Megele The Angel Of Death Essay

, Research Paper

Mengele, “The Angel of Death”

Dr. Josef Mengele was rightfully named “The Angel of Death” due to his major and infamous involvement in the tragedy of the Auschwitz concentration camps. This so called “doctor” was as different as night and day at any given time. On one side he was considered a gentle person who went out of his way to help small children and young adults to feel comfortable during his procedures. However, his other side gave him an essence of pure evil.

Mengele had the full permission of the Nazi party of which he was a direct member of to perform any tasks or procedures on any Jewish people brought to Auschwitz. Mengele, however, limited his own self to performing experiments on twins and/or dwarfs. He practiced what people now would call “insane or crazy” experiments on these people. Some of his hypothesis centered on the idea of changing people s eyecolor too blue, Hitler s idea of perfection and supremacy.

One of Mengele s primary goals was to transform Jews into blonde-haired and blue-eyed members of the Aryan Nation. Although the majority of his “crazy” experiments and ideas failed, Mengele was commended on his efforts and ideology by Aldolf Hitler himself.

Dr. Mengele s works were regarded as standard procedure in the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz. In fact, after the Jewish people arrived after fifteen (15) days in the crowded, desolate, and disease ridden railway cars they were split up into two groups. One group was sent straight to the gas chamber and were later incinerated as if they never even existed. The other group was put in crowded barracks or sent into the hands of “Dr. Death”, Mengele himself.

He would then personally select his subjects. During the selection process he would give his subjects candy and other luxuries such as, playing hide and seek and follow the leader with them. The follow the leader game usually resulted in people ending up at the crematorium.

When Mengele practiced on his subjects he usually began by inoculating them life-threatening germs and diseases in order to discover how the Jewish people would react to the illnesses, which also meant almost certain death. As far as using twins in these types of experiments he would compare an inoculated twin s organs with that of their healthy twin s organs. There was never any record of what Mengele was planning to do with this information. Another of Mengele s twisted practices, utilizing twins, extended to attempting to make siamese twins himself by joining two people by sewing their organs, veins, and other body parts together. Victim s of this practice usually died from gangrene poisoning.

At the close of the war Mengele and several other concentration camp doctors were arrested by French and American troops. However, in 1946, at the onset of the war criminal trials Mengele escaped from jail. Years later he was found dead in a remote Asian mountain site, after living for an extended period in solitaire.

At the conclusion of my research I can say without hesitancy that Mengele was attempting to “play god” throughout his tainted medical career. Mengele used his power as excuse to commit murder and in the name of racism, prejudice, and ethically violations without concern for punishment. In all respects the tragedy of the Jewish concentration camps was felt by all in the world. This is a pathetic part of Germany s and the world s horrible past.