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podcast transcript
The white coat worn by doctors symbolizes healing, trust, and compassion among medical professionals.
But during the Holocaust, in the hands of one of history’s most notorious criminals, it became something very different.
His crimes were so heinous that they still shape modern medical ethics, rules for human experimentation, and the hunt for Nazi war criminals.
Learn more about Joseph Mengele and his horrific crimes in this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Joseph Mengele was born on March 11, 1911 in Günzburg, Germany. He was the eldest of three children born to his industrialist father, Karl Mengele, and his mother, Walburga.
Mengele grew up privileged as his father’s profitable farm machinery company, “Karl Mengele & Sons”, provided comfort and security for his family.
In 1915, Karl moved his company to support the war effort, producing military equipment and weapons for the German army in World War I. After Germany’s defeat in the war, he returned to selling farm equipment.
As a child, Mengele was considered intelligent and creative, enjoying both academic activities and the arts.
Mengele became interested in medicine at a young age. His fascination with this field was inspired by his own health problems. Joseph was diagnosed with a disease called osteomyelitis when he was 15 years old. This disease is an infection of the bone, causing inflammation and other complications.
He eventually studied medicine at the University of Munich. Around this time, Mengele became involved in politics. His extreme political beliefs may have been influenced by his father, who later became a member of the Nazi Party.
While at university, Mengele further shaped his new ideology by joining the “Steel Helmets,” an organization that blamed Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I.
Mengele attended several universities while earning his doctorate in medicine, which connected him with fellow scholars throughout Germany.
His racial beliefs influenced his early research at school, and he eventually earned a doctorate for his studies of the jawbones of different races.
He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 while writing his medical thesis. This study was also a genetics-based study focused on cleft palate. Mengele’s early work shows how deeply he believed in Nazi racial science from the beginning.
Mengele joined the SS in 1938, served in Hitler’s special security forces, and received his MD that same year.
While completing his studies, Mengele met Irene Schönbein, the daughter of a professor. The couple had their only child, Rolf, in 1944.
The outbreak of World War II in 1939 interrupted his studies. Mengele was called to duty early in the war and served in the medical unit.
In 1941, Mengele’s unit was sent to Ukraine as part of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. During this time, Mengele was awarded the Iron Cross First Class after rescuing two German soldiers from underneath a tank.
After being wounded in service in 1942 and deemed unfit for combat, Mengele was transferred to the SS Race and Settlement headquarters to evaluate candidates for the Germanization campaign.
The campaign aimed to spread German culture, language, and people to non-German regions, focusing on Eastern and Central Europe and seeking to assimilate or exterminate populations on racial lines.
By 1942, SS doctors began moving into the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, and were tasked with determining which prisoners would be sent to forced labor and which would be sent immediately to the gas chambers. About three quarters of those arriving died immediately.
Encouraged by his colleagues, Mengele applied for a transfer in 1943 and was appointed camp doctor and administrator of the “gypsy camp” at Auschwitz.
In his role, he sent to death any prisoners who did not recover within two weeks. If prisoners were deemed too sick, weak, or injured to work, they were ordered to be executed in the gas chamber.
This reputation earned him the nickname “Angel of Death.” This meant that the prisoners would die once they reached the infirmary or barracks.
He also took part in the arrival of prisoners. Mengele was reported to be on the ramp almost the entire time upon his arrival, making it appear that he was personally carrying out the majority of his death selection duties.
Mengele was one of 50 doctors at Auschwitz. Although he was not the most senior, nor did he supervise the other doctors there, he became by far the most notorious. His fame came from the medical experiments he conducted on prisoners.
His research focused on genetics, aiming to develop desired traits in test subjects.
The SS authorized biomedical researchers to conduct experiments on prisoners without regard for ethics or safety, often justifying this practice as promoting racial purity, defending Germany, or expanding the Aryan population.
Auschwitz, the largest concentration camp, was the largest supplier of test subjects. Because of its large scale, it is also a place where many experiments have been conducted.
Mengele was not the only doctor performing these experiments. He was the most notorious man. Many researchers saw Auschwitz as an opportunity to work with test subjects and advance their research.
Mengele conducted the study together with geneticists Karin Magnussen and Otmar Von Verschuer from the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institte in Berlin.
One of their areas of study was heterochromia, a condition in which people have different colored eyes. The group aimed to identify differences in iris structure between races, which they hoped would help “cure” heterochromia.
Mengele extracted heterochromatic eyes from the Romani he killed and sent them to Magnussen and Von Verschuer for experimentation. At Auschwitz, he also conducted his own experiments, including injecting adrenaline into the eyes of children to change their eye color.
Mengele’s experiments on twins were particularly infamous. Twins, most of them children, were often selected and taken to the barracks designated for Mengele’s experiments.
Mengele was curious about both identical and fraternal twins. He wanted to use twins to study how genetic diseases arise and evolve and determine which traits are innate and which are a product of the environment.
He discovered racial differences, found genetic weaknesses in Jewish and Romani groups, and operated on children to prove Aryan superiority. He believed his research would show that different races have different disease susceptibility and tissue health.
Mengele had the twins endure invasive procedures simply to perform weekly exams and record their body measurements. He brutally mutilated the twins’ limbs as part of cruel experiments, deliberately infected the children with diseases such as typhus, and performed unnecessary blood transfusions, causing them enormous suffering.
Many of his twin experiments were unspeakably cruel. Perhaps the most heinous example is the stitching of two twins together to create conjoined twins. The children endured painful days before succumbing to death.
The procedure often proves fatal. When one of the twins died, Mengele typically killed the other and dissected them to compare their internal features.
In addition to experimenting with twins and eye color, Mengele also targeted people with physical abnormalities, including people with dwarfism.
For those with physical abnormalities, Mengele drew blood, extracted teeth, completed measurements, and administered medications and x-rays. He conducted this study for two weeks. He then sent the man to a gas chamber and sent the skeleton to Berlin for further experiments.
Mengele also studied the transmission of typhoid fever to pregnant women and their transmission to newborns, despite his lack of training in obstetrics.
Other mothers were unable to breastfeed their children because their breasts were physically tied. The goal of the experiment was for Mengele to see how long babies could survive without being fed.
Mengele also implemented forced sterilization of Romani and Jewish prisoners through various means. The goal of these experiments was to help promote the genetic superiority of the Aryans by finding a way to prevent other races from having children.
It is important to note that some of the experiments listed above may have been incorrectly assumed to have been performed by him. Many historians have argued that some of the experiments are myths and others were potentially performed by different doctors.
Nonetheless, it is believed that Josef Mengele experimented on between 3,000 and 4,000 people, many of whom were children. Even if some of these incidents are false, there is undeniable evidence that he committed many of these crimes.
As the Soviets neared Auschwitz, Mengele saw the writing on the wall and left the concentration camp. He brought with him as many records of the experiments as he could, disguised himself as a member of the retreating army rather than the SS, and began moving west.
He was eventually captured by American troops stationed in Germany and imprisoned for two months before being released. Unfortunately, the US military did not realize that the man they were carrying, Joseph Mengele, was wanted for war crimes. He was released in 1945.
During the Nuremberg Trials, Mengele’s name was mentioned several times. Allied forces mistakenly believed he was dead based on testimony from his family. In fact, he was right under their noses.
Mengele remained in Germany until 1949. During this time, he reconnected with his family by working as a farm laborer. He left only when he feared that staying would result in arrest and death.
Eventually he fled to South America. There, Mengele worked as a salesman for his family’s company, selling agricultural supplies. He is known to have visited Paraguay several times as a representative of the company.
There is evidence that Mengele continued to practice medicine while in South America. According to the Argentine government, there are records of Mengele performing various procedures without a license.
Mengele requested a copy of his birth certificate from West Germany so he could register an alien residence permit in Argentina in his name. This allowed him to return to Europe for a time and reunite with his son. During this time, he stayed with his family and enjoyed skiing trips to Switzerland.
After his visit, he returned to Argentina and applied for an identity card. The card was given José Mengele, the Argentine variant of his name.
Nazi hunters eventually discovered him alive and tracked him to Argentina. West Germany applied for his extradition and offered compensation for his capture. Argentina did not give up on him at first, giving Mengele ample time to flee to Paraguay. When extradition was approved, he disappeared.
Mengele became increasingly concerned about his safety in South America after the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. This meant that despite technically protecting him from extradition, Fargwazi was not safe in practice because Nazi hunters could enter the country illegally at any time.
His life in hiding was not glamorous. In Brazil, he lived under assumed names and became increasingly paranoid and dependent on others. He suffered health problems, including a stroke. On February 7, 1979, while swimming near Sao Paulo, Brazil, Mengele suffered another stroke and drowned. He was buried under the pseudonym Wolfgang Gerhard.
His death was not confirmed to the world until 1985, when investigators located and exhumed his remains in Brazil. Forensic analysis strongly identified the body as Mengele’s. DNA testing confirmed this in 1992. This ended decades of speculation that he might still be alive.
Joseph Mengele’s legacy is not that of a madman operating outside the system. That’s one of the most shocking parts of his story. He was trained and qualified to perform some of the most horrific experiments and was given free will.
Today, Mengele is remembered as one of the clearest examples of why medical ethics matter. The absolute ban on human experimentation without consent was further strengthened as Nazi crimes became known.
His life shows how education and professional status cannot prevent evil when ambition and ideology replace morality.
