Pure executioner work. In May 1943 he became a "doctor" at Auschwitz. In the so-called “gypsy camp”. This is exactly what they say: let the wolf into the sheepfold.

Concentration camp career

But Mengele remained a simple “doctor” for only a little over a year. At the end of the summer of 1944, he was appointed “chief doctor” in Birkenau (Auschwitz was a whole system of camps, and Birkenau was the so-called inner camp). By the way, Mengele was transferred to Birkenau after the “gypsy camp” was closed. At the same time, all its inhabitants were simply taken and burned in gas chambers. In the new place, Mengele went wild. He personally met trains with arriving prisoners and decided who would go to work, who would go straight to the gas chambers, and who would go to experiments.

Hell of an experimenter

We will not describe in detail exactly how Mengele abused the prisoners. This is all too disgusting and inhumane. Let us present just a few facts to clarify for the reader the direction of his, so to speak, “scientific experiments.” And this educated barbarian believed, yes, believed that he was engaged in “science.” And for the sake of this very “science” people can be subjected to any torture and bullying. It is clear that there was no smell of science there.

It smelled, as mentioned above, of this bastard’s complexes creeping out, of his personal sadistic inclinations, which he satisfied under the guise of scientific necessity.

What did Mengele do?

It is clear that he had no shortage of “test subjects”. And therefore, he did not spare the “consumables” that he considered the prisoners who fell into his clutches. Even the survivors of his terrible experiments were then killed. But this bastard was sorry for the painkiller, which was, of course, necessary for the “great German army.” And he carried out all his experiments on living people, including amputations and even dissections (!) of prisoners without anesthesia. It was especially hard on the twins. The sadist had a special interest in them. He carefully looked for them among the prisoners and dragged them to his torture chamber. And, for example, he sewed two together, trying to make one out of them. He sprayed chemicals into the eyes of children, allegedly looking for a way to change the color of the iris of the eyes. He, you see, was researching female endurance. And to do this, I passed a high voltage current through them. Or, here is the famous case when Mengele sterilized an entire group of Polish Catholic nuns. Do you know how? Using X-rays. It must be said that for Mengele all the camp prisoners were “subhumans.”

But it was the gypsies and Jews who received the most attention. However, let's stop depicting these “experiments”. Just believe that this was truly a monster of the human race.

Gray "rat trails"

Some of the readers probably know what “rat trails” are. This is what American intelligence agencies called the escape routes of Nazi criminals they identified after defeat in the war, in order to avoid prosecution and punishment for their atrocities. Evil tongues claim that these same American intelligence services themselves subsequently used “rat trails” to lead the Nazis out of attack and then use them for their own purposes. Many of the Nazis fled to Latin American countries.

One of the most famous “rat trails” is the one created by the famous ODESSA network, the brainchild of Otto Skorzeny himself. True, his involvement in this has not been proven. But it's not that important. The important thing is that it was thanks to precisely this “rat trail” that Josef Mengele fled to South America.

Hello Argentina

As we now know, Mengele really, like a rat, sensed the imminent sinking of the already leaky ship called the “Third Reich.” And of course, he understood that if he fell into the hands of the Soviet investigative authorities, he would not get away with it and would answer for everything to the fullest extent. Therefore, he fled closer to the Western allies of the USSR. This was in April 1945. He, dressed in a soldier's uniform, was detained. However, then a strange thing happened. Allegedly, Western specialists were unable to establish his real identity and... released him on all four sides. It’s hard to believe. Rather, the conclusion suggests itself about the deliberate removal of the sadist from trial. Although the general confusion at the end of the war could have played a role. Be that as it may, Mengele, after spending three years in Bavaria, fled along the “rat trail” to Argentina.

Escape from Mossad

We will not describe in detail the life of a Nazi criminal in Argentina. Let's just say that one day he almost fell into the hands of the famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and Mossad agents.

They followed his trail. But at the same time they were on the trail of the main Nazi “specialist in the final solution of the Jewish question” Adolf Eichmann. Trying to capture both at the same time was extremely risky.

And the Mossad settled on Eichmann, leaving Mengele for later. However, after Israeli intelligence literally kidnapped Eichmann from Buenos Aires, Mengele understood everything and quickly fled the city. First to Paraguay and then to Brazil.

The disease took revenge

It must be said that the Mossad was close several times to discovering and capturing Mengele, but something went wrong. So the famous sadist lived in Brazil until 1979. And then... One day he went swimming in the ocean. While taking ocean baths, he suffered a stroke. And Mengele drowned. It was only in 1985 that his grave was found. Only in 1992 were researchers finally convinced that the remains belonged to Mengele. After death, the Nazi and sadist still had to serve people. And, by the way, precisely in the scientific field. His remains serve as scientific material at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Sao Paulo.

"Angel of Death" Josef Mengele

Josef Mengele, the most famous of the Nazi doctor-criminals, was born in 1911 in Bavaria. He studied philosophy at the University of Munich and medicine at the University of Frankfurt. In 1934 he joined the CA and became a member of the NSDAP, and 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 Viking division. In 1942, he received the Iron Cross for rescuing two tank crews from a burning tank. After being wounded, SS-Hauptsturmführer Mengele was declared unfit for combat service and in 1943 was appointed chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Soon the prisoners nicknamed him “the angel of death.”

Sadistic scientist doctor

Fanatic doctor Josef Mengele

In addition to its main function - the extermination of representatives of “inferior races”, prisoners of war, communists and simply dissatisfied people, concentration camps in Nazi Germany also performed another function. With the arrival of Mengele, Auschwitz became a "major scientific research center." Unfortunately, the range of Joseph Mengele’s “scientific” interests was unusually wide. He began with “work” to “increase the fertility of Aryan women.” It is clear that the material for research was non-Aryan women. Then the Fatherland set a new, directly opposite task: to find the cheapest and most effective methods of limiting the birth rate of “subhumans” - Jews, Gypsies and Slavs. Having mutilated 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 “methodology” of the experiments was the most simple: they took a concentration camp prisoner, covered them with ice on all sides, “doctors” in SS uniforms constantly measured their body temperature... When a test subject died, a new one was brought from the barracks. Conclusion: after the body has cooled 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.”

The Luftwaffe, the German air force, commissioned research on the topic: “The influence of high altitude on pilot performance.” A pressure chamber was built in Auschwitz. Thousands of prisoners suffered a terrible death: with ultra-low pressure, a person was simply torn apart. Conclusion: it is necessary to build aircraft with a pressurized cabin. But not a single one of these aircraft took off in Germany until the very end of the war.

Joseph Mengele, having become fascinated by racial theory in his youth, on his own initiative conducted experiments with eye color. For some reason, he needed to prove in practice that the brown eyes of a Jew under no circumstances could become the blue eyes of a “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 is the value of research alone on the effects of physical and mental exhaustion on the human body! And the “study” of three thousand young twins, of which only 200 survived! The twins received blood transfusions and organ transplants from each other. There was a lot more going on. Sisters were forced to bear children from their brothers. Forced gender reassignment operations were carried out...

And before starting his experiments, “good Doctor Mengele” could pat the child on the head, treat him with chocolate...

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 pill. Judging by the fact that soon after the start of the “approbation” the concern additionally purchased 150 more Auschwitz prisoners, no one was able to wake up after the new sleeping pills. By the way, other representatives of German business also collaborated with the concentration camp system. The largest chemical concern in Germany, IG Farbenindustri, 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 “disintegrated.” 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 possibilities for experiments at his disposal, he still achieved nothing. The conclusion that if a person is not given sleep and food, he will first go crazy and then die cannot be considered a scientific result.

Quiet "departure from grandfather"

In 1945, Josef Mengele carefully destroyed all the collected “data” and escaped from Auschwitz. Until 1949, he worked quietly in his native Günzburg 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. During 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 thoroughly checked. 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. A check of all subsequent reports about his further fate showed that they were untrue.

After the end of the war, many journalists were looking for at least some information that could lead them to the trail of Josef Mengele... The fact is that for forty years after the end of World War II, “fake” Mengeles appeared in a variety of places. Thus, in 1968, a former Brazilian policeman claimed that he allegedly managed to discover 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 bomber left a note admitting that he was the wanted Nazi criminal Josef Mengele.

Where was he found?

It was only in 1985, it seems, that Mengele's true whereabouts became known. Or rather, his graves. An Austrian couple living in Brazil reported that Mengele was Wolfgang Gerhard, who had been their neighbor for several years. The couple claimed that he drowned six years ago, that he was then 67 years old, and indicated the location of his grave - the town of Embu.

Also in 1985, the remains of the deceased were exhumed. Three independent teams of forensic experts participated at every stage of the event, and live television coverage from the cemetery was received in almost every country in the world. The coffin contained only the decayed bones of the deceased. However, everyone was eagerly awaiting the results of their identification. For millions of people wanted to know whether these remains really belonged to the cruel misanthrope and executioner who had been wanted for many years.

The scientists' chances of identifying the deceased were considered quite high. The fact is that they had at their disposal an extensive archive of data about Mengele: the SS file cabinet from the war contained information about his height, weight, skull geometry, and condition of his teeth. The photographs clearly showed the characteristic gap between the upper front teeth.

The specialists who examined the Embu burial had to be very careful when drawing conclusions. The desire to find Josef Mengele was so great that there have 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, which presents readers with a fascinating history of the professional career of Clyde Snow, the main expert who studied the remains of Embu.

How was he identified?

The bones discovered 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.

After the exhumation was completed, scientists examined the grave a second time, looking for 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 experts the basis to almost certainly consider the examined remains to belong to a wanted war criminal. However, they needed absolute certainty; they needed an argument to convincingly support such a conclusion. And then Richard Helmer, a West German forensic anthropologist, joined the experts’ work. 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 the points on the skull that were supposed to serve as starting points for restoring the appearance of the face, and accurately determine the distances between them. The researcher then 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 clearly reproduced the features of the face being restored. The last - and most crucial - moment of the entire procedure came when the face, recreated using computer graphics methods, was combined with the face in Mengele's photograph. Both images matched exactly. Thus, it was finally proven that the man who had been hiding for many years in Brazil under the names of Helmut Gregor and Wolfgang Gerhard and who 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 (15, 2000, No. 39, pp. 1082–1086; 38, pp. 365–378; 1999, no. 13).

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With this article I am starting a new section on the blog - the section of wonderful people. This will include biographies of some personalities, maniacs, murderers, scientists who in one way or another had a hand in the death or torment of people. And don’t let it seem strange to you that I put all of the above on the same level, because if a psychopath does not have education and power, he becomes a maniac, and if he does, he becomes a scientist. And this section opens with Joseph Mengele, a man who has become a terrible legend.

Since there is a goal to write a complete and detailed article, I will divide the text into several parts.

Biography
Ideology
Psyche
Mengele's experiments
Escape from Justice

Biography of Joseph Mengele

He was born on March 16, 1911 in Bavaria in the family of a large businessman, as they say now. His father founded a farming equipment company called Karl Mengele and Sons. Yes, the Angel of Death had a full-fledged family, there were parents, there were brothers. Father - Karl Mengele, mother - Walburgi Hapfaue, two brothers - Alois and Karl. From the memoirs of the scientist himself, if you can call him that, a cruel matriarchy reigned in the family. Everything was subject to the routine established by the mother of the family. She often humiliated her husband in front of her children and argued with him over financial and social issues. There is information that when Karl bought a car, his wife nagged him for a long time and cruelly for wasting family funds. Joseph also recalls that both parents did not show much love for their children and demanded unquestioning obedience, diligence and diligence in their studies. Maybe this is one of the reasons why Mengele’s experiments will make entire generations of people terrified in the future.

The future doctor of Auschwitz studied at the best universities in Germany, then still the German Empire. He studied anthropology and medicine, after which he wrote the scientific work “Racial Differences in the Structure of the Mandible” in 1935, and already received his doctorate in 1938.

That same year, the doctor joined the SS Army, where he was awarded the Iron Cross and the title of Hauptsturmführer for saving two wounded soldiers from a burning tank. A year later, he was wounded and was transferred to the reserve due to poor health. He became a doctor at Auschwitz in 1943 and in twenty-one months managed to kill and torture hundreds of prisoners.

Ideology

Naturally, the root cause of such a brutal attitude towards people was ideology. At that time, many questions worried the German authorities, and they gave various scientific tasks to their wards, fortunately there was more than enough material for conducting experiments - there was a war. Joseph believed that the only worthy race, the Aryans, should become the leading race on the planet and rule over all others,

unworthy. He accepted many of the principles of the science of eugenics, which was based on the division of all humanity into “right” genes and “wrong” ones. Accordingly, everyone who did not belong to the Aryan race should be limited and controlled, this included Slavs, Jews and Gypsies. At that time, there was a shortage of fertility in Germany and the government ordered all women under 35 to have at least four children. This propaganda was shown on TV; the higher authorities wanted to know how to increase the birth rate of the “right” people.

Psyche

I do not have the education to give a doctor any diagnosis. I will just list some of the psychological features of his behavior and you will understand everything. Josef was very meticulous. When twins were brought to his laboratory, assistants measured all parts of their bodies down to the millimeter, physical and psychological indicators, the doctor himself compiled this data into huge tables filled with calligraphic even handwriting. There were hundreds of such tables. He did not drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. He often looked in the mirror, because he considered his appearance ideal, and even refused to get a tattoo, which at that time was given to all purebred Aryans. The reason is the reluctance to spoil perfect skin.
Auschwitz prisoners remember him as a tall, confident young man with perfect posture. The uniform is patiently ironed and the boots are polished to a shine. Smiling, always in a good mood, he could send people to death and hum a simple melody under his breath.
There is a known case when he grabbed a Jewish woman by the throat who was trying to escape the gas chamber and began to beat her, striking her in the face and stomach. Within a few minutes, the woman’s face turned into a bloody mess, and when it was all over, the doctor calmly washed his hands and returned to his work. Nerves of steel and a pedantic approach to business defined him as the ideal psychopath.

Mengele's experiments

To write this article, I dug through a lot of information on the Internet and was surprised by what people write about Joseph. Yes, he was a ruthless psychopath who destroyed hundreds of people, but the results of many experiments are still used in medical textbooks. Thanks to his pedantry and developed intellect, he made a great contribution to the science of the human body. And his activities concerned not only dwarfs and twins. At the beginning of his, so to speak, career, Mengele conducted experiments to find out the limits of human capabilities and options for resuscitating victims. The laboratory was interested in frostbite, when a person was covered with ice and biometric indicators were measured until death, and sometimes they tried to resuscitate him. When one of the prisoners died, they brought another.

Above is one of the experiments with cold water.

Many data on dehydration, drowning and the effects of overload on the human body were obtained during that dark time. Mengele's experiments also concerned various diseases, for example cholera and hepatitis. Obtaining such results would not have been possible without an incredible amount of human sacrifice.
Of course, the doctor was most interested in questions of genetics. He selected among prisoners people with various congenital abnormalities - dwarfs and disabled people, as well as twins. The story of the Jewish family of dwarfs Ovitz, which the scientist perceived as his personal pets, became famous. He named them after the seven dwarfs from Snow White and ensured they were well fed and maintained between inhumane experiments.

The Ovitz family is pictured above. It is unclear what could make these people smile.

In general, his latest works were divided into two types: how to make an Aryan woman give birth to two children at once instead of one, and how to limit the birth rate of unwanted races. People were castrated without anesthesia, changed gender, sterilized with X-rays, and shocked to understand the limit of endurance. The twins were stitched together, blood was transfused, and organs were transplanted from one to the other. There is a known case of two twins from a gypsy family being stitched together; the children experienced incredible torture and soon died from blood poisoning. During the entire experiment, out of more than sixteen thousand twins, no more than three hundred remained alive.

Escape from Justice

Human nature demands that those who commit such acts be punished, but Joseph avoided this. Fearing that the enemies of the Aryan race would use the results of the experiments, he collected invaluable data and, dressed in a soldier's uniform, left the camp. All the wards should have been destroyed, but Cyclone-B ended, and then Soviet troops saved the lucky ones. This is how the Ovitz family of dwarfs and 168 other twins received their long-awaited freedom. What about our doctor? He left Germany and went to South America using fake passports. There he developed paranoia, he moved from place to place, and even a $50,000 reward did not force the intelligence services to catch him. I think the reason for such leniency was the very medical data that he possessed. Thus, the tanned and happy doctor died in Brazil in 1979 from a stroke in the water. Mengele never received punishment. Could the intelligence services repeatedly turn a blind eye to his presence, because according to some sources, Josef still has family in Europe and he visited them? We will never know this again. In any case, Mengele’s experiments, the results of which are still recorded in medical publications, make hair move in all places. Sometimes sadism, developed intelligence and power give rise to a truly explosive cocktail of cruelty and impunity.

What do you think about these experiments? Was it worth it and does it justify the Angel of Death? Write below in the comments.

Are you interested in historical figures? Read the whole truth about the bloodthirsty

Josef Mengele (born March 16, 1911 - died February 7, 1979) was the most famous of the Nazi doctor criminals. The chief physician of Auschwitz, who conducted medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. His first education was as a philosopher; in the 1920s he became imbued with the racial ideology of Alfred Rosenberg. In the concentration camp, he selected healthy Jews to work in industrial enterprises, and sent others to the gas chambers. The fanatical doctor conducted experiments on prisoners who were especially unlucky in order to find the optimal way to breed the “right breed” of people. Tens of thousands of prisoners became victims of the monstrous experiments of the killer doctor. After the war, the Nazi managed to escape.

Origin. Life before Auschwitz

Originally from Günzburg, a small ancient town on the banks of the Danube in Bavaria. His father was the owner of an agricultural machinery factory, Karl Mengele and Sons, which employed many residents of the town. He studied philosophy at the University of Munich and medicine at Frankfurt University. 1934 - joined the CA and became a member of the NSDAP. 1937 - joined the SS. He worked at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene.

During World War II he served as a military doctor in the SS Viking division. 1942 - was awarded the Iron Cross for saving two tank crews from a burning tank. After being wounded, SS-Hauptsturmführer Mengele was declared unfit for military service and in 1943 he was appointed chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Soon the prisoners nicknamed him “the angel of death.”

Chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp

In addition to its main function - the destruction of representatives of “inferior races”, prisoners of war, communists and simply dissatisfied people, concentration camps in Nazi Germany also performed another function. With Mengele's appointment as the concentration camp's chief physician, Auschwitz became a "major research center." Unfortunately, the range of Joseph Mengele’s “scientific” interests was very wide.

Joseph Mengele - experiments

Josef Mengele injected harmful drugs into the veins and hearts of prisoners to determine the degree of suffering that could be achieved and test how quickly they could lead to death.

People were specifically infected with various diseases to test the effectiveness of new drugs.

He was engaged in research on female endurance. Why did I pass a high voltage current through them? Or, here is the famous case when the “angel of death” sterilized an entire group of Polish Catholic nuns. Do you know how? Using X-rays. It must be said that for the sadist, all concentration camp prisoners were “subhumans.”

Even those who managed to survive his terrible experiments were later killed. This geek in a white coat was stinging on painkillers, which were, of course, necessary for the “great German army.” And he carried out all his experiments on living people, including amputations and even dissections (!) of prisoners without anesthesia.

Experiments: increasing and limiting birth rates

He began with “work” to “increase the fertility of Aryan women.” Of course, the material for research was non-Aryan women. Then a new, directly opposite task was set: the search for the cheapest and most effective methods of limiting the birth rate of “subhumans” - Jews, Gypsies and Slavs. After tens of thousands of men and women were maimed, Joseph Mengele made a “strictly scientific” conclusion: the most reliable way to avoid conception is castration.

Experience: the effects of cold on soldiers

The “research” proceeded as usual. The Wehrmacht commissioned a topic: to find out everything about the effects of cold (hypothermia) on the body of soldiers. The “methodology” of the experiments was the most simple: they took a prisoner, covered them with ice on all sides, the “SS doctors” constantly measured the body temperature... After the experimental subject died, a new one was brought from the barracks. Conclusion: after the body has cooled below 30°, 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.”

Experiments: The effect of high altitude on the pilot

The Luftwaffe, the Nazi air force, commissioned a study on the topic: “The effect of high altitude on pilot performance.” A pressure chamber was built at Auschwitz. Thousands of prisoners suffered a terrible death: with ultra-low pressure, a person was simply torn apart. Conclusion: airplanes should be built with pressurized cabins. But not a single aircraft of this kind took off in Nazi Germany until the very end of the war.

Experiment with eye color

The fanatical doctor, who became interested in racial theory in his youth, began on his own initiative to conduct experiments with eye color. For some reason, he wanted to prove in practice that the brown eyes of a Jew under no circumstances will become the blue eyes of a “true Aryan.” They injected blue dye into hundreds of Jews - extremely painful and often leading to blindness. Conclusions: it is impossible to turn a Jew into an Aryan.

Experiments with twins

And what is the “study” of 3,000 young twins, of which only 200 were able to survive! The twins received blood transfusions and organ transplants from each other. We did a lot of other things. Sisters were forced to bear children from their brothers. They performed forced sex reassignment operations...

Before starting his experiments, “good Doctor Mengele” could pat the child on the head, treat him with chocolate... We can best judge the character of Doctor Mengele and his human, or rather, devilish, appearance in the following case.

Of the group of twins who were in the study, one child died of “natural” death, and during his autopsy some kind of abnormality was discovered in the chest organs. Then Joseph Mengele, “hungry for scientific experiments,” immediately decided to establish whether it was possible to find such an anomaly in the surviving twin. He immediately got into the car, drove to the concentration camp, gave the child a chocolate bar and then, promising to take him for a ride, put him in the car. But the “car ride” ended in the courtyard of the Birkenau crematorium. Josef Mengele got out of the car with the child, let the child go a few steps forward, grabbed a revolver and shot the unfortunate victim in the back of the head almost point-blank. Then he immediately ordered him to be taken to the anatomy and there he began autopsying the still warm corpse to make sure whether the same organ anomalies were manifested in the twins!..

So the fanatic doctor decided to create Siamese twins by sewing together gypsy twins. The children suffered terrible torment and blood poisoning began.

After the war

After the defeat of the Nazis, the “angel of death,” realizing that execution awaited him, tried with all his might to escape persecution. In 1945, he was detained in the uniform of a private near Nuremberg, but then he was released because they could not establish his identity. After which the fanatical doctor hid for 35 years in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. During all this time, the Israeli intelligence service MOSSAD was looking for him and was close to capturing him several times.

They were never able to arrest the sadist. His grave was found in Brazil in 1985. 1992 - the body was exhumed and it was proven that it belonged to Josef Mengele. Now the remains of the killer doctor are at the Medical University of Sao Paulo.

Subsequent events

1998 - A former prisoner 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 pill. Judging by the fact that shortly after the start of the “approbation” the concern acquired an additional 150 Auschwitz prisoners, no one woke up after taking the new sleeping pill.

It should be noted that other representatives of German business also collaborated with the concentration camp system. The largest German chemical concern IG Farbenindustri made not only synthetic gasoline for tanks, but also Zyklon-B gas for the gas chambers of the same Auschwitz. Some of the fragments of IG Farbenindustry are well known in the world today. Including as drug manufacturers.