Mengele Essays - Nazis In South America, Josef Mengele,

Mengele Mengele promoted medical experimentation on inmates, especially dwarfs and twins. He is said to have supervised an operation by which two Gypsy children were sewn together to create Siamses twins; the hands of the children became badly infected where the veins had been resected. (Snyder) Cohen tells us: The only firsthand evidence on these experiments comes from a handful of survivors and from a Jewish doctor, Miklos Nyiszli, who worked under Mengele as a pathologist. Mengele subjected his victims - twins and dwarfs aged two and above - to clinical examinations, blood tests, X rays, and anthropological measurements. In the case of the twins, he drew sketches of each twin, for comparison. He also injected his victims with various substances, dripping chemicals into their eyes (apparently in an attempt to change their color). He then killed them himself by injecting chloroform into their hearts, so as to carry out comparative pathological examinations of their internal organs. Mengele's purpose, according to Dr. Nyiszli, was to establish the genetic cause for the birth of twins, in order to facilitate the formulation of a program for doubling the birthrate of the 'Aryan' race. The experiments on twins affected 180 persons, adults and children. Mengele also carried out a large number of experiments in the field of contageous diseases, (typhoid and tuberculosis) to find out how human beings of different races withstood these diseases. He used Gypsy twins for this purpose. Mengele's experiments combined scientific (perhaps even important) research with the racist and ideological aims of the Nazi regime. which made use of government offices, scientific institutions, and concentration camps. From the scanty information available, it appears that his research differed from the other medical experiments in that the victims' death was programmed into his experiments and formed a central element in it. (Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, 964) MENGELE, JOSEF (1911- ?). Camp doctor at Auschwitz extermination camp. ..appointed chief doctor in 1943 by Himmler ... joined other doctors (Koenig, Thilon, Klein) in the task of choosing employable Jews to operated the industrial machines and sending others to the gas chambers. The selection was haphazard. The inmates were paraded before Mengele, who called either Right! (work squads) or Left! (gas chambers). ...[he] promoted medical experimentation on inmates, especially twins ... supervised an operation by which two Gypsy children were sewn together to create Siamese twins ... hands of the two children became badly infected where the veins had been resected. Witnesses at the Frankfurt Trial told of [his] standing before his victims with his thumb in his pistol belt and choosing candidates for the gas chambers. When it was reported that one block was infected with lice, [he] solved the problem by gassing all the 750 women assigned to it. Work Cited Snyder, Dr. Louis L. Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. New York: Paragon House, 1989. ISBN 1-55778-144-3 THE ANGEL OF DEATH: JOSEF MENGELE Right, left, what man could send people to their death with a flick of a cane, without batting an eye? Josef Mengele. The stories and pictures of Auschwitz tell a gruesome tale of death and torture. Stories of the abused, used, and killed, the tales of the torturees have been told, but what about the torturers? The SS, the doctors, the ones who carried out the deeds, what was their life like? That is what this paper will focus on. What went on inside the pathology lab, and what went on inside the pathologist. Millions of people passed through Auschwitz, Mengele's domain, during the Holocaust. Early in 1945, it was recorded that over 700,000 people were currently living (dying) there. Over 1 million people were killed at Auschwitz, about a fifth of all the Jews killed. People were brought to Auschwitz in cattle cars, hundreds of people would be put into a car and then not let out for days, without food or water. Even when the trains arrived at Auschwitz they would often sit on the track for days until all the many trains which had come before were unloaded. After this hellish journey, the first thing that people saw was Josef Mengele, the angel of Auschwitz standing in his immaculate SS uniform, shining boots, perfectly brushed and pressed shirt and pants, and glistening silver skulls. Josef Mengele was a doctor at Auschwitz, he performed experiments, made selections, and is responsible for sending thousands of people to the crematorium. As a person he was split, one side of him was