Josef Mengele

Josef Mengele (German: [ˈjoːzɛf ˈmɛŋələ] ^ⓘ; 16 March 1911 – 7 February 1979), often dubbed the "Angel of Death" (German: Todesengel), was a German military officer and physician during World War II at the Soviet front and then at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. He conducted research and experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp, where he was a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be murdered in the gas chambers.

Before the war, Mengele received doctorates in anthropology and medicine, and he began a career as a researcher. He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS in 1938. He was assigned as a battalion medical officer at the start of World War II, then transferred to the Nazi concentration camps service in early 1943. He was assigned to Auschwitz, where he saw the opportunity to conduct genetic research on human subjects. With Red Army troops sweeping through German-occupied Poland, Mengele was transferred 280 kilometres (170 miles) away from Auschwitz to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp on 17 January 1945, ten days before the arrival of the Soviet forces at Auschwitz.

After the war, Mengele fled to Argentina in July 1949, assisted by a network of former SS members. He initially lived in and around Buenos Aires, but fled to Paraguay in 1959 and later Brazil in 1960, all while being sought by West Germany, Israel, and Nazi hunters such as Simon Wiesenthal, who wanted to bring him to trial. Mengele eluded capture despite extradition requests by the West German government and clandestine operations by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. He drowned in 1979 after suffering a stroke while swimming off the coast of Bertioga, and was buried under the false name of Wolfgang Gerhard. His remains were disinterred and positively identified by forensic examination in 1985 and DNA analysis in 1992.

Mengele was born into a Catholic family in Günzburg, Bavaria, on 16 March 1911, the eldest of three sons of Walburga (née Hupfauer) and Karl Mengele. His two younger brothers were Karl Jr. and Alois. Their father was the founder of the Karl Mengele & Sons company (later renamed Mengele Agrartechnik [de]), which produced farming machinery. In 1915, the company expanded, and switched to producing military equipment such as specialized wagons for military transport and parts for deploying naval mines. Karl joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and the SS in 1935, primarily as a way to advance his career in local politics. He served as a district economic advisor, and was found during denazification proceedings after World War II to have not been a committed Nazi.

Mengele was successful at school and developed an interest in music, art, and skiing. In 1924, he joined the Greater German Youth League [de], a right-wing youth group, and remained a member until 1930, serving as leader of the local chapter from 1927. He completed secondary school in April 1930 and went on to study medicine at the University of Munich. After two semesters, he switched to the University of Bonn, where he took his medical preliminary examination. In 1931, he joined Der Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, a paramilitary organization that was absorbed into the Nazi Sturmabteilung ('Storm Detachment'; SA) in 1934. He spent part of 1933 studying at the University of Vienna, and earned his PhD in anthropology from the University of Munich in 1935, studying for four years under Theodor Mollison, a physical anthropologist and proponent of the pseudoscience of scientific racism. Mengele's dissertation, titled Rassenmorphologische Untersuchung des vorderen Unterkieferabschnittes bei vier rassischen Gruppen ("Racial morphological study of the anterior segment of the mandible in four racial groups"), attempted to prove that measurements of the lower jaw could be used to determine race.

In January 1937, he joined the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt, where he worked for Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a German geneticist with a particular interest in researching twins. As Verschuer's assistant, Mengele focused on the genetic factors that result in a cleft lip and palate or a cleft chin. His thesis on the subject earned him a cum laude doctorate in medicine (MD) from the University of Frankfurt in 1937. In a letter of recommendation, Verschuer praised Mengele's reliability and his ability to verbally present complex material clearly. In 1938, he hired him as a permanent assistant at his institute. As part of his duties, he assessed the racial heritage of applicants for the Aryan certificate, a document required before a person could qualify for government jobs or German citizenship.

On 28 July 1939, Mengele married Irene Schönbein, whom he had met while working as a medical resident in Leipzig. Their only child, a son they named Rolf, was born in 1944.

Mengele joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1938. He received basic training in 1938 with the Gebirgsjäger (mountain light infantry) and was called up for service in the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) in June 1940, some months after the outbreak of World War II. He soon volunteered for medical service in the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the SS, where he served with the rank of SS-Untersturmführer (second lieutenant) in a medical reserve battalion until November 1940. He was next assigned to the SS Race and Settlement Main Office in Poznań, where one of his assignments was evaluating candidates for Germanization.