Ainsley Bissett

Miss Schmidt
Honors English 9
February 27, 2018
An Annotated Bibliography: Dr. Josef Mengele
History in an Hour. “Dr. Josef Mengele: The Angel of Death - a Summary.” History in an Hour,

William Collins, 12 Feb. 2018, www.historyinanhour.com/2014/02/07/josef-mengele-

summary/.

Dr. Josef Mengele is the man who is most commonly associated with lethal medical

experiments on the inmates of Auschwitz. He was born on March 16, 1911. When he got

older, he studied philosophy and medicine in Munich and Frankfurt. Later, he joined the

Nazi party because he shared Hitler’s racial views. Mengele was injured while serving on

the medical corps and returned to Germany. No longer able to fight, Mengele arrived at

Auschwitz, where he started his cruel experiments on prisoners. He would assist with

selections as prisoners arrived at the concentration camp. He would search for twins and

other with unusual physical conditions. Mengele conducted experiments on 1,500 pairs of

siblings at Auschwitz, many of whom were young Jewish children. If one twin died

during the experiments, Mengele would order for the other to be murdered too. He would

draw blood from his patients until they were unconscious, and then inject them with

untested medications. These medications often lead to death. Mengele was referred to as

‘the good uncle’ by the children because he would often bring them toys before bringing

them to the gas chambers. One family he had a particular interest in was the Ovitzes, a

family with dwarfism. He would pour freezing and boiling water on them and extract

their teeth and hair. In 1945, Mengele fled Auschwitz and ended up in the custody of the
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US. When he escaped he went to South America and evaded capture for the rest of his

life.

Remember.org. “Medical Experiments of the Holocaust and Nazi Medicine.” The Holocaust

History, remember.org/educate/med.exp.

Doctors were always known as lifesavers until Dr. Josef Mengele and a few others

decided to perform lethal experiments on the prisoners of Auschwitz. Some of the

experiments performed by these doctors included freezing a person until they died, and

also trying to warm them back up using painful methods. The Nazis believed that the

Aryan race was to become superior to all other. All who didn’t meet the genetic

requirements would be killed. Since they wanted to be the master race, testing began in

concentration camps to refine the master race and to determine the cause of defects. Dr.

Josef Mengele preferred to experiment on twins and Gypsies. He would appear at

selections and send the twins, dwarfs, and unique physical specimens to experimental

blocks where they would be examined. He would first examine and measure them from

head to toe. After all the living data was taken from the twins, they would be injected

with chloroform in their heart, killing them. They were then dissected for after death

examinations. One experiment he performed was taking twins and forcing gas in through

their noses which caused them to cough. He then forced them to be photographed for

several days. Mengele wanted to show their hair patterns. The twins were forced to hold

many agonizing positions for hours, or until they went unconscious. Experiments like

these, or even worse, would continue for a few weeks until all the data was collected, and

then they would be injected with chloroform.

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United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Josef Mengele.” United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/josef-mengele.

Josef Mengele was an SS physician, who was known for his inhumane medical

experiments on prisoners of Auschwitz. He started out getting his Ph.D. in physical

anthropology from the University of Munich. Then, he became the assistant of Dr. Otmar

von Verschuer, a scientist who was widely known for his twin research. Mengele then

joined the Nazi party and was drafted into the army in 1940. He was wounded and

returned to Germany, where he studied anthropology, human genetics, and eugenics.

While he was staying in Germany, he received a promotion to become an SS captain at

Auschwitz in 1943. He then took a position as Chief Camp Physician of Auschwitz II in

1943. He was under the jurisdiction of Dr. Eduard Wirths. He would perform selections

as prisoners arrived at the camp, choosing which ones were good for working, or which

ones should go immediately to the gas chambers. Josef Mengele was commonly known

as the “Angel of Death,” or the “White Angel,” for his cruel demeanor while selecting

prisoners. He would also try to search for twins, which he would use for medical

research, especially for genetics. He wanted to trace the genetic origins of various

diseases. Mengele would also collect the eyes of his victims to use as research material.

Most of his test subjects would either die from experimentation or be killed for post-

mortem examination. After the war, Mengele was held in US custody, but was then

released because the US was unaware that he was a war criminal. Josef Mengele than

moved to Brazil, where he died and was buried under the name of Wolfgang Gerhard. In

1992, German Police confirmed that the DNA of Wolfgang Gerhard had match

Mengele’s. He had avoided his capture for 34 years.

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Walker, Andy. “The Twins of Auschwitz.” BBC News, BBC, 28 Jan. 2015,

www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30933718.

The Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz 70 years ago, but what they found left behind was

shocking. They found the victims of disturbing experiments by Dr. Josef Mengele. When

prisoners would arrive at the camp, anybody who was physically unique or had a twin

was taken by Mengele. Mengele came to Auschwitz so that he could have an unlimited

supply of twins to experiment on, and he wouldn’t get in trouble if they died. One record

stated that Mengele worked on 732 pairs of twins. He would remove organs from people

without anesthetic, and if one twin died the other would be killed too. One odd thing

about Mengele was that he liked to collect the eyes of his victims. Josef Mengele was

interested in why eyes were different colors, and some of his experiments included giving

injections to try and change a person’s eye color. He also injected people with diseases

such as Noma, just to see how they react to the disease. He didn’t only do his

experiments on twins though. He also worked on dwarves, giants, and Romas. Mengele

wanted to find out why genetic defects happen. In 1945, the camp was liberated, and the

children were filmed in interviews. The outside world wanted to know everything that

had happened with them and Mengele’s experiments. Mengele then fled west and was

arrested by the US army. Since he didn’t have a SS tattoo on his arm, he was freed by a

unit that was unaware that he was a major war criminal. He then worked as a farmhand in

Bavaria before going to Argentina in 1949. He died from drowning after a stroke in

Brazil at a holiday resort.

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Wiesel, Elie. Night. Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

Elie Wiesel was a typical young Jewish boy, but he unfortunately lived during the

Holocaust. He ended up at Auschwitz, which is one of the most infamous concentration

camps. When he got there, all the Jews went through a line to selections. A man standing

in the middle decided whether they would go to the left or to the right. Little did Elie

Wiesel know, but this man was the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele. One way meant that you

would be kept alive to work. The other way was a little worse, you would go straight to

the gas chambers or crematorium. When Elie Wiesel got to the man, he lied to make

himself appear to be older and stronger than he really was. Luckily, he was told to go to

the left by Mengele because he was good for working. His father was given the same

direction, and they both would go to work instead of being killed immediately.

Unfortunately, Wiesel’s mother and sisters did not have the same fate, and they were not

as lucky. In Elie Wiesel’s mind, he will never forget Dr. Mengele. He will forever

remember him as the one who sent them to work instead of the gas chambers. He was the

notoriously cruel doctor, but he did save Elie Wiesel’s and his father’s lives, at least for a

little while. Dr. Mengele was known for his cruel ways during the selection process, and

Elie Wiesel had to experience this in his lifetime.