The 'Angel of Death' Comes to Auschwitz

An Overview of the Early Career of Josef Mengele

Oct 31, 2009

Auschwitz was an infamous German detention camp. Incoming prisoners were chosen for immediate death, or for medical experimentation under doctors such as Josef Mengele.

Beginning in 1946, the Doctors' Trial in Nuremberg, Germany, detailed the medical experiments performed at German detention camps before 1945. The trial testimony captured the denials of the 23 National Socialist (Nazi) physicians involved, as well as the outrage of the U.S. military prosecutors. And yet one important Nazi doctor was absent from Nuremberg because he already had fled Germany with the unwitting help of the Red Cross — Josef Mengele.

Josef Mengele was born on March 16, 1911. He was the son of a wealthy businessman and industrialist in the Bavaria region of Germany. According to Lifton (1985), Mengele was remembered by those who knew him as “a popular young man, an enthusiastic friend . . . intelligent, [and] a serious student” with lofty ambitions. Ironically, Mengele also was raised as a Roman Catholic.

In 1930, Mengele enrolled at the University of Munich as a student in Philosophy and Medicine. There, he developed an interest in eugenics (i.e., the policy of selective breeding) under Ernst Rüdin, who later helped the Nazis draft the first compulsory sterilization law in Germany. Although not overtly political at the time, Mengele absorbed Rüdin's theories, which advocated purifying society of defective elements such as the handicapped, the mentally ill, and all sexual deviants.

Mengele received his Ph.D in medicine and anthropology in 1934. His doctoral dissertation focused on how racial differences caused structural differences in the lower jaw, which led to a lifelong interest in racial pedigrees. Following graduation, he became a researcher under Dr. Ottmar von Verschuer at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Race Research, where he developed an obsession with genetic similarities and differences among twins.

Mengele joined the Nazi Party in 1937. Once war broke out in September 1939, he served in France and Russia until he was wounded in battle, discharged from active combat duty, and volunteered to serve in one of the German prison detention camps.

Of all the detention camps run by the Nazis, the most infamous was an enormous Polish complex known as Auschwitz. The complex contained three separate camps: an administrative center (Auschwitz I), an extermination camp (Auschwitz II, Birkenau), and a work camp that supplied slave labor for the nearby German factories (Auschwitz III, Monowitz). One survivor of Birkenau later tried to find words to describe the horrors of life at Auschwitz and finally admitted that “nothing . . . close to human existence existed in that place” (Mozes-Kor, 1992).

On May 30, 1943, Josef Mengele became the Camp Doctor at Birkenau. For the first time in his career, he had an unlimited source of material for experimentation.

At Auschwitz, Mengele devoted his energies to study genetic engineering and ways of purifying the German race from 'impure' genes. His work was funded by a grant from the German Research Council, which his old mentor (Dr. von Verschuer) had secured on Mengele's behalf.

Prisoners assigned to Auschwitz arrived by train. The overcrowded cattle cars would pass through the “Gate of Death” at Birkenau, where prisoners were quickly unloaded and sorted into two groups — those who were fit enough to work (and thus would live), and those who would be exterminated. Approximately 70% of all prisoners were selected for immediate death. The remaining 30% were recruited to forced slave labor, or were used for medical experimentation.

According to Bülow (2009), German physicians selected human experimentation material from the trainloads of incoming prisoners. When it came his turn to stand on the ramp and choose, Mengele assumed an imperious manner. “Polished boots slightly apart, his thumb resting on his pistol belt,” Mengele inspected the captives and made his decision with a flick of his arm. “Death to the left, life to the right. . . . with a flick of the cane clasped in a gloved hand.”

Mengele often wore a white lab coat while making his selection. With his arms spread to the left and to the right, he was said to resemble an 'Angel of Death.'

For the prisoners selected as subjects of medical experimentation, the horrors of Block 10 awaited them.

Lynott DR. 2009. Josef Mengele. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/history/mengele/index_1.html?print=yes

Mozes-Kor E. 1992. The Mengele twins and human experimentation: a personal account. In: GJ Annas and MJ Grodin, eds. The Nazi doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The copyright of the article The 'Angel of Death' Comes to Auschwitz in WW II History is owned by Jeffrey Willett. Permission to republish The 'Angel of Death' Comes to Auschwitz in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.