Josef Mengele: The Angel of Death

just the mention of his name can send a chill up the spine in a place full of horror he was the most feared monster of them all we're of course talking about the Angel of Death Josef Mengele although trained as a doctor to preserve life he brought a sadistic cruelty to the experiments that ended the lives of so many and his victims of choice when they were children in this week's by graphics we reveal the depraved life of the monster of Auschwitz dr. Josef Mengele yes if Mengele entered the world on the 16th of March 1911 in the German Bavarian town of goons burg after three miscarriages he was the first born of Karl and well Perga Mengele karl was the owner of a farm machine factory which turned to producing munitions when war broke out in 1914 the manglers would go on to have two more sons but Joseph was the firm favorite of his mother while poker was an obese woman who had a Stern reputation and a voracious appetite she doted on her eldest son who was much closer to him than she was to her husband for his part Josef proved to be a quiet child whose main goal was to please his overbearing mother at school Josef he was an average student he struggled to keep his grades up at the standard that his mother expected and when he was fifteen he contracted the serious bone marrow disease osteomyelitis the disease which was often fatal in those days kept him off school for six months returning to class he was seriously behind his peers academically over the next two years he showed a remarkable level of self-discipline to not only catch up but surpass many of his fellow students by the age of 17 he had outgrown his shyness and developed into a handsome focused and driven young man who was popular with both teachers and classmates you in April 1930 the 19 year old passed his high school exams and gained acceptance into the medical and philosophy faculties at Munich University he had decided to become a doctor Mengele stood out from the other men on campus he was always impeccably dressed and had developed the air of a gentleman he treated women with old-fashioned dignity and was a very good dancer all these traits got him quickly noticed by the ladies with the results that his social calendar was usually pretty full during his first year of university Mengele began to show an interest in politics he joined the steel helmets in March of 1931 a paramilitary group who advocated a return to the pre-war monarchy the steel helmets were a stepping stone in the National Socialist or Nazi Party which was promoted in beer halls as well as on university campuses the Nazis advocated a return of German pride and pureness and the removal of racial impurities these ideas they appealed to Mengele and seemed to mesh with the social Darwinism that he thought was being taught in the lecture halls he became fascinated with eugenics particularly the idea that a population could be made more perfect through selective breeding of those who had the most desirable characteristics it would also help to weed out undesirable traits by the elimination of the weak and the feeble while the Nazis believed in eugenics for them the process of generational selective breeding it was too slow they were determined to weed out the weak right now the Aryan race could simply no longer stands being contaminated by inferior races such as the Slavs and the Jews both of whom were considered untermensch or subhuman these beliefs were enthusiastically embraced by the young and impressionable Josef Mengele in 1935 Mengele was awarded a PhD in anthropology his thesis was entitled racial morphological research on the lower jaw section of four racial groups the paper was free of any racial bias and set out to prove empirically by science alone that the German was a superior breeding and a better human being a year later Mengele graduated with a medical degree he's been for months an intern at Leipzig University clinic before joining the staff of Germany's leading racial expert this was dr. omar free her von versa and he was based at the Institute for heredity biology and racial purity located at the University of Frankfurt Mandela's job at the Institute was to examine people who were suspected of breaking the Nuremberg Laws to see whether or not they were Jews he and his colleagues created thousands of files which would turn out to be devastating in future years when people were rounded up for transportation to concentration camps in May of 1937 Mengele officially joined the Nazi Party he became a member of the Nazi doctors party and then in May of 1938 the shoot Staffan or SS the SS had been created as Hitler's personal protection squad but it expanded its role to the running of concentration camps the leader of the SS was Heinrich Himmler a meticulous organiser who had plans to make the still small organization as powerful as the national army at the time Mengele joined the SS was an elite group that only allowed the best specimens of Aryan manhood into its ranks [Music] at about the same time as he became a member of the SS Mangler became engaged to Irene show in mind the daughter of a professor at Frankfurt University six years younger than Joseph Irene was a blonde haired beauty and made the perfect compliments to the handsome athletic looking young doctor when it came to getting married however there was a bit of a problem while Yosef was able to show documentation of his Aryan purity Irene could not prove that her grandfather was 100% Aryan it was only the influence of the Mangala family that smoothed the way for the wedding which took place in July of 1939 the failure to fully prove Irene's ancestry precluded the manglers from inclusion in the kinship book of the SS which included couples who could prove their Aryan ancestry back to 1750 as a result Mengele was deprived of the swords and spoons wort which was given to an SS man on the birth of a child after his three months of marriage Mengele was called for a three-month stint in the Army he was sent to the Tyrolean mountain region possessing a high level of physical fitness and being an adept hiker he excelled in his service having completed his three-month service he returned to his job at Frankfurt University but with the coming of war in 1939 national mobilization was instituted Mengele was rejected on the first draft because he had had a kidney infection as a child [Music] in June of 1940 Mengele was finally called up becoming a second left tannins in the waffen-ss he was put in a no combat position working in the genealogical section of the race and resettlement office by June of 1941 with the onset of Operation Barbarossa there was an urgent need for men to serve on the Eastern Front Mengele was pulled out of the office and sent to the Russian front he proved to be a courageous soldier winning the Iron Cross second class at the beginning of 1942 Mengele transferred to the Scandinavian Viking SS division where he served as a field doctor again he proved discouraged under fire winning the Iron Cross first class when he pulled two men from a burning tank in November of 1942 he suffered serious wounds and was taken off the frontlines after a period of recovery he returned to the race and resettlement office he gained a promotion to captain and then in mid 1943 was given what was to him a dream job this was a practical eugenics researcher this meant that he was able to indulge all of the wackiest eugenics theories testing them out on living human subjects the human subjects who would be mangle as guinea pigs were to be found at the auschwitz-birkenau concentration camp he obtained posting to the camp and set about extending his anthropological research into heredity Mengele was not the first doctor to use concentration camp inmates for research purposes in Birkin vault and de Cao Jews were injected with bacteria exposed to all manner of deadly diseases and struck with rifle buds repeatedly to see how long it would take for them to suffer irreversible brain damage at Auschwitz itself doctor Horst Schumann had been conducting sterilization experiments once castrating 90 men in a single day yes Mengele was to take the scope and barbarity of his experiments to an entirely new level outfits had been elected as the venue for his work because of its out-of-the-way location and because it was close to a railway junction with tracks coming from all over Europe Mengele arrived at Auschwitz on the 23rd of May 1943 the next day he participated in his first selection this involved selecting which of the new inmate arrivals were to live and which were to die on that day alone he sent 1035 gypsies to the gas chamber as was his nature Mengele was actively dressed during these selections he wore a white SS medical uniform white gloves and polished black boots his face was emotionless as he decided who is to die by a simple flick of his wrist his constant chain-smoking and air of nonchalance presented a mystifying yet terrifying sight for the bewildered new arrivals during his time at Auschwitz Mengele oversaw selection on 74 transports 80% of new arrivals were condemned to death immediately all children under the age of 14 were killed as with the old in the infer Mandela seemed to enjoy this aspect of his job and he was known to say here the Jews and through the doors and leave through the chimney mangle is passion however was for scientific research he instructed the guards to seek out those who were deformed overly tall midgets or he will aim his most prized subjects were twins especially if they were children from his earliest days at university Mangala had a fascination with twins he believed that by studying them he could discover the secret to genetic manipulation indeed it was his search for twins that motivated him to attend so many arrival selections during his time at Auschwitz he managed to find 1500 pairs of twins that were used as human guinea pigs only 100 pairs survived the twins and other research subjects who were selected on arrival would be marched to living quarters at the Birkenau about 2 miles away there they lived in appalling conditions surrounded by rotting corpses and starving adults once established in their disgraceful living quarters the children had to complete an intensive questionnaire in which they had to indicate their age height eye and hair color ethnic backgrounds as well as any health problems older children assisted young ones to complete performs desperate to have everything completed to the satisfaction of the guards children would then be interviewed by a Mangler himself who would take extensive notes and then have a file for each child drawn up he was determined to have his research seen as legitimate and so he went to great lengths to keep everything official in preparation for experimentation the children were cleaned bathed and dressed in clean pajamas they were then taken by Red Cross vehicles to one of Mandela's research laboratories he had established a number of labs around the auschwitz-birkenau area for these specific purposes at one blood tests and x-rays were taken here the children were treated with care Mengele would come in regularly to make sure that none were being mistreated on these agency would hand out sweets to the children and talk gently and reassuringly to them by doing this he was able to engender trust which got the children onto his experimentation table [Music] in other labs the most heinous barbarism was taking place on a daily basis anesthesia was never used so the pain that was inflicted on the children can hardly even be imagined experiments included the removal of specific organs or limbs immersion in freezing water the injection of dyes and the eyes the castration of boys sterilization of girls and deliberate infection of wounds with gangrene occasionally Mengele would organize endurance test experiments this involved subjects being given increasingly strong voltages of electricity until they either died became unconscious or went into a coma as soon as a twin died its sibling would immediately be killed in order to provide comparative data during the autopsies despite manglers attempts to cloak his work in legitimacy there was no valid scientific reason for any of these horrendous experiments doctors who assisted Mengele later recorded that it seemed as if many of the experiments were just inspired purely by sadism in addition to his diabolical lab work into selection duties with new arrivals Mengele occasionally delivered babies women who were found to be pregnant were immediately gassed however if they were near full-term Mengele would deliver the baby only to be sent with its mother to death one of his greatest amusements was to allow for them both to live for some time but to tape the mothers breasts so that she would be forced to watch her baby starve to death of all of his atrocities the worst occurred when he had a pit dug and a massive violet in the yard of Birkenau he then had 300 children all under the age of 5 thrown into the flames unlike the majority of Nazi killers Mengele did not have to be drugged or drunk in order to carry out his murderous work in fact according to Jewish survivors who were forced to assist in the laboratory's he was enthusiastic in his infliction of Cruelty at times his temper would flare and exhibit itself with sharp bursts of horror on one occasion he smashed an old man's skull Akande simply because he wanted to be on his son's work detail within the camps of auschwitz and birkenau Mengele had unlimited power this combined with his natural sadism turned him into a monster he was often accompanied on his rounds his female equal SS goddamn aggressor a 21 year old blonde beauty who was almost as depraved as he was the two of them marched around the camp in immaculate uniform the perfect Aryan couple Mangal has hatred for the Jews knew no bounds he would celebrate Jewish holy days such as Yom Kippur by ordering the gassing of a thousand children but his extreme prejudice could not prevent feelings of lust from arising within him on occasion went naked young women were paraded in front of him on one occasion a beautiful 15 year old Jewish girl from Transylvania stood in front of him Mengele was clearly aroused by the girl obviously torn inside he and the girl selected for special experimentation over the next hour he caused such deformity to her body that she resembled an old decrepit hag he then left her to die having overcome his illicit lust by early 1944 Mengele had taken to adopting a child invariably the little boy would physically resemble him and would be dressed in a small white medical uniform Mengele would walk around the camp and in hands with the child providing him with sweets and toys within a month the doctor would tire of the child and let him still hand in hand to the gas chamber the cruel of the Mengele was in the conducting of his duties the more respect he got in the Nazi hierarchy in a report written at the end of 1944 out of its camp commandant Rudolf Hess wrote that Mengele carried out all tasks even Zim often under very difficult conditions to the complete satisfaction of his superiors often using his little off-duty time to utilize the scientific material at his disposal to make valuable contribution to anthropological science [Music] by early 1945 Mengele was at the height of his power yet he could also read the writing on the wall he knew that the war was soon lost and that the Russians would overrun the camp in early January the crematoria had been blown up and healthy prisoners were being forced marched to new destinations in Germany Mengele continued his experiments until the last minute but then he busied himself in shipping out all of his equipment documents and reports then on January the 17th of 1945 Joseph Mengele simply disappeared from Auschwitz ten days later the Russians arrived they discovered a burnt-out horror Factory the place had been set on fire and the Germans like Mengele at flat a few thousand survivors more dead than alive were found wandering among the ruins Mengele had fled to another concentration camp further south then as the Russians closed in on that camp he made for the math housing camp in Austria when the Allies approached he ditched his Nazi uniform and went on the run his freedom it didn't last long on May the second he had joined up with a war hospital units the unit soon was overrun by the Russians and all the Germans were taken into custody when arrested main hello was wearing a Wehrmacht uniform he proved to be a bad prisoner constantly worrying that he would be exposed as an SS officer with all of the suspected SS men weeded out he and the other prisoners were handed over to the Americans and then released the angel of death appeared to have escaped scot-free however he knew he would be constantly hunted down he was too afraid to return to his family so he travelled around West Germany and into Soviet occupied East Germany for three years he worked as a labourer on an Alpine farm in Bavaria [Music] meanwhile the story of menglers atrocities have been revealed to the world at large as a result he became the most sought after Nazi scalp by post-war Nazi hunters he made the decision to flee Europe walking over the absent crossing into Italy in April of 1949 he then made his way to South Tyrol where he managed to obtain an International Red Cross ID card under a false name with this he managed to get a Swiss passport Mengele then travelled to Genoa where he set sail for Buenos Aires Argentina upon arriving on Argentinean soil Mengele finally felt safe he was taken in by argentinian President Juan Peron and lived within his palatial compound Iran had been a long time supporter of Hitler and it opened up his country to fleeing Nazis Mengele established a comfortable life in Argentina he found work as a carpenter a trader which he proved to be adept he was also a highly respected member of the local Nazi community by now his father was extremely wealthy as a result of his business ventures the old man financed international rendevouz usually at skiing resource absent from these family get-togethers was manglers wife Irene who had divorced her husband in absent Esha on a family skiing trip to Switzerland in 1956 Mengele charmed his dead brother calls widow Martha a year later they were married Martha and her son Rolf moved to Argentina to be with Mengele with the backing of his father's money Mengele and his new family they lived very well they moved into an upmarket villa in a luxurious suburb ironically in the midst of many wealthy Jewish families he felt so confident in his new life that in 1956 he gave up his alias and reverted to his real name however a determined handful of Nazi hunters mainly made up of Holocaust survivors were hot on his trail one of them Hermann Lange beam managed to get a hold of the divorce papers filed by Irene they indicated that man Halle was living in Buenos Aires Lange been pressured the West German government to issue an arrest warrant which they did on June the 7th 1959 the West German Foreign Ministry now demanded that Mengele be extradited to face the charges [Music] megalo was warned what was happening and fled to Paraguay a year later he moved on to Brazil where he settled in with a Hungarian couple on a small farm about 300 miles from Sao Paulo in mid 1962 he moved again this time to a 45 hectare farm at sierra negra 150 miles north of sal power where he bordered with the strauss a family in his old age Mengele became arrogant surly and self-centered he treated other people there's his intellectual and racial inferiors in 1964 a war crime trial for Mengele was held in absentee shep throughout the course of the trial the gruesome details of his experiments were related often by surviving human guinea pigs as a result of these revelations he became a hated figure for the vast majority of West Germans by 1970 the efforts to get Mengele extradited had petered out and he had largely been forgotten about he continued to live an unhappy life with the Strasser family who had grown to loathe him in 1976 he suffered a stroke from which he only partially recovered he finally met his end in February of 1979 suffering a fatal stroke while swimming at the beach and bertioga until the moment he took his last breath he never uttered a single regret about his actions at Auschwitz so I really hope you enjoyed that by graphics video if you did don't forget to subscribe to this channel for brand new biographies every Monday and Thursday also I've got another channel it's called top tens on that channel as you might have guessed from the name of it we look at all sorts of interesting top 10 lists you can check it out through the link on the screen now but if you're looking for something else to watch right now why not check out a biography from the archives or indeed a top tens video over there on the right and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Biographics

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Keywords: Josef Mengele, Josef Mengele biography, biography of Josef Mengele, angel of death, worst nazis, worst war criminals, biographics, biographics joseph mengele, most evil people

Id: y7ssLE3FddY

Length: 20min 8sec (1208 seconds)

Published: Mon May 28 2018