Josef Mengele "The Angel Of Death"

Josef Mengele was an SS physician, infamous for his inhumane medical experimentation upon concentration camp prisoners at Auschwitz. Studied philosophy at Munich and medicine at Frankfurt University. In January 1937, at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt, he became the assistant of Dr. Otmar von Verschuer, a leading scientific figure widely known for his research with twins.In 1937 Mengele joined the Nazi Party. The following year, the same year in which he received his medical degree, he joined the SS. In 1940, he was drafted to the Army and was wounded while in campaign and returned to Germany, in January 1943 he began work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics, directed by his former mentor von Verschuer. Later that year in April, he received a promotion to the rank of SS captain, this shortly proceeded to his transfer to Auschwitz on May 30, 1943.

 Once settled in Auschwitz, Mengele used this as an opportunity to carry with his research on heredity. Mengele was especially interested in identical twins, he used to separate them from the other inmates and placed in special barracks.

The SS abandoned the Auschwitz camp on January 27, 1945, and Mengele transferred to Gross Rosen camp in Lower Silesia, again working as camp physician. Gross Rosen was dissolved at the end of February when the Red Army was close to taking it. After the war, Mengele managed to escape from a British internment hospital and, with the aid of false papers, fled via Rome to Buenos Aires. One of the most wanted Nazi war criminals, Mengele was reported to have seen by various eye-witnesses in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, and substantial rewards were offered for his capture.

Naturalised as a Paraguayan citizen in November 1959, Mengele was sought by the West German Bonn government after 1962, but all efforts to capture or bring him to trial failed. In 1985, after a large reward had been offered in Israel for information leading to his capture, it was announced that he had most probably died in a swimming accident in Embu, Brazil, on 7 February 1979. In July 1985 a body, presumed to be that of Mengele, was exhumed in Brazil and autopsied by an international panel of forensic pathologists. They concluded that there was a high probability that it was indeed Mengele’s last remains, but an element of doubt still exists in some quarters.

Facts about Mengele:

•  Fled to Argentina, where he worked in construction but soon came in contact with influential Germans who helped him regain an affluent lifestyle.
• Practised medicine specializing in illegal abortions.
• Befriended other Nazis in Buenos Aires such as Hans-Ulrich Rudel and Adolf Eichmann.
• Left Argentina in 1962 for Paraguay for fear of being captured.