Four S-S officers stand together smiling and chatting in a field. The two in the center are smoking.
Josef Mengele, infamously known as “Doctor Mengele,” remains one of the most chilling figures of the 20th century and a central perpetrator of the Holocaust. A German physician and SS captain, Doctor Mengele’s name has become synonymous with the horrific medical experiments conducted in Nazi concentration camps, particularly at Auschwitz. As the “Chief Camp Physician” of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) from November 1943, Doctor Mengele oversaw and personally conducted experiments on prisoners, actions that led to immense suffering and death. Many victims perished during these procedures or were deliberately killed afterward to facilitate gruesome post-mortem examinations. Doctor Mengele’s legacy is not merely that of a Nazi criminal, but also a stark example of how medical expertise can be twisted in the service of a genocidal ideology.
Doctor Mengele’s name evokes images of Auschwitz and the systematic horrors perpetrated within its walls. His role in the camp’s medical atrocities cemented his place as perhaps the most recognized individual responsible for the crimes committed there. Beyond his actions within Auschwitz, Doctor Mengele’s postwar escape and decades in hiding symbolize the broader failure of international justice to capture and prosecute Nazi war criminals effectively. This evasion further contributes to the disturbing mystique surrounding Doctor Mengele.
The notoriety of Doctor Mengele has permeated popular culture, inspiring numerous books, films, and television series. However, many of these portrayals sensationalize and distort the reality of Doctor Mengele’s crimes, often removing him from the crucial historical context that explains his actions. He is frequently depicted as a stereotypical “mad scientist,” driven by irrational sadism and conducting experiments devoid of any scientific basis.
The truth about Doctor Mengele is, in fact, even more unsettling. He was not a fringe figure but a highly qualified doctor and respected medical researcher, decorated for his wartime service. Doctor Mengele was trained at prestigious institutions and worked at the forefront of German medical research. His experiments at Auschwitz, while barbaric and unethical, were often connected to and supported the broader scientific pursuits of other German researchers and institutions. Doctor Mengele was not an anomaly; he was one of many biomedical professionals who exploited concentration camp prisoners for experiments within the Nazi system. Furthermore, Doctor Mengele was also actively involved in the selection process that sent countless victims to their deaths in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Doctor Mengele’s actions were not those of a rogue individual but were disturbingly consistent with the accepted norms of German science under the Nazi regime. His crimes underscore the profound dangers of science when it is corrupted by an ideology that dehumanizes entire groups of people, denying them basic human rights, dignity, and life itself. Understanding Doctor Mengele requires examining not just the man himself, but the system that enabled and encouraged his atrocities.
Doctor Mengele’s Life Before Auschwitz
Josef Mengele’s early life provides context for his later transformation into the infamous “Angel of Death.” Born on March 16, 1911, in Günzburg, Bavaria, Germany, Doctor Mengele was raised in a prosperous environment as the eldest son of Karl Mengele, who owned a successful farm equipment manufacturing business.
Doctor Mengele pursued higher education with ambition, studying medicine and physical anthropology at several prominent German universities. His academic achievements were significant: in 1935, Doctor Mengele earned a PhD in physical anthropology from the University of Munich. Following this, in 1936, he passed the rigorous state medical exams, officially becoming a licensed physician.
In 1937, Doctor Mengele began his professional career at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt. This institution, directed by Dr. Otmar von Verschuer, was a leading center for genetic research, particularly known for twin studies. Doctor Mengele served as Verschuer’s assistant, and under his mentorship, Doctor Mengele completed a second doctorate in 1938, further solidifying his academic credentials. This early career path placed Doctor Mengele within the mainstream of German scientific research, specifically within the emerging field of racial hygiene, which would become deeply intertwined with Nazi ideology.
Doctor Mengele and the Embrace of Nazi Ideology
While Doctor Mengele did not initially align himself with the Nazi Party before their rise to power, his involvement with right-wing political and paramilitary groups began early in his adult life. In 1931, Doctor Mengele joined the Stahlhelm, a paramilitary organization associated with the German National People’s Party, another right-wing political entity. His involvement deepened in 1933 when he became a member of the SA (Sturmabteilung), the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing, after the Stahlhelm was absorbed into it. Although Doctor Mengele’s active participation in the SA ceased in 1934, this early affiliation demonstrates his leanings toward right-wing nationalism.
Crucially, during his university years, Doctor Mengele fully embraced racial science, the pseudoscientific foundation of biological racism. He came to believe in the core tenet of this theory: that Germans were biologically distinct and inherently superior to all other races. This belief was a cornerstone of Nazi ideology, which used racial science to justify discriminatory and brutal policies. Nazi racial theories underpinned policies such as the forced sterilization of individuals deemed “genetically inferior” due to physical or mental conditions, as well as the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, which prohibited marriage and sexual relations between Germans and Jews, Black people, or Roma.
By 1938, Doctor Mengele had formally joined both the Nazi Party and the SS, the Schutzstaffel, the Nazi Party’s paramilitary and security force. His scientific work became explicitly aligned with the Nazi agenda of maintaining and promoting the supposed superiority of the “German race.” His mentor, Verschuer, also a fervent believer in biological racism, played a significant role in shaping Doctor Mengele’s views and career trajectory. Beyond research, Verschuer and his institute, including Doctor Mengele, provided “expert” opinions to Nazi authorities responsible for enforcing the Nuremberg Laws. They assessed individuals to determine their “Germanness” and evaluated Germans for forced sterilization or marriage restrictions based on perceived hereditary conditions. This period reveals Doctor Mengele’s active role in translating racist ideology into practical, discriminatory policies within Nazi Germany.
Doctor Mengele’s Service on the Eastern Front
Doctor Mengele’s transition from scientific researcher to active participant in Nazi violence accelerated with his military service. In June 1940, Doctor Mengele was drafted into the German army (Wehrmacht). Just a month later, he volunteered for the medical service of the Waffen-SS, the armed branch of the SS, indicating a clear commitment to the Nazi regime. Initially, Doctor Mengele was assigned to the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) in occupied Poland. Here, he applied his racial science expertise to evaluate and refine the SS’s methods for determining “racial purity” among those claiming German ancestry. This role further solidified his involvement in the practical implementation of Nazi racial policies.
Around late 1940, Doctor Mengele was transferred to the engineering battalion of the SS Division “Wiking” as a medical officer. He served in this capacity for approximately 18 months, beginning in June 1941, experiencing intense combat on the eastern front during the invasion of the Soviet Union. Doctor Mengele’s time on the eastern front was marked by extreme brutality. Notably, during the initial weeks of the German invasion, his division participated in the mass slaughter of thousands of Jewish civilians. His actions and service earned him the Iron Cross, both 2nd and 1st Class, prestigious German military decorations, and promotion to SS captain (SS-Hauptsturmführer). This combat experience and recognition further entrenched Doctor Mengele within the SS hierarchy and validated his commitment to the Nazi cause.
Doctor Mengele returned to Germany in January 1943. While awaiting his next Waffen-SS assignment, 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 reconnection with Verschuer and the KWI-A set the stage for Doctor Mengele’s subsequent assignment to Auschwitz and the horrific experiments that would define his infamy.
Doctor Mengele’s Assignment to Auschwitz
On May 30, 1943, Doctor Mengele received orders from the SS assigning him to Auschwitz. Evidence suggests that Doctor Mengele may have actively sought this posting, likely seeing it as an unparalleled opportunity for human experimentation. He became one of the camp physicians at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest part of the Auschwitz complex, which functioned as both a concentration and extermination camp for Jews from across Europe. Doctor Mengele’s responsibilities at Auschwitz extended beyond general camp medical duties. He was specifically put in charge of Birkenau’s Zigeunerlager, the “Gypsy camp,” established for Romani people (pejoratively called “Gypsies” by the Nazis). Beginning in 1943, approximately 21,000 Romani men, women, and children were imprisoned in the Zigeunerlager.
When the Zigeunerlager was liquidated on August 2, 1944, Doctor Mengele played a direct role in the selection process, choosing 2,893 Romani prisoners to be murdered in the Birkenau gas chambers. Shortly after this mass murder, Doctor Mengele was promoted to chief physician of Auschwitz-Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, signifying his increasing authority within the camp medical hierarchy. In November 1944, he was further assigned to the Birkenau hospital for the SS, consolidating his medical command within this sector of Auschwitz. These assignments placed Doctor Mengele at the heart of the killing machinery of Auschwitz, giving him direct access to vast numbers of victims for both selection and experimentation.
Doctor Mengele: The “Angel of Death” and Selection Duty
Four S-S officers stand together smiling and chatting in a field. The two in the center are smoking.
A core part of the horrific routine at Auschwitz was the “selection” process, in which camp medical staff, including Doctor Mengele, determined which incoming prisoners would live and which would be immediately murdered. The SS ideology deemed those unable to work as “useless” and slated them for extermination. Upon arrival of transports filled with Jews at Birkenau, Doctor Mengele and other medical personnel conducted selections on the unloading ramps. Able-bodied adults were chosen for forced labor within the concentration camp system. Those deemed unfit for work, including children, the elderly, and many women, were immediately sent to the gas chambers and murdered.
In addition to arrival selections, Doctor Mengele and other camp physicians conducted periodic selections within the camp infirmaries and barracks. These were aimed at identifying prisoners who were injured, ill, or weakened to the point of being unable to work. The SS utilized various methods to murder these selected prisoners, including lethal injections of phenol and gassing. Doctor Mengele regularly carried out these selections at Birkenau, earning him the infamous moniker “Angel of Death” among the prisoners. Gisella Perl, a Jewish gynecologist who was forced to work at Birkenau, vividly described the terror Doctor Mengele’s presence instilled:
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 Mengele’s notoriety stemmed significantly from the testimonies of prisoner physicians who worked under him and survivors of his medical experiments. Their accounts painted a picture of a man wielding immense power over life and death, contributing to his lasting infamy.
It is important to note that Doctor Mengele was one of approximately 50 physicians who served at Auschwitz. He was not the highest-ranking medical officer in the overall Auschwitz complex, nor did he command all the other doctors. However, Doctor Mengele’s name became by far the most widely known among the Auschwitz doctors. One key reason for this was his frequent presence at the selection ramps. Even when not directly performing selections, Doctor Mengele was often present, searching for twins for his research or recruiting physicians for the Birkenau infirmary. Consequently, many survivors who underwent selection upon arrival mistakenly believed Doctor Mengele was the doctor who selected them, even though he performed this duty no more often than his colleagues. His visibility and the unique nature of his twin research contributed to his disproportionate infamy.
Doctor Mengele and Biomedical Research at Auschwitz
The Nazi regime authorized and encouraged unethical and lethal human experiments within concentration camps, viewing prisoners as expendable research material. Auschwitz, due to its massive prisoner population, became a central hub for these experiments, both as a site for direct research and as a source of subjects for experiments conducted at other camps. The sheer number of prisoners deported to Auschwitz – 1.3 million men, women, and children from diverse national and ethnic backgrounds – meant that researchers seeking specific populations for their studies could readily find them there.
Doctor Mengele was among more than a dozen SS medical personnel who conducted experiments on Auschwitz prisoners. Other notable doctors involved in these atrocities included:
- Eduard Wirths, the chief physician of Auschwitz, who oversaw the overall medical operations and experimentation within the camp complex.
- Carl Clauberg, a prominent specialist in infertility treatments, who conducted horrific sterilization experiments on women at Auschwitz.
- Horst Schumann, a key figure in the Nazi Euthanasia Program, who later performed sterilization experiments at Auschwitz and other camps using X-rays.
- SS physician Helmut Vetter, who conducted drug trials for the Bayer subsidiary of IG Farben, testing experimental pharmaceuticals on prisoners at Dachau, [Auschwitz](/narrative/3673/en], and Gusen concentration camps, often with deadly consequences.
- Johann Paul Kremer, a professor of anatomy, who used Auschwitz to obtain human specimens for anatomical research, often selecting newly arrived prisoners for immediate gassing so that he could dissect their fresh corpses.
These doctors, including Doctor Mengele, viewed their assignments to Auschwitz as a unique and “exciting” opportunity to advance their research agendas, unconstrained by ethical considerations or the need for informed consent.
Types of Horrific Experiments Conducted by Doctor Mengele and Others
The experiments performed in concentration camps like Auschwitz were characterized by extreme cruelty and a complete disregard for human life. They routinely resulted in permanent injury, disfigurement, and death. In some cases, death was the intended outcome, as researchers sought to study the effects of certain treatments or conditions post-mortem. Prisoners were never asked for their consent, nor were they informed about the procedures they would undergo or the potential risks involved. The range of experiments conducted at Auschwitz was broad and deeply disturbing, including:
- Mass Sterilization Experiments: Doctors like Clauberg and Schumann conducted experiments aimed at developing efficient and inexpensive methods for mass sterilization, targeting Jewish, Romani, and other groups deemed “undesirable” by the Nazis.
- Wound and Disease Experiments: Prisoners were deliberately wounded or infected with diseases like typhus, tuberculosis, and malaria to study the progression of these illnesses and to test the effectiveness of experimental treatments. These experiments often involved immense suffering and high mortality rates.
- Surgical Experiments: Unnecessary and often brutal surgeries were performed on prisoners, ostensibly for research purposes or to provide surgical training to medical personnel. These procedures were frequently conducted without anesthesia and led to severe infections and death.
- Murder and Dissection for Anthropological and Medical Research: Prisoners were murdered specifically to provide researchers with corpses for dissection and study. Doctor Mengele, in particular, was involved in the systematic killing of twins and individuals with physical anomalies to facilitate his and his colleagues’ research.
Doctor Mengele’s Specific Experiments at Auschwitz
Beyond his general duties at Auschwitz, Doctor Mengele focused on his own research agenda and conducted specific experiments on prisoners. His mentor, Verschuer, may have played a role in securing Doctor Mengele’s Auschwitz assignment precisely to support the research efforts of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics (KWI-A). Throughout his time at Auschwitz, Doctor Mengele regularly sent blood samples, body parts, organs, skeletons, and even fetuses extracted from Auschwitz prisoners to his colleagues at the KWI-A in Germany. He actively collaborated with them on research projects, utilizing the captive population of Auschwitz as his experimental subjects.
In addition to his collaborative work with the KWI-A, Doctor Mengele pursued his own independent research at Auschwitz. His primary goal was to publish groundbreaking findings that would earn him the academic credentials necessary to secure a prestigious university professorship after the war. Auschwitz provided him with a horrifyingly unique laboratory to achieve this ambition.
To facilitate his research, Doctor Mengele established a dedicated research complex within Auschwitz, setting up laboratories in several barracks. He selected prisoner physicians and other medical professionals to serve as his staff, leveraging their expertise while still subjecting them to the brutal conditions of the camp. Doctor Mengele was able to procure modern scientific instruments and equipment for his research and even established a pathology lab within his complex, allowing him to conduct on-site examinations and dissections.
Doctor Mengele’s Research Goals: Racial Pseudoscience
Doctor Mengele’s research, both his independent projects and his collaborations with the KWI-A, centered on understanding how genes influence the development of specific physical and mental traits. While the study of genetics is a legitimate and important scientific field when conducted ethically, the work of Doctor Mengele, Verschuer, and their colleagues was fundamentally corrupted by their deeply ingrained belief in racial science and Nazi ideology. They subscribed to the false theory that human races are biologically distinct and hierarchical. This theory posited a racial hierarchy with the “Aryan race” at the top and deemed “inferior” races genetically predisposed to negative traits.
These “negative traits” extended beyond physical and mental illnesses to include socially undesirable behaviors such as “vagrancy, prostitution, and criminality.” Nazi racial ideology also promoted the dangerous myth that interracial marriage would “contaminate” and degrade “superior” races by introducing these negative hereditary traits.
Doctor Mengele’s research aimed to identify definitive physical and biochemical markers that could distinguish between different “races.” He and his colleagues believed that discovering these markers was crucial for “preserving the racial purity” and supposed superiority of the German people. For Doctor Mengele and others like him, the perceived importance of this racial research justified conducting any experiment, no matter how harmful or lethal, on individuals they deemed racially inferior, such as the prisoners of Auschwitz. This warped scientific rationale underpinned the immense suffering inflicted by Doctor Mengele.
Doctor Mengele’s Victims: Roma, Jews, and Twins
Alt text: ID card of Renate Guttmann, a survivor of Doctor Mengele’s twin experiments at Auschwitz, highlighting the personal stories of victims.
Doctor Mengele primarily selected his victims for experimentation from two groups targeted by Nazi racial ideology: Roma and Jews. These groups were of particular interest to Nazi biomedical researchers because Nazi ideology classified both Roma and Jews as “subhuman” and threats to the supposed purity of the German “race.” This racist dehumanization led Nazi scientists to believe that ethical considerations did not apply to their treatment of Roma and Jewish individuals.
During Doctor Mengele’s tenure at Auschwitz-Birkenau, over 20,000 Roma were imprisoned in the Zigeunerlager, and hundreds of thousands of Jews arrived on transports from across Nazi-occupied Europe. Auschwitz presented a horrifyingly unique setting: nowhere else could scientists have access to such a concentrated population of these targeted groups, and nowhere else did they possess such absolute power to experiment on human beings without any constraints. One of Doctor Mengele’s colleagues reportedly recalled him remarking that it would be “a crime” not to exploit the “opportunities” for human experimentation that Auschwitz-Birkenau afforded.
Roma Victims of Doctor Mengele
Doctor Mengele’s interest in Roma extended beyond using them as subjects for general medical experiments. He also conducted an anthropological study of the Romani population within the Zigeunerlager, treating the entire camp as a living laboratory for racial observation. When an outbreak of noma, a severe gangrenous infection of the mouth, occurred among Romani children in the camp, Doctor Mengele seized the opportunity. He assigned prisoner physicians to meticulously study the disease. Noma is primarily caused by bacterial infection in severely malnourished children with weakened immune systems. However, Doctor Mengele, consistent with his racial biases, attributed the noma outbreak among Romani children to supposed hereditary factors rather than the appalling conditions within the camp.
Ironically, prisoner physicians, despite the horrific circumstances, discovered an effective treatment for noma, a disease that was often fatal. Yet, even after successfully curing Romani children of noma, Doctor Mengele ensured that all of them were eventually murdered in the gas chambers, negating any potential benefit from the medical knowledge gained and highlighting the purely exploitative and genocidal nature of his actions.
Twin Experiments of Doctor Mengele
Twins became a central focus of human genetic research in the 1930s, and Doctor Mengele’s experiments on twins at Auschwitz are among his most infamous atrocities. Before World War II, researchers like Verschuer used twins to study the heritability of diseases, typically obtaining consent from twins or their parents. However, recruiting sufficient numbers of twins for research was challenging. Auschwitz solved this problem for Doctor Mengele in the most brutal way imaginable. He systematically collected hundreds of pairs of twins from among the Jewish and Romani prisoners arriving at Auschwitz. No researcher had ever had the opportunity to study and experiment on such a vast cohort of twins.
Doctor Mengele directed his staff to meticulously measure and record every conceivable physical attribute of the twins. He ordered large quantities of blood to be drawn from them and subjected them to numerous painful and often invasive procedures. Lorenc Andreas Menasche, a survivor of Doctor 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 some of his most gruesome experiments, Doctor Mengele murdered sets of twins simultaneously to conduct comparative autopsies on their corpses. After dissecting and studying their bodies, Doctor Mengele sent various organs and skeletal remains to the KWI-A for further analysis, treating human lives as mere biological specimens.
Victims with Congenital Anomalies Targeted by Doctor Mengele
During selections on the arrival ramps at Auschwitz, Doctor Mengele specifically sought out individuals with visible physical anomalies. This included dwarfs, individuals with gigantism, and those with physical deformities such as clubfoot. Doctor Mengele would meticulously study these individuals, documenting their conditions, and then have them murdered. Their bodies were then sent to research institutions in Germany for further examination, turning human suffering into scientific specimens.
Doctor Mengele also targeted Roma and Jews with heterochromia iridum, a condition where a person’s eyes are different colors. One of Doctor Mengele’s colleagues at the KWI-A had a particular research interest in heterochromia. To support this colleague’s work, Doctor Mengele had individuals with heterochromia murdered at Auschwitz and their eyes removed and sent to Germany for study, demonstrating the callous and instrumental way he viewed human life.
Children as Victims of Doctor Mengele
Children were disproportionately victimized by Doctor Mengele’s experiments. The children he selected for his research were housed in separate barracks, receiving marginally better food and living conditions than other prisoners – a deceptive tactic used to gain their cooperation. Doctor Mengele cultivated a facade of friendliness towards these children, deceptively acting like a benevolent figure. Moshe Ofer, a survivor of Doctor Mengele’s experiments, described his and his brother Tibi’s interactions with Doctor Mengele:
[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 Mengele used children both for his own experiments and to contribute to the research of the KWI-A. In one particularly horrific experiment, he collaborated on a study of eye color development. He administered a chemical substance, provided by one of his KWI-A colleagues, directly into the eyes of children and newborns. The resulting reactions ranged from severe irritation and swelling to permanent blindness and even death, showcasing the extreme cruelty and disregard for life inherent in his research.
A prisoner assigned to care for the Jewish twins subjected to Doctor Mengele’s experiments provided a harrowing account of the children’s physical and emotional responses to their treatment:
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 Escape from Justice
As the Soviet Red Army advanced into western Poland in January 1945, Doctor Mengele fled Auschwitz along with the rest of the camp’s SS personnel, attempting to evade capture and accountability for his crimes. He briefly served at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp and its subcamps in the chaotic final months of the war. In the war’s closing days, Doctor Mengele shed his SS uniform, donned a Wehrmacht (German army) uniform, and joined a regular military unit, further obscuring his identity. Following Germany’s surrender, his unit surrendered to US military forces, and Doctor Mengele became a prisoner of war (POW).
Remarkably, Doctor Mengele successfully concealed his true identity as the infamous “Angel of Death.” Posing as an ordinary Wehrmacht officer, he was processed as a regular POW by the US Army. In a staggering failure of identification, the US Army released Doctor Mengele in early August 1945, completely unaware that his name was already on lists of wanted war criminals due to his atrocities at Auschwitz. This initial escape from justice allowed Doctor Mengele to remain at large for decades.
From late 1945 until the spring of 1949, Doctor Mengele lived and worked under a false name as a farmhand near Rosenheim, Bavaria. During this period of hiding in plain sight, he managed to re-establish contact with his family, who provided him with crucial support and resources for his continued evasion. As US war crimes investigators began to uncover the full extent of Doctor Mengele’s crimes at Auschwitz, they initiated efforts to locate and arrest him. However, relying on deliberately false information provided by Doctor Mengele’s family, investigators mistakenly concluded that he had died. This erroneous conclusion further hampered efforts to bring him to justice and emboldened Doctor Mengele to seek permanent escape from Europe.
With financial assistance from his family, Doctor Mengele immigrated to Argentina in July 1949, using yet another false identity. Argentina, under the Perón regime, became a haven for fleeing Nazi war criminals. By 1956, Doctor Mengele had become well-entrenched in Argentina and felt secure enough to obtain Argentine citizenship under the name José Mengele, further legitimizing his false identity. However, in 1959, his sense of security was shattered when he learned that West German prosecutors had discovered his whereabouts in Argentina and were seeking his arrest and extradition.
Facing renewed threat of capture, Doctor Mengele fled Argentina for Paraguay, where he again acquired citizenship. The 1960 abduction of Adolf Eichmann by Israeli intelligence agents in Argentina and his subsequent trial in Israel heightened Doctor Mengele’s paranoia. Correctly suspecting that Israeli agents were also pursuing him, Doctor Mengele fled Paraguay and went into hiding in Brazil. Supported financially by his family in Germany, he spent the remaining years of his life living under an assumed name near São Paulo, Brazil, constantly evading capture. On February 7, 1979, while swimming at a vacation resort near Bertioga, Brazil, Doctor Mengele suffered a stroke and drowned, finally ending his decades-long escape from justice. He was buried in a suburb of São Paulo under the alias “Wolfgang Gerhard.”
The Discovery and Identification of Doctor Mengele’s Body
The international pursuit of Doctor Mengele persisted even after years of fruitless searching. In May 1985, the governments of Germany, Israel, and the United States formally agreed to collaborate in a renewed effort to track down Doctor Mengele and bring him to justice, reflecting the enduring international determination to hold Nazi war criminals accountable. This renewed investigation led German police to raid the home of a Mengele family friend in Günzburg, Germany. Crucially, this raid uncovered evidence suggesting that Doctor Mengele had died and been buried in Brazil under a false name.
Brazilian police subsequently located Doctor Mengele’s grave near São Paulo 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. Based on skeletal analysis, dental records, and photographic superimposition, these experts conclusively identified the body as that of Josef Mengele. In 1992, DNA evidence analysis further confirmed the forensic findings, definitively proving that the body was indeed Doctor Mengele.
Despite extensive international efforts, Doctor Mengele successfully evaded arrest for 34 years, ultimately escaping earthly justice. His story remains a stark reminder of the failures in the pursuit of Nazi war criminals and the enduring legacy of the horrors he perpetrated as the “Angel of Death” of Auschwitz.
Footnotes
Last Edited: Nov 15, 2024 Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
