The Angel of Death
The Angel of Death he was called, and he stood in the deboarding area in front of the train tracks, elevated above the crowds of Jewish deportees, arriving at Auschwitz for the first time. A young man, clothed in either a Nazi uniform, or a white physician's coat, he stood moving his arms, pointing to the left or right, flapping sinister wings, denoting who would live and who would die, although his victims were not aware of the decisions being made.1 Men were separated from their wives and mothers. Workers were separated from non-workers, the healthy young separated from the aging: Mothers and babies separated from the rest. Husbands and wives were separated: there were to be no live births in Auschwitz. And of greatest interest to this 'Angel of Death', were Twins and other genetic anomalies: these persons were set aside for Dr. Josef Mengele's 'special attention'. Even though it was wartime and normal bounds of morality were suspended, the physicians of Auschwitz exceeded all known moral bounds in performing cruel and bizarre experiments on unwilling subjects. These experiments included :
Medical Experiments in the Camps
Much of Mengele's experiments were actually funded by a government grant, which
his mentor, Professor von Verschuer helped him to obtain. In 1936, Mengele passed
his medical Registry exam. In 1937 Mengele joined Professor Otmar Freiher von
Verschuer, in Genetics at theThird Reich Institute for Hereditary
Biological and Racial Purity at the University of Frankfurt. In 1938 he
concluded his dissertation on differing Lower Jaw formations and Racial
differencesnote 2. He became a military physician, at the rank
of Lieutenant, and in 1941 he was awarded the Iron Cross for bravery
in the Ukraine, as well as the Black Badge for the Wounded. By 1943 he
was awarded a grant which would fund and inspire much of his work at Auschwitz
with a research grant from the German Research Council. The aim of the
grant, which lead to his cruel experiments was "to devise methods of eradicating
inferior gene strands".2 Even the 'science' of the Third Reich was
aimed toward racial purification, and development of "Master Race" characteristics.
One of the most disconcerting events of the Shoah, was the escape of Mengele after
the war. While many physicians were brought to trial as war criminals (see
The Physician
War Criminals; Mengele escaped most likely to Argentina. For the next 60 years
his name became synonymous with medical aberration and the epitome of barbarism. Many who had done far less than Mengele were sentenced to death and imprisonment at Nuremberg and beyond. There were rumors of his presence
well into the 90s, when a man found dead in a swimming pool in Argentina was prelimarily determined to be Mengele via dental records. While he most certainly now may no longer be alive,
he remained for years, one of the most sought-for war criminals who escaped justice.
OUTSIDE LINKS
Twin Studies
Mengele:Biography
Crime Library: Serial Killers
The Twin Studies
The Angel of Death
Mengele: SS Doctor
Medical Experiments: Clauberg
noteTo understand the extreme to which Mengele and his associates went, in one experiment, identical twin were literally stitched together in studies of siamese twins. Mengele's experiments had virtually no moral bounds: he did not see his subjects as human.
Note 2 While neither the Jews nor Anti-Semitism was mentioned in the dissertation, per se, the study of physique and 'phenotype' as related to race were popular topics in the early days of the Third Reich, as those who saw the dangers of this line of reasoning without restraint, were removed from University positions.