Josef Mengele's crimes in the concentration camp. Joseph Mengele. What did Mengele do

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von Verschuer is a world authority in the field of twin research, from Mengele he received a large number of human preparations: the eyes of twin children, blood samples of "people of a different race", the heads of decapitated children, the skeletons of Jews

Until recently, it was thought that the doctor, the Nazi criminal who used thousands and thousands of prisoners of Auschwitz for terrible and deadly experiments, acted alone. On the contrary, he was the doer and diligent collaborator of some of the leading German scientists of the day. At least two of them quietly continued their careers after the war: Nobel laureate Adolf Butenandt and Dr. Otmar von Verschuer. The weekly Der Spiegel tells about this, publishing the results of an investigation conducted by a commission of historians, writes the Italian newspaper La Repubblica (The translation of the article is published by the website Inopressa.ru).

The subject of the investigation was Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, a leading German institute for biological, medical and biotechnological research. Before the war this place was called Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft. "The red bloody thread of the prisoners connected the splendor of Villa Dahlem, a wealthy quarter of Berlin, with the barracks of Auschwitz." The German Institute conducted experiments on the organs that "Dr. Death" cut out from children.

Butenandt, whose research on sex hormones and proteins ranks among the most important scientific achievements of the 20th century, is accused of conducting human experiments on the effects of certain molds on liver cells. Heavy clouds of doubt also hung over his "hemopetin project," research into substances that could improve the blood quality of Luftwaffe pilots and enable them to survive in cold water or cold climates.

There is no doubt that von Verschuer, the world authority in the field of twin research, received from Mengele a large number of human preparations: the eyes of twin children, blood samples of "people of a different race", the heads of decapitated children, the skeletons of Jews, newborns in formalin. 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 his other experimental subjects with typhus or terrible diseases that destroy tissues. Many Jewish women were injected with deadly bacteria into their ovaries by Mengele.

Some twins with different eye colors had colorants injected into their 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 children died in terrible agony. "Mengele, through criminal methods, turned Auschwitz into the largest biotech laboratory in the world with human beings instead of experimental animals," says expert Ernst Klee. The twin experiments at Auschwitz were followed with great interest in Berlin.

Of the 900 pairs of twins handed over to Mengele at Auschwitz, only 50 survived. Many died as a result of the experiments. Many of them were killed by Mengele by lethal injections in the summer of 1944. The Nazi doctor transferred their eyes, carefully preserved in formalin, to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft.

Adolf Butenandt and Dr. Othmar von Verschuer were renowned world-class scientists and science editors of the New York Times. The first in 1972 was president of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, the second headed the German Society for Anthropology in the new-born Federal Republic. Neither was ever responsible for the notorious ties to Mengele. "Doctor Death" fled to South America, lived quietly and happily, in abundance, and died by accident, drowning a few meters from the shore of one of the beautiful Brazilian beaches.

Josef Mengele, the most famous of the Nazi criminal doctors, was born in Bavaria in 1911. Mengele studied philosophy at the University of Munich and medicine at the University of 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".

In addition to their main function - the destruction of "inferior races", prisoners of war, communists and simply dissatisfied - concentration camps performed another function in Nazi Germany. With the advent of Mengele, Auschwitz became a "major research center". The range of "scientific" interests of Josef Mengele was unusually wide. He began with work on "increasing the fertility of Aryan women." Then the leadership of the Nazi Party set a new, directly opposite task for the doctor: to find the cheapest and most effective methods of birth control for "subhumans" - Jews, Gypsies and Slavs. Having crippled tens of thousands of men and women, Mengele came to the conclusion that 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 on the body of a soldier (hypothermia). The experimental technique was the most straightforward: a concentration camp prisoner is taken, covered with ice on all sides, "doctors" in SS uniforms constantly measure body temperature. When a test subject 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."

The Luftwaffe, the German air force, commissioned research

Among all the Nazi criminals from the Third Reich, one stands out, which, perhaps, even among the most vile murderers and vile sadists, rightfully takes the place of the vilest of the vilest. Some of the Nazis can, albeit at a stretch, be classified as lost sheep 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 notorious 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 the human court, but, it seems, only in order to wait for the higher court.

Josef Mengele was Nazi hardened from childhood. The fact is that he, who was born in 1911 in the Bavarian Gunzburg, was the son of the founder of a company that produced agricultural equipment, Karl Mengele. The company was called just that - "Karl Mengele and Sons" (Josef had two brothers - Karl and Alois). Naturally, the prosperity of the company depended on how the farmers feel. Farmers, like, in fact, millions of other Germans, after the defeat of Germany in the First World War and imposed against it, as they would now say, the most severe political and economic sanctions, did not feel well. And there is nothing surprising in the fact that when Hitler came to power with his Nazi party and his unbridled populism, promising mountains of gold to shopkeepers and the middle bourgeoisie, seeing them as his electoral base, Karl Mengele supported the Nazis with all his heart and part of his wallet. So the son was brought up in "proper" conditions.

misanthropic dissertation

By the way, Josef Mengele did not immediately go to study medicine (yes, he refused to continue his father’s work, apparently, he was drawn to experiments on people from a young age), no. First, he plunged into the activities of the right-wing conservative-monarchist organization "Steel Helmet", which had two wings - political and militant. However, many political organizations in Germany in those years had their militants at 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 smells like (the SA was later actually defeated by Hitler, and the leadership headed by Rem was destroyed - such was the intra-Nazi competition). Or maybe, as the biographers of this fiend say, he really had health problems. Josef left the Steel Helmet and went to study medicine. By the way, about predilections and ideology. The topic of Mengele's doctoral dissertation was "Racial Differences in the Structure of the Mandible". So it was originally 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. It didn't stop there. Became a member of the SS. Then he even ended up in the SS Panzer Division "Viking". Well, like in a tank division. Of course, Mengele was not sitting in the tank. He was a doctor in the engineer battalion of this division and even received the Iron Cross. Reportedly, for rescuing two tankers who were pulled from 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 was treated for a long time, but he became unsuitable for service at the front. But they found a “job”, as they say, “to their liking”. The one to which he went all his adult life. Pure butcher's 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 a simple "doctor" Mengele stayed 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. At the new place, Mengele "looked around". He personally met trains with arriving prisoners and decided who would go to work, who would immediately go to the gas chambers, and who would go to experiments.

Infernal Experimenter

We will not describe in detail exactly how Mengele mocked the prisoners. All this is painfully vile and inhuman. Let us give 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 precisely engaged in "science". And for the sake of this very "science" people can be subjected to any torture and abuse. It is clear that there was no smell of science there.

It smelled, as already mentioned above, of the complexes of this bastard climbing out, his personal sadistic inclinations, which he satisfied, hiding behind scientific necessity.

What did Mengele do

It is clear that he had no shortage of "experimental" ones. And therefore, he did not spare the “expendable material”, as he considered the prisoners who fell into his paws. Even the survivors of his macabre experiments were then killed. But this bastard regretted 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 dissection (!) of prisoners, without anesthesia. Especially for 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 of them. He splashed chemicals into the eyes of children, allegedly looking for a way to change the color of the iris. He, you see, explored female endurance. And for this, a high voltage current was passed through them. Or, here is the famous case when Mengele sterilized a whole group of Polish Catholic nuns. Do you know how? With the help of x-rays. I must say that for Mengele all the prisoners of the camp were "subhuman".

But the Gypsies and Jews enjoyed the most close attention. However, let's stop painting these "experiments". Just trust that it was indeed a fiend of the human race.

Gray "rat trails"

Some of the readers probably know what "rat trails" are. So the American intelligence services called the escape routes of Nazi criminals they identified after the defeat in the war, in order to avoid persecution and punishment for their atrocities. Evil tongues claim that these same American intelligence services subsequently used the "rat trails" themselves to take the Nazis out of the blow, in order to 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 that was 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. It is important that thanks to just such a "rat trail" Josef Mengele fled to South America.

Hello Argentina

As is now known, Mengele really smelled like a rat the imminent flooding of a ship already full of holes called the Third Reich. And of course, he understood that if he fell into the hands of the Soviet investigative authorities, he would not come out dry and would answer for everything to the fullest extent. Therefore, he fled closer to the Western allies of the USSR. It was in April 1945. He, dressed in a soldier's uniform, was detained. However, then a strange thing happened. Allegedly, Western experts were unable to establish his real identity and ... let him go to all four sides. Little is believed in it. Rather, the conclusion suggests itself about the deliberate withdrawal of the sadist from the court. Although the general confusion of the end of the war could play a role. Be that as it may, Mengele, after spending three years in Bavaria, fled to Argentina along the "rat path".

Escape from Mossad

We will not describe in detail the life of a Nazi criminal in Argentina. Let's just say that once 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 got 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 stole Eichmann from Buenos Aires, Mengele understood everything and quickly fled the city. First to Paraguay and then to Brazil.

The disease took revenge

I must say that the Mossad was close to detecting and capturing Mengele several more times, but something went wrong. So the famous sadist lived in Brazil right up to 1979. And then... One day he went swimming in the ocean. While taking ocean baths, he had a stroke. And Mengele drowned. It was not until 1985 that his grave was found. Only in 1992, the researchers were finally convinced that the remains belonged to Mengele. After his death, the Nazi and sadist still had to serve people. And, by the way, it is in the scientific field. His remains serve as scientific material at the Medical Faculty of the University of São Paulo.

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, in his cruelty and sadism, surpassed many famous killers and maniacs.

Curriculum vitae

Josef was born on March 16, 1911 in the German city of Günzburg 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. Imagining himself the arbiter of 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 the field, the "Angel of Death" surrounded the prisoners of the concentration camp with large pieces of ice and periodically measured 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 in very bad condition after the operation were placed in the gas chambers or an anatomical autopsy was performed.

All the results of the experiments carried out were periodically sent to the table of the highest ranks of 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 with him his notebooks, notes and tables. 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

Dr. Josef Mengele is one of the most demonized Nazi criminals. Unfortunately, most of the nightmares attributed to the doctor are absolutely reliable and, remembering the terrible stories of the surviving "patients", you can believe anything. But was the doctor a madman or a bloodthirsty maniac? Obviously not. Having a sharp mind and a brilliant education, the "Angel of Death" was deprived of humanity and a sense of compassion - he simply went to his goal, leaving death and grief behind him.

Josef Mengele was born in 1911 in the Bavarian city of Gunzburg. The youth of the future doctor of medicine was typical of most German youth in the late 20s and early 30s of the 20th century. Josef fell under the influence of Nazi propaganda and became a member of the Steel Helmet, a radical Nazi organization.

Members of the Steel Helmet. 1934

But the nightly torchlight processions and the burning of Jewish shops did not captivate the intelligent young man, so Mengele broke with the militants a year later, citing health problems. The young man was attracted by science - having received a medical degree in anthropology, he easily got a job at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene, as an assistant to Dr. Otmar von Verschuer.

Promising young doctor Josef Mengele

Together with Verschuer, Mengele dealt with genetics, with particular emphasis on twins and various developmental anomalies. When Adolf Hitler came to power, the institute abandoned all hopeless tasks and completely switched to the study of racial issues. At the height of the war, in 1942, Josef Mengele was offered to work "for the glory of the fatherland" in a concentration camp in Poland, and the young specialist immediately agreed.

Josef Mengele (first from the left) in the Solahütte resort, 30 km from

A lot of work was expected, since Jews from all over Europe were brought to Poland for the destruction, and there was more than enough material for scientific research. First, the young specialist was appointed chief physician of the gypsy sector in Auschwitz, and a little later he also headed the clinic in Birkenau, a satellite concentration camp of a huge death complex.

One of the main tasks of the doctors in the concentration camps was to receive new batches of prisoners, who were immediately sorted by sex, age and, of course, health status. Elderly, sick, malnourished and too young prisoners were immediately sent to the gas chambers as unpromising workers.

A new batch of prisoners arrived at the station of the Auschwitz camp

But any of the doomed could be saved by Dr. Mengele, as soon as he turned to the leadership of the concentration camp with a corresponding request. It is worth noting that the young doctor often asked for pardon for prisoners and took dozens of them to his clinic in the camp.

Crematorium oven in Auschwitz

Mengele even asked to wake him up if the trainload of new prisoners arrived at night. The doctor was especially interested in children and, first of all, twins and those who had growth anomalies.

Most of the “patients” of the camp doctor were never seen again - they all died a terrible painful death in the “operating rooms” and laboratories of Auschwitz.

In one of the Auschwitz laboratories

It is difficult to describe the whole range of "scientific" work for which Dr. Josef Mengele used living material. They underwent surgery to change the color of the cornea - the Nazi was looking for a way to turn people with brown and black eyes into blue-eyed Aryans. Horrific experiments were also performed in gynecology, amputation of limbs, experiments with lowering body temperature to extreme and infection with deadly diseases.

Congenital anomalies of development gave a delay in death

Part of the tasks that Mengele set for himself concerned bringing a person to the standards of "racial purity", and part was an order from the military. The German army needed new ways to save from hypothermia and pressure drops, effective antibiotics and innovative surgical methods.

One of the thousands of victims of non-humans in white coats. Experiment with pressure change, carried out on request Luftwaffe

The doctor was not alone - a whole team of killers in white coats worked under his leadership, and besides this, Nazi "luminaries" from other death camps and military hospitals of the Reich regularly came to the camp "to exchange experience". "Doctor Death" or "Angel of Death", as the prisoners of the camp called Mengele, conducted hundreds of experiments, most of which ended in death or crippled the test subject.

Assistant Dr. Mengele conducts an experiment with oxygen starvation

Surviving but disabled camp prisoners were sent to the gas chambers or killed by an injection of phenol. It is especially creepy to read the memoirs of camp prisoners about Mengele's attitude towards children. The killer doctor was always kind and courteous, and in the pockets of his impeccably white coat were lollipops and chocolates, which he generously distributed to hungry kids.

Cheslav Kwok. 14-year-old Auschwitz prisoner killed by phenol injection into the heart in March 1943

Parents, seeing that the children were taken with them by a polite and nice doctor, usually calmed down. It could not even occur to them that their kids were already sentenced to a terrible death in the clutches of a ruthless monster.

The doctor created the illusion of caring for people around his clinic - a kindergarten and a nursery, as well as an obstetric and gynecological center for pregnant women, worked on its territory.

"Kindergarten" by Dr. Mengele. All those kids are dead

Only a few of those about whom Dr. Mengele "showed concern" were able to leave the death camp after his release - the Nazi knew perfectly well what he was threatened with disclosing information about crimes and carefully covered his tracks. The monster felt the end approaching and 10 days before the camp was liberated by Soviet troops, he fled the camp, sending his last test subjects to the gas chambers.

In most of the surviving photographs, "Doctor Death" smiles and looks quite happy.

With him, Dr. Mengele took an invaluable archive with notes, photographs and diaries of observations. Having gone to meet the allies, Mengele surrendered to the Americans, after which his traces are lost for many years.

During the trials of Nazi criminals, the name of Josef Mengele was mentioned many times, but the American military could not say anything intelligible about his location.

Wanted Dr. Josef Mengele (Germany)

At this time, "Doctor Death" lived quietly in his native Bavaria under a false name and even practiced as a private doctor. Mengele felt so free that he even had the audacity to travel to the areas of Germany under the control of the Red Army. One such trip is known for sure - the Nazi had to take some of the valuable records from the cache.

Looking for a criminal. Brazil

In 1949, the search for a monster doctor narrowed so much that Mengele was forced to flee across the ocean to Argentina. After the war, the so-called "rat trail" system operated, providing the escape of Nazi criminals from Europe to the relatively safe South America.

Having settled in Buenos Aires, Mengele opened a private medical practice, not disdaining at the same time clandestine abortions. In 1958, he was even arrested, but not for the crimes at Auschwitz, but for the death of a young patient. However, solid patrons and big money resolved the issue, and the doctor did not stay long in prison.

Dr. Josef Mengele with his son. An old man enjoys life in a Brazilian resort

In the mid-60s, Buenos Aires became a troubled place for the Nazis - the Israeli intelligence service Mossad kidnapped and brought to Israel Adolf Eichmann, one of Hitler's henchmen. The criminal was tried and hanged to the applause of the whole world. Not wanting such a fate, the doctor flees to Paraguay under the name of José Mengele, and after that to Brazil.

Mengele felt so confident that he did not even resort to changing his appearance.

For almost 35 years, Mengele led by the nose the best specialists in the search for war criminals. The Mossad and Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter, literally stepped on the heels of the Angel of Death many times, but he always managed to avoid capture. Unfortunately, the most wanted Nazi monster never got the punishment he deserved.

On February 7, 1979, Mengele, who had recently suffered a stroke, was splashing on the very shore of São Paulo Beach in the ocean when he suddenly became ill. There was no one nearby, and the killer of thousands of Auschwitz prisoners simply drowned in shallow water.

International team of experts involved in the identification of Mengele's body

The Skull of the Most Wanted Nazi Criminal

The search for Mengele continued until 1992, when, with the help of genetic analysis, it was proved that the unnamed remains of a German found in a neglected grave in one of the cemeteries of São Paulo belong to Dr. Josef himself.

The body of the criminal did not deserve to lie in the ground - it was exhumed, taken apart and used to this day as visual aids at the medical university.

Ralph Mengele

Finally, it is worth saying that Josef Mengele never repented for his crimes. In 1975, the doctor was found by his son Ralph, who was told by the Nazi that he did not regret anything and did absolutely no harm to anyone personally.

The first concentration camp in Germany was opened in 1933. The last of those who worked was captured by 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 are 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."

Dr. Mengele had to answer the question: how to increase the reproductive capacity of the German people so that it satisfies the needs of the planned large-scale settlement by Germans of the occupied regions 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 a comparative analysis of the internal organs, which was carried out 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 eye colors had colorants injected into their 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 uniforms 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. A new book by Argentinean historian Jorge Camaraza, Mengele: The Angel of Death in South America, has just been published, which claims 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: to 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, engage in "scientific research", many of which were important for modern medicine, since vaccines against various diseases were developed, and many other useful experiments were carried out that would not have been possible in a democratic state (in fact, the crimes of Mengele, like many of his colleagues, made a huge contribution to medicine), finally, being already on the run, Josef received a quiet rest on the sandy shores of 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.