The Angel of Death
The echoes of the screams of thousands echo in the chambers as they beg for their lives. These people would die at the hands of Josef Mengele, an SS officers and physician most infamous for his horrifying and gruesome experiments involving twins. By the end of World War Two, thousands more would die through his inhumane experiments in an attempt to support his views of eugenics.
Born on March 16, 1911, Josef Mengele was born the oldest of three children. He would grow up with a strong interest in the fine arts and eventually study philosophy in Munich. Mengele would go on to earn a medical degree at the University of Frankfurt am Main and eventually study under Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, where he first developed his interest in twins. It was probably here that he developed his strong views on eugenics on the idea of the master race.
Along with his extreme anti - semitic views, he would join the Nazi party in 1937 where he was appointed as a chief doctor at Birkenau. It would be here that the majority of his experiments would take place.
Although many officers despised the selection process, Mengele would often savor his job, taking his time to select the most optimal test subjects. He was sadistic and held no regard for human lives. One such disgusting example was the genocide of several camps as a result of the outbreaks of diseases that had spread. This genocide, along with his systematic cleaning of the blocks was able to stop the outbreak.
Whereas a majority of his selections would go on to die in the gas chambers, Mengele took a particular interest in twins. Particularly, he sought to use twins to justify his views on eugenics and that it was necessary to eliminate people with unfavorable traits. Because twins shared genomes, any differences in would be due to behavior not genetics. This horrifying view of human life would lead him to experiment on hundreds of twins who were subjected to his experiments. These twins were also given “special treatment” in which they were given extra rations in addition to candy and their own clothes. However, in reality, they were subjected to much more gruesome fates. Mengele would make them sit naked so that he could measure and compare the difference between twins. He would inject them with random chemicals to see their effects and if one twin died from such an experiment, he would often kill the other to perform an autopsy in order to compare the two. Perhaps most infamous was his procedure in which he attempted to artificially create conjoined twins. Ultimately, they would suffer and die of gangrene a couple days later.
After the liberation of Germany and the end of the war, Josef Mengele was never punished and would go on to live in isolation in South Africa. Over all, The Angel of Death will be remembered as a sadistic facist who held no regard of human lives in his insane attempts to prove his views on eugenics.
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