Josef Mengele (Photo)
Doctor Josef Mengele remains one of the most chilling figures of the 20th century, synonymous with the horrors of the Holocaust and the atrocities committed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. A German physician and SS captain, Doctor Josef Mengele, often dubbed the “Angel of Death,” stands as the most notorious of the Nazi doctors who conducted gruesome medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. These experiments, devoid of ethics and humanity, inflicted immense suffering, often leading to death. Appointed “Chief Camp Physician” of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) in November 1943, Doctor Josef Mengele orchestrated a reign of terror, subjecting countless victims to his depraved research. Many perished during these procedures or were deliberately killed afterward to facilitate post-mortem examinations, furthering his macabre studies.
Josef Mengele’s name evokes images of unimaginable cruelty and the systematic dehumanization inherent in the Nazi regime. His presence at Auschwitz and the horrifying medical experiments he perpetrated have solidified his position as the most recognizable face of the camp’s brutality. Even after the war, his life spent evading justice became a symbol of the international community’s failure to hold Nazi war criminals accountable.
Doctor Josef Mengele’s infamy has permeated popular culture, inspiring numerous books, films, and television series. However, many of these portrayals sensationalize and distort the reality of his crimes, stripping them of their historical context. Some depictions paint him as a stereotypical mad scientist, driven by irrational sadism and conducting experiments devoid of scientific rationale.
The truth about Doctor Josef Mengele is far more unsettling. He was not a fringe figure but a highly educated and respected doctor and medical researcher, a decorated war veteran deeply embedded within the German scientific establishment. He worked for a leading German research institution and his experiments at Auschwitz, while monstrously unethical, were often aligned with and supported the broader scientific agendas of other German researchers. Doctor Josef Mengele was not an anomaly; he was one of many biomedical professionals who exploited concentration camp prisoners for research in Nazi Germany. Furthermore, he participated in the routine selection process, sending countless innocent individuals to their deaths in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Doctor Josef Mengele operated within the accepted norms of German science under the Nazi regime. His actions expose the terrifying potential for science to become a tool of oppression when divorced from ethical considerations and placed at the service of a hateful ideology that denies fundamental human rights, dignity, and the very humanity of entire groups of people.
Doctor Josef Mengele Before Auschwitz: Education and Ideological Roots
Josef Mengele’s path to becoming the “Angel of Death” began far from the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Born on March 16, 1911, in Günzburg, Bavaria, Germany, he was the eldest son of Karl Mengele, a successful manufacturer of farm equipment. His privileged upbringing provided him with access to excellent education.
Doctor Josef Mengele pursued higher education with rigor, studying medicine and physical anthropology at several prestigious universities. His academic achievements were significant: in 1935, he earned a PhD in physical anthropology from the University of Munich, followed by passing the state medical exams in 1936.
In 1937, Doctor Josef Mengele’s career took a turn towards the field that would later define his horrific legacy. He began working at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt, under the mentorship of Dr. Otmar von Verschuer. Verschuer, a prominent geneticist renowned for his twin studies, became a significant influence on Mengele. Under Verschuer’s guidance, Doctor Josef Mengele obtained a second doctorate in 1938, further solidifying his credentials within the German scientific community.
Embracing Nazi Ideology and Racial Pseudoscience
While Doctor Josef Mengele did not initially align himself with the Nazi Party before their rise to power, his early affiliations reveal a leaning towards right-wing ideologies. In 1931, he joined the Stahlhelm, the paramilitary wing of the German National People’s Party, another right-wing political entity. His involvement with Nazi paramilitary groups deepened when the Stahlhelm was absorbed by the SA (Nazi Party paramilitary) in 1933, making Doctor Josef Mengele a member. Although he ceased active participation in the SA in 1934, this early involvement indicates his susceptibility to extremist ideologies.
During his university years, Doctor Josef Mengele fully embraced racial science, the pseudoscientific foundation of Nazi racism. He became a believer in biological racism, the false and dangerous theory that Germans were biologically distinct and inherently superior to all other races. This racist ideology was central to Nazi doctrine and permeated all aspects of the regime’s policies. Nazi Germany used racial science to justify horrific practices, including the forced sterilization of individuals deemed “unfit” due to physical or mental conditions. The Nuremberg Race Laws, which infamously prohibited marriage and sexual relations between Germans and Jewish, Black, or Romani people, were also rooted in these racist pseudoscientific theories.
In 1938, Doctor Josef Mengele solidified his commitment to the Nazi cause by joining both the Nazi Party and the SS. His scientific work became explicitly aligned with the Nazi agenda of preserving and enhancing the supposed superiority of the German “race.” His mentor, Verschuer, also a fervent believer in biological racism, further reinforced this dangerous path. Beyond research, Verschuer and his team, including Doctor Josef Mengele, acted as “experts” for Nazi authorities. They provided opinions on who qualified as German under the Nuremberg Laws and evaluated Germans for forced sterilization or marriage prohibitions based on their perceived racial or genetic fitness. Doctor Josef Mengele’s scientific expertise was thus weaponized to serve the discriminatory and genocidal aims of the Nazi regime.
Doctor Mengele’s Brutal Service on the Eastern Front
Doctor Josef Mengele’s involvement in the Nazi war machine extended beyond scientific research. In June 1940, he was drafted into the German army (Wehrmacht). Driven by ambition and ideological conviction, he volunteered for the medical service of the Waffen-SS (the military branch of the SS) just a month later. Initially, he served with the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) in German-occupied Poland. In this role, Doctor Josef Mengele was tasked with evaluating the methods used by the SS to determine the “racial purity” of individuals claiming German ancestry, ensuring they met the Nazi criteria for Germanness.
Around late 1940, Doctor Josef Mengele’s assignment shifted to the front lines. He was transferred to the engineering battalion of the SS Division “Wiking” as a medical officer. For approximately 18 months starting in June 1941, he experienced the extreme brutality of combat on the eastern front. Furthermore, in the initial, intensely violent weeks of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Doctor Josef Mengele’s division participated in the mass slaughter of thousands of Jewish civilians, marking his direct complicity in Nazi atrocities. His service on the eastern front was recognized with the Iron Cross, both 2nd and 1st Class, and promotion to SS captain (SS-Hauptsturmführer), demonstrating his rising status within the SS ranks.
Doctor Josef Mengele returned to Germany in January 1943. While awaiting his next Waffen-SS posting, he resumed working with his mentor, Verschuer, who had become the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics (KWI-A) in Berlin. This reunion would prove crucial in setting the stage for Doctor Josef Mengele’s most infamous assignment.
Assignment to Auschwitz: Doctor Mengele’s Descent into Horror
On May 30, 1943, Doctor Josef Mengele’s career path took a decisive and horrific turn when the SS assigned him to Auschwitz. Evidence suggests that Doctor Josef Mengele himself may have actively sought this assignment, perhaps recognizing the unparalleled “research opportunities” it presented within the Nazi system. He became one of the camp physicians at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Auschwitz complex and a dedicated killing center for Jews deported from across Europe. Doctor Josef Mengele’s responsibilities extended to the Zigeunerlager (literally, “Gypsy camp”) within Birkenau. From 1943 onwards, nearly 21,000 Romani men, women, and children (derogatorily labeled Zigeuner or “Gypsies”) were imprisoned in Auschwitz, confined to the Zigeunerlager under appalling conditions. When this family camp was liquidated on August 2, 1944, Doctor Josef Mengele personally participated in the selection of 2,893 Romani prisoners destined for the gas chambers of Birkenau. Shortly after this mass murder, he was promoted to chief physician for Auschwitz-Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II. By November 1944, his final assignment within the camp system was to the Birkenau hospital for the SS, solidifying his position of power within the Auschwitz death machinery.
The Angel of Death: Doctor Mengele’s Reign of Terror and Selections for Murder
Four S-S officers stand together smiling and chatting in a field. The two in the center are smoking.
A group of SS officers socializing at an SS retreat outside Auschwitz (Photo)
A group of SS officers socialize at an SS retreat outside Auschwitz. Pictured from left to right: Dr. Josef Mengele, Rudolf Höss, Josef Kramer, and an unidentified officer. The casual demeanor of these high-ranking SS officers in this photograph starkly contrasts with the horrific reality of Auschwitz and the atrocities they oversaw.
Credits: – US Holocaust Memorial Museum
A central and horrific aspect of Doctor Josef Mengele’s duties at Auschwitz was his participation in “selections.” These selections were a brutal process designed to identify individuals deemed unable to work, whom the SS considered “useless” and therefore slated for immediate murder. Upon the arrival of transports of Jews at Birkenau, Doctor Josef Mengele and other camp medical personnel conducted selections on the unloading ramps. Able-bodied adults were chosen for forced labor within the concentration camp system, while those deemed unfit for work – overwhelmingly children, the elderly, and the infirm – were sent directly to the gas chambers.
Beyond these initial arrival selections, Doctor Josef Mengele also routinely conducted periodic selections within the camp infirmaries and barracks. These aimed to identify prisoners who were injured, sick, or weakened to the point of being unable to work. The SS employed various methods to murder these vulnerable prisoners, including lethal injections and gassing. Doctor Josef Mengele’s regular involvement in these selections earned him the terrifying nickname “Angel of Death” among the prisoners. Gisella Perl, a Jewish gynecologist imprisoned at Birkenau, vividly recounted the sheer terror Mengele’s presence instilled in the women’s infirmary:
We feared these visits more than anything else, because [. . .] we never knew whether we would be permitted to live [. . . .] He was free to do whatever he pleased with us.
– Quoted according to Gisella Perl’s memoir I was a Doctor in Auschwitz (New York: International Universities Press, 1948), 120.
After World War II, Doctor Josef Mengele’s name became synonymous with the horrors of Auschwitz, largely due to the accounts of prisoner physicians who were forced to work under him and the testimonies of survivors of his brutal medical experiments.
While Doctor Josef Mengele was undeniably infamous, it’s important to note that he was one of approximately 50 physicians who served at Auschwitz. He was not the highest-ranking medical officer in the vast Auschwitz complex, nor did he command all other doctors. Nevertheless, his name became far more widely known than any of his colleagues. One key reason for this disproportionate notoriety was Doctor Josef Mengele’s frequent presence on the arrival ramps during selections. Even when not directly performing selection duty, he was often present, searching for twins for his experiments or seeking out physicians to recruit for the Birkenau infirmary. Consequently, many survivors who endured the selection process upon arrival at Auschwitz mistakenly believed Doctor Josef Mengele was the doctor who had selected them, even though he performed this task no more frequently than his fellow physicians.
Doctor Mengele: Biomedical Researcher in the Atrocity of Auschwitz
The SS actively encouraged and authorized German biomedical researchers to conduct unethical and lethal human experiments within the concentration camps. Auschwitz, due to its massive prisoner population, became a central hub for these horrific experiments. It not only served as a site for numerous experiments conducted within its own walls but also supplied prisoners to other camps for research purposes. The sheer scale of Auschwitz – with 1.3 million men, women, and children from diverse national and ethnic backgrounds deported there – meant researchers seeking specific human subjects could find them more readily than in smaller camps.
Doctor Josef Mengele was just one of over a dozen SS medical personnel who conducted experiments on individuals imprisoned at Auschwitz. Other doctors involved in these atrocities included:
- Eduard Wirths, the chief physician at Auschwitz, holding overall medical authority.
- Carl Clauberg, a renowned specialist in infertility treatments who conducted sterilization experiments on women.
- Horst Schumann, notorious for his role in the Nazi Euthanasia Program, where he gassed thousands of patients with disabilities, and later performed sterilization experiments at Auschwitz.
- SS physician Helmut Vetter, who conducted drug trials for the Bayer subsidiary of IG Farben, testing experimental pharmaceuticals on prisoners at Dachau, Auschwitz, and Gusen concentration camps.
- Johann Paul Kremer, a professor of anatomy who conducted experiments related to starvation and collected human organs.
These doctors, driven by ambition and a twisted sense of scientific advancement within the Nazi ideological framework, viewed their assignments to Auschwitz as a unique and “exciting opportunity” to further their research, regardless of the immense suffering inflicted on their victims.
Types of Gruesome Experiments Conducted by Doctor Mengele and Others
The experiments carried out in the concentration camps by Doctor Josef Mengele and his colleagues were characterized by extreme cruelty and a complete disregard for human life. They often resulted in permanent disfigurement, lasting physical and psychological trauma, or death. In some experiments, the deliberate killing of victims was an intended outcome. The medical professionals conducting these experiments at Auschwitz never sought consent from the prisoners and provided no information about the procedures or their potential consequences. The types of experiments conducted at Auschwitz encompassed a range of horrific procedures, including:
- Testing methods of mass sterilization: Aiming to develop efficient ways to sterilize large populations deemed “undesirable” by the Nazi regime.
- Inflicting wounds and infecting prisoners with diseases: To study the progression of diseases, the effects of untreated infections, and to test experimental treatments, often under deliberately worsened conditions.
- Conducting unnecessary surgeries and procedures: Performed for research purposes or to provide training for medical professionals, with no benefit to the victims and often causing severe harm.
- Murdering and dissecting prisoners: To obtain bodies and organs for anthropological and medical research, treating human beings as mere specimens for dissection and study after their deliberate killing.
Doctor Mengele’s Specific Experiments: Twins, Roma, and Genetic Obsessions
Beyond his general duties at Auschwitz, Doctor Josef Mengele dedicated himself to his own research and experiments on prisoners. His mentor, Verschuer, may have even facilitated Doctor Josef Mengele’s assignment to Auschwitz specifically to support the research agenda of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics (KWI-A). Throughout his time at Auschwitz, Doctor Josef Mengele regularly sent blood samples, body parts, organs, skeletons, and even fetuses extracted from Auschwitz prisoners to his colleagues in Germany. He actively collaborated on their research projects by conducting studies and experiments using living prisoners as subjects.
In addition to his collaborative work with the KWI-A, Doctor Josef Mengele pursued his own experimental research at Auschwitz, driven by the ambition to publish his findings and achieve the academic credentials necessary for a university professorship.
To facilitate his research endeavors, Doctor Josef Mengele established a research complex within Auschwitz, spread across several barracks. He handpicked his staff from among the imprisoned medical professionals, creating a team forced to assist in his horrific experiments. Doctor Josef Mengele was able to procure modern instruments and equipment for his research and even set up a pathology lab within the camp, highlighting the resources and support he received for his cruel work within the Nazi system.
Doctor Mengele’s Research Goals: Racial Pseudoscience and Genetic Delusions
Doctor Josef Mengele’s personal research and the research he conducted in collaboration with the KWI-A were fundamentally rooted in the pseudoscientific field of genetics, specifically focusing on how genes determine physical and mental characteristics. While the ethical study of genetics is a legitimate and important scientific field, the work of Doctor Josef Mengele, Verschuer, and their colleagues was tragically distorted and corrupted by their fervent belief in racial science, a cornerstone of Nazi ideology. This racist theory posited that human races are genetically distinct and inherently hierarchical. It asserted the superiority of the “Aryan race” and the inferiority of other races, claiming that “inferior” races were genetically predisposed to negative traits, including not only physical and mental illnesses but also socially undesirable behaviors like “vagabondage,” prostitution, and criminality. This warped racial theory also fueled the Nazi obsession with racial purity, claiming that intermarriage between races would contaminate and undermine the supposedly “superior” races.
Doctor Josef Mengele’s research sought to identify specific physical and biochemical “racial markers” that could supposedly definitively distinguish between races. He and his colleagues believed that discovering these markers was crucial for preserving the supposed racial purity and superiority of the German people. This twisted logic led them to believe that the supposed importance of this research justified conducting harmful and lethal experiments on human beings – specifically Auschwitz prisoners – whom they dehumanized as racially inferior.
Victims of Doctor Mengele: Roma, Jews, and the Dehumanized
ID Card
Renate Guttmann (ID Card)
Renate Guttmann and her twin brother, Rene, were victims of Doctor Josef Mengele’s experiments. Their experience exemplifies the suffering endured by the “Mengele Twins” at Auschwitz.
Doctor Josef Mengele primarily targeted two ethnic groups for his horrific experiments: Roma and Jews. These groups were of particular interest to Nazi biomedical researchers because Nazi ideology categorized both Roma and Jews as “subhuman” and a perceived threat to the German “race.” This racist dehumanization allowed Nazi scientists, including Doctor Josef Mengele, to operate without any ethical constraints when experimenting on members of these groups.
During Doctor Josef Mengele’s time at Auschwitz-Birkenau, over 20,000 Roma were imprisoned in the Zigeunerlager, and hundreds of thousands of Jews arrived on transports. Auschwitz presented an unprecedented and horrific opportunity: nowhere else in the world could scientists have access to such a concentrated population of these targeted groups, coupled with absolute power to experiment on them without consequence. One of Doctor Josef Mengele’s colleagues chillingly recalled him remarking that it would be “a crime” not to exploit the “opportunities” for human experimentation that Auschwitz-Birkenau offered.
Roma: Victims of Anthropological Obsession and Cruelty
In addition to using Roma as subjects for his medical experiments, Doctor Josef Mengele also conducted an anthropological study of the Romani men, women, and children within the Zigeunerlager. When an outbreak of noma, a severe gangrenous infection of the mouth, occurred among Romani children in the camp, he assigned prisoner physicians to study it. Noma is a bacterial infection primarily affecting severely malnourished children. However, Doctor Josef Mengele, blinded by his racist ideology, falsely attributed the noma outbreak to hereditary factors within the Romani population rather than the appalling conditions of starvation and squalor in the camp. Despite Doctor Josef Mengele’s flawed premise, the prisoner physicians, forced to work under him, discovered a cure for noma, a disease that was normally fatal. Tragically, despite being cured, all of the Romani children who recovered from noma were ultimately murdered in the gas chambers, highlighting the utter futility and cruelty of Doctor Josef Mengele’s “research.”
Twins: Doctor Mengele’s Obsessive Pursuit
Twins held a particular fascination for genetic researchers in the 1930s, and Doctor Josef Mengele’s interest mirrored this trend, albeit in a monstrously unethical context. Before World War II, Verschuer and other researchers studied twins to investigate the hereditary basis of diseases, typically obtaining consent from the twins or their parents. However, recruiting large numbers of twins for research proved challenging. Auschwitz provided Doctor Josef Mengele with a horrifyingly efficient solution. He systematically collected hundreds of pairs of twins from among the Jewish and Romani arrivals at Auschwitz. No researcher had ever had access to such a vast pool of twin subjects, enabling Doctor Josef Mengele to conduct experiments on an unprecedented scale.
Doctor Josef Mengele meticulously ordered his staff to measure and record every conceivable physical attribute of the twins. He drew large quantities of blood and subjected them to numerous painful and invasive procedures. Lorenc Andreas Menasche, a survivor of Doctor Josef Mengele’s twin experiments, recounted:
[…] They also gave us injections all over our bodies. As a result of these injections, my sister fell ill. Her neck swelled up as a result of a severe infection. They sent her to the hospital and operated on her without anesthetic in primitive conditions. (…)
From the account of Lorenc Andreas Menasche (also Menashe Lorenzi or Lorenzy), camp number A 12090.
In his ultimate act of depravity, Doctor Josef Mengele murdered sets of twins simultaneously to perform comparative autopsies on their corpses. After studying the autopsied bodies and organs, he sent specimens to the KWI-A for further analysis, treating human lives as mere biological material for his twisted research.
Persons with Congenital Anomalies: Targeted for their Differences
During selections on the arrival ramps at Auschwitz, Doctor Josef Mengele specifically sought out individuals with physical anomalies. This included dwarfs, people with gigantism, and those with conditions like clubfoot. Doctor Josef Mengele studied these individuals, exploiting their unique physical characteristics for his research, before having them murdered. Their bodies were then sent to Germany for further examination by researchers, turning their rare conditions into a death sentence.
Doctor Josef Mengele also targeted Roma and Jews with heterochromia, a condition causing different colored eyes. One of his colleagues at the KWI-A had a particular research interest in heterochromia. To satisfy this morbid curiosity, Doctor Josef Mengele had individuals with heterochromia murdered at Auschwitz and sent their eyes to his colleague in Germany, reducing human beings to mere sources of organs for scientific inquiry.
Children: Doctor Mengele’s Most Vulnerable Victims
Children constituted the majority of victims subjected to Doctor Josef Mengele’s medical experiments. The children selected for his experiments were housed in separate barracks, receiving marginally better food and treatment than other prisoners – a deceptive tactic to mask the horrific reality of their situation. Doctor Josef Mengele cultivated a facade of friendliness towards the children, a chilling contrast to the cruelty he inflicted upon them. Moshe Ofer, a survivor of Doctor Josef Mengele’s experiments, recalled his and his brother Tibi’s interactions with the “Angel of Death”:
[Mengele] visited us as a good uncle, bringing us chocolate. Before applying the scalpel or a syringe, he would say: ‘Don’t be afraid, nothing is going to happen to you…’ …he injected chemical substances, performed surgery on Tibi’s spine. After the experiments he would bring us gifts…In the course of later experiments, he had pins inserted into our heads. The puncture scars are still visible. One day he took Tibi away. My brother was gone for several days. When he was brought back, his head was all dressed in bandages. He died in my arms.
Doctor Josef Mengele used children both for his own experiments and to support the research of the KWI-A. He collaborated on a study examining eye color development, administering a chemical substance provided by one of his colleagues into the eyes of children and newborns. The horrific consequences ranged from severe irritation and swelling to permanent blindness and even death.
A prisoner assigned to care for the Jewish twins used in Doctor Josef Mengele’s experiments described the children’s reactions to their torment:
Samples of blood were collected first from the fingers and then from the arteries, two or three times from the same victims in some cases. The children screamed and tried to cover themselves up to avoid being touched. The personnel resorted to force. (…) Drops were also put into their eyes….Some pairs of children received drops in both eyes, and others in only one. ….The results of these practices were painful for the victims. They suffered from severe swelling of the eyelids, a burning sensation….
Doctor Mengele’s Evasion of Justice: Escape and Decades in Hiding
In January 1945, as the Soviet Red Army advanced into western Poland, Doctor Josef Mengele fled Auschwitz along with the rest of the camp’s SS personnel, abandoning the site of his atrocities. He spent the final months of the war serving at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp and its subcamps. In the chaotic final days of Nazi Germany, he donned a German army uniform and joined a military unit, attempting to blend into the retreating Wehrmacht forces. After Germany’s surrender, this unit surrendered to US military forces, inadvertently providing Doctor Josef Mengele with an opportunity to escape justice.
Posing as a regular German army officer, Doctor Josef Mengele became a US prisoner of war. In a stunning failure of identification, the US Army released him in early August 1945, completely unaware that Doctor Josef Mengele’s name was already on lists of wanted war criminals for his horrific crimes at Auschwitz.
From late 1945 until spring 1949, Doctor Josef Mengele lived under a false identity, working as a farmhand near Rosenheim, Bavaria. During this period in hiding, he managed to re-establish contact with his family, who provided him with crucial support for his continued evasion of justice. When US war crimes investigators finally became aware of Doctor Josef Mengele’s atrocities at Auschwitz and began actively searching for him, they were misled by his family’s deliberate lies, leading them to believe he was already dead. This false information allowed Doctor Josef Mengele to recognize that remaining in Germany was too dangerous. With financial assistance from his family, he fled Germany, immigrating to Argentina in July 1949 under yet another assumed name, beginning his decades-long escape.
By 1956, Doctor Josef Mengele had established himself in Argentina and, feeling a false sense of security, even obtained Argentine citizenship under the name José Mengele. However, in 1959, his past began to catch up with him when he learned that West German prosecutors had discovered his whereabouts in Argentina and were seeking his arrest. Doctor Josef Mengele once again fled, this time to Paraguay, where he obtained Paraguayan citizenship to further solidify his false identity and evade capture. In May 1960, the abduction of Adolf Eichmann by Israeli intelligence agents in Argentina sent shockwaves through the network of Nazi fugitives. Doctor Josef Mengele, correctly fearing that he was also a target, fled Paraguay and went deeper into hiding. Supported by his family in Germany, he spent the remainder of his life living under an assumed name near São Paulo, Brazil. On February 7, 1979, while swimming at a vacation resort near Bertioga, Brazil, Doctor Josef Mengele suffered a stroke and drowned, finally escaping human justice through accidental death. He was buried in a suburb of São Paulo under the alias “Wolfgang Gerhard,” ensuring his true identity remained concealed even in death for several years.
The Discovery and Identification of Doctor Mengele’s Body: A Posthumous Reckoning
In May 1985, decades after Doctor Josef Mengele vanished, the governments of Germany, Israel, and the United States initiated a collaborative effort to locate and bring him to justice, even posthumously. German police raided the home of a family friend of the Mengeles in Günzburg, Germany, uncovering crucial evidence that Doctor Josef Mengele had indeed died and been buried near São Paulo, Brazil. Brazilian police subsequently located his grave and exhumed the body in June 1985. A team of forensic experts from the United States, Brazil, and Germany conducted a thorough examination of the remains, positively identifying them as those of Josef Mengele, bringing an end to decades of speculation and uncertainty. In 1992, DNA evidence definitively confirmed the forensic findings, solidifying the conclusion that the body was indeed that of Doctor Josef Mengele.
Despite the extensive international efforts to bring him to justice, Doctor Josef Mengele successfully evaded capture for 34 years, ultimately escaping earthly accountability for his monstrous crimes. His story serves as a stark reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust and the enduring challenge of holding perpetrators of such atrocities accountable.
Footnotes
Last Edited: Nov 15, 2024 Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
