Josef Mengele

Josef Mengele (1911-1979) was a Nazi SS Hauptsturmfuhrer and physician at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, involved in direct killings and nonconsensual medical experiments on humans. He escaped prosecution and died, in 1979, while swimming in Paraguay. Robert Jay Lifton wrote "Certainly no Nazi war criminal has evoked so much fantasy and fiction." Examples include the novel and book The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin, the drama The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth. Isser Harrel, head of the Israeli Mossad, said "the moment the name of Mengele was mentioned, Adolf Eichmann went into a panic. Eichmann was higher-ranking and apparently in a much higher position of power within the SS.

Mengele has been described as supporting Nazi race and biological ideology, which variously categorized some people as "life unworthy of life", and also that the Jews and other groups needed to be physically exterminated. His questionable actions fell into three categories:

1. Participation in the established procedures of the Nazi genocide program, such as selecting camp arrivals for forced labor or immediate killing; these activities were under the immediate direction of camp Chief Medical Officer Eduard Wirths, who reported to camp commander Rudolf Hoess, and part of the overall program of the Final Solution.
2. Involuntary medical experiments, under the sponsorship of Otmar von Verscheur of the Kaiser William Institute of Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics
3. Killings and other actions that may have been for personal gratification

He was not a policy-making official, but committed individual crimes. Mengele was relatively little known immediately after the war, but an increasing body of historical writing drew attention to him. Lifton observes that he has acquired "mythic" proportions as a war criminal, and indeed conducted atrocities. Nevertheless, he was one of the Nazi doctors that took advantage of eugenic opportunities in the camps, and “[i]n ordinary times, Mengele could have been a slightly sadistic German professor.” Lifton emphasizes that von Verschuen had much influence on his actions.

Early life

Born in Guenzburg, Germany to a wealthy Roman Catholic family, he grew up under strict discipline. His father, Karl, owned a major manufacturing plant. Even today, Karl Mengele Strasse is one of the main streets of Guenzburg. His mother, Walburga (Wally) was the family disciplinarian, and the parents quarreled. In his autobiography, Josef called his father "cold", his mother "not much better at loving" although he though she had admirable decisiveness and energy. Warmth came from a nanny. He had two brothers, Karl Jr. and Alois. While there was sibling rivalry, especially with Karl, they were reasonably close.

Matriculating at the University of Munich in 1930, initially in the faculties of philosophy and medicine, later adding paleontology and anthropology. While considered a "loner", he appeared to enjoy parties.

In 1931, his father, joined the Nazi Party, and was a friend of the Nazi district leader (Kreisleiter), George Deisenhofer, a known anti-semite. Karl Sr. paid Deisenhofer a bribe for a seat on the town council, having earlier hosted Adolf Hitler to give a speech at his factory. Profits soared.

Josef's first foray into right-wing politics also came in 1931, when, at age 20, he joined the youth branch of the paramilitary Freikorps, the Stahlhelm. Thinking it more a wave of the future, he joined the SA in January 1934, but, after the June purge, he resigned in October, for reasons of "kidney trouble. He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS in 1938, and the SS Medical Corps in 1940.

A first influence may have been Dr. Ernst Rudin, an advocate, along with Alfred Hioche and Karl Bindong, of the idea that doctors should destroy "life devoid of value." Rudin was among the architects of the July 1933 Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health, which established the Nazi criteria for mandatory sterilization.

Pre-Auschwitz SS career

Joining the SS in 1940, he was assigned as a front-line physician to the SS Viking Division. After being wounded in action, his recovery was insufficient for him to be approved for front-line service.

Combat

Assigned to the SS Viking Division, he served as a combat physician and was wounded in action. He was decorated, according to his wife, for extracting wounded soldiers, under fire, from a burning tank.

Staff duty

Before moving to concentration camps, however, he was assigned to the RuSHA in 1942. Von Verschuer wrote "my assistant Mengele has been transferred to a post in Berlin so in his free time he can work at the Institute."

Auschwitz

left to right are Richard Baer, Josef Mengele, Josef Kramer, Rudolf Hoess and Anton Thumann, July 1944, probably celebrating Baer replacing Hoess as Commandant of Auschwitz

He transferred, from RuSHA, to Auschwitz between May 1943 and January 1945, and served as a general medical officer, conducted experiments under the sponsorship of von Verscheur, and conducted research of his own devising. Additionally, he was widely accused of random acts of gratuitious cruelty and murder.

Selections

Nazi selection was the process by which a camp physician made instant decisions as to whether an arriving prisoner would be killed immediately or sent to slave labor. Other selections for life or death took place in the hospital block. Mengele did more selections than any other officer, and appeared to enjoy the duty. Survivors comment that he was always immaculately dressed, and often seemingly kind unless he broke into a rage. One survivor said he "conveyed the impression of a gentle and cultured man who had nothing to do with selections, [lethal injections with phenol] and Zyklon B."

Lifton reports a prisoner doctor saying "Everything in Auschwits was under ...Mengele...Mengele was the one who was present at all the transports. Usually he alone, himself, stood on the ramp and he made the selections. When he couldn't do it he sent another clever...[SS doctor] to do it."

Things that enraged him included signs of Orthodox Judaism, and any form of defiance. When a mother fought being separated from her daughter, he shot them both, and then ordered everyone in the transport, including those who had already been selected for work, to the gas chambers.

In the hospital, prisoner physician Olga Lengyel said "How we hated this charlatan!...How we despised his detached, haughty air, his constant whistling, his absurd orders!" Another prisoner doctor, Gisella Perl, feared his visits more than anything else "because...we never knew whether we would be permitted to continue to live...He was free to do whatever he pleased with us." Emphasizing his power of life and death, he would sometimes treat prisoners, which was unusual for SS physicians.

Direct killings

As mentioned, he shot a number of prisoners. In the hospital block, he would give lethal injections "as though her were performing regular surgery...without showing any emotion at all."

Experiments

The full range of his experiments is not known, although a good deal was concerned with heritable traits among twins, human dwarfs and Roma. The latter is known because it was reported to van Verschuen. Indeed, Lifton believes he came to Auschwitz for that purpose, having worked on twins for von Verschuer at Frankfurt, quoting Mengele's teacher as

What is absolutely neeed is research on series of families and twins selected at random...with and without hereditary diseases...[to achieve] complete and reliable determination of heredity in man [and] the extent of damage caused by adverse influences [as well as] relations between disease, racial types, and miscegenation.

Benno Muller-Hill, who had access to Mengele's private papers, speculated "I would almost bet it was von Verschuer who talked him into going to Auschwitz. He would have said, 'There's a big opportunity for science there. Many races there, many people. Why don't you go? It's in the interest of science."

Twins

For twin research, he drafted a prisoner anthropologist to take measurements, and a pathologist, Miklos Nyiszli. Nyiszli said Mengele had built a well-equipped pathological facility for him and the other prisoner pathologists, where Mengele would also do dissections.

Relations with Nazi doctors

Hans Muench, a SS doctor known for humane behavior, said Mengele was ...not only intelligent but generally and scientifically a very interesing person. In a friendly personal exchange of views I could express different opinions that he tolerated...In contrast to others [SS physicians], a dozen of them, he was the easiest to get on with because he did not adopt a fixed, stubborn SS doctor's attitude."

Psychological analysis

Several authors describe his personality as schizoid.

Escape

After Allied bombers made small raids in late 1944, his wife and child moved back to Guenzburg on 23 November 1944. In December, he carried out his last experiments, in this case fatal ones for 11 female dwarfs, and then began to destroy his experimental facilities on 5 December. Taking some records with him, he departed Auschwitz on 17 January 1945.

He transferred to the Gross Rosen Concentration Camp in Silesia, but moved away again by 18 February. Soviet troops entered Auschwitz on 27 January. As the war came to an end, he had joined a regular army field hospital. he entrustd his research notes to an otherwise unidentified German nurse.

Postwar

There is debate whether or not he spent any time in U.S. detention camps. It is generally rejected that he was involved in U.S. intelligence cooperation, as there have been no suggestions of his having data of interest to Western intelligence.

The chief research analyst of the U.S. Office of War Crimes recommened that he "...be placed on the wanted list and indicted for war crimes." The same analyst, however, did not list von Verschur. Other Nazi physicians, charged with equivalent acts, were sentenced in the Medical Case at the Nuremberg Military Tribunals.

The governments of Germany, Israel, and the United States agreed, in 1992, that he was dead.