Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele (1911-1979) was a Nazi SS Hauptsturmfuhrer and physician at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, involved in direct killings and nonconsensual medical experiments on humans. He escaped prosecution and died, in 1979, while swimming in Paraguay.
Mengele has been described as supporting Nazi race and biological ideology, which variously categorized some people as "life unworthy of life", and also that the Jews and other groups needed to be physically exterminated. [1] His questionable actions fell into three categories:
- Participation in the established procedures of the Nazi genocide program, such as selecting camp arrivals for forced labor or immediate killing; these activities were under the immediate direction of camp Chief Medical Officer Eduard Wirths, who reported to camp commander Rudolf Hoess, and part of the overall program of the Final Solution.[2]
- Involuntary medical experiments, under the sponsorship of Otmar von Verscheur[3] of the Kaiser William Institute of Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics[4]
- Killings and other actions that may have been for personal gratification
He was not a policy-making official, but committed individual crimes. Mengele was relatively little known immediately after the war, but an increasing body of historical writing drew attention to him.[5] Lifton observes that he has acquired "mythic" proportions as a war criminal, and indeed conducted atrocities. Nevertheless, he was one of the Nazi doctors that took advantage of eugenic opportunities in the camps, and “[i]n ordinary times, Mengele could have been a slightly sadistic German professor.” [6] Lifton emphasizes that von Verschuen had much influence on his actions. [7]
Legal proceedings
Other Nazi physicians, charged with equivalent acts, were sentenced in the Medical Case at the Nuremberg Military Tribunals.
The governments of Germany, Israel, and the United States agreed, in 1992, that he was dead. [8]
SS career
After being injured in the field, he transferred to Auschwitz between May 1943 and January 1945, and both served as a general medical officer and conducting experiments under the sponsorship of Otto von Verscheur[3] Subsequently, he moved to Mauthausen Concentration Camp.[9]
Selections
Experiments
Early life
Born in Guenzburg, Germany, Mengele earned a doctorate in anthropology and a medical degree, doing his research in eugenics.[5] He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS in 1938, and the SS Medical Corps in 1940.[9]
References
- ↑ Robert Jay Lifton (1986), The Nazi Doctors: medical killing and the psychology of genocide, Basic Books, p. 21
- ↑ Auschwitz, United States Holocaust Museum
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Rebecca Erbelding (28 April 2008), The Historiography of Josef Mengele: Home, George Mason University
- ↑ Bentley Glass (October 1981), "A Hidden Chapter of German Eugenics between the Two World Wars", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 125 (5)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Rebecca Erbelding (28 April 2008), The Historiography of Josef Mengele: Biography, George Mason University
- ↑ Lifton, The Nazi Doctors, p. 346
- ↑ Lifton, The Nazi Doctors, p. 355
- ↑ Office of Special Investigations, Criminal Division; Neal M. Sher, director (October 1992), In the Matter of Josef Mengele: A Report to the Attorney General, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Mengele, Josef, Yad Vashem Historical Center