Josef Mengele - Nazi Angel of Death & His Horrific Medical Experiments on Auschwitz Prisoners

Josef Mengele - Nazi Angel of Death & His Horrific Medical Experiments on Auschwitz Prisoners. On the 30th of May 1943, the SS assigned Mengele to Auschwitz where he worked as one of the camp physicians at Auschwitz-Birkenau. There is some evidence that Mengele himself requested this assignment because of the opportunities it could provide for his research. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of the Auschwitz camps and also served as a killing center for Jews deported from throughout Europe. In addition to other duties, Mengele also had responsibility for Birkenau’s so called “Gypsy Family camp”. Beginning in 1943, nearly 21,000 Romani men, women, and children were sent to Auschwitz and imprisoned in the Gypsy Camp. When this family camp was liquidated on the 2nd of August 1944, Mengele participated in selecting the 2,893 Romani prisoners who were to be murdered in the Birkenau gas chambers. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed chief physician for Auschwitz-Birkenau and in November 1944, he was assigned to the Birkenau hospital for the SS. As part of their camp duties, medical staff at Auschwitz performed so-called selections. The purpose of the selections was to identify persons who were unable to work. The SS considered such persons as useless eaters and therefore murdered them. When transports of Jews arrived at Birkenau, the camp medical personnel selected some of the able-bodied adults to perform forced labor in the concentration camp. Those not selected for labor, including children and older adults, were murdered in the gas chambers. All visibly pregnant women and mothers of babies and young children were sent to the gas chambers upon arrival. Mengele rationalized this as follows: “When a Jewish child is born, or a woman comes to the camp with a child already. I don’t know what to do with the child. I can’t set the child free because there are no longer any Jews who live in freedom. I can’t let the child stay in the camp because there are no facilities that would enable the child to develop normally. It would not be humanitarian to send a child to the ovens without permitting their mother to be there to witness the child’s death. That is why I send the mother and child to the gas ovens together.” Josef Mengele was also alleged to have had affair with the infamous Irma Grese, one of the most hated and feared guards in the camp. When Mengele discovered that she was having affairs with Jewish inmates, who were deemed racially inferior, he ended his relationship with her. Mengele was also a sexual deviant who indulged in sexual brutality. For example, while male prisoners were left standing at assembly awaiting his arrival, he is reported to have spent one whole night engaged in recording the reactions of their Jewish women to being raped by camp functionaries. Camp physicians at Auschwitz and at other concentration camps also conducted periodic selections in the camp infirmaries and barracks. They conducted these selections in order to identify prisoners who were either injured or had become too ill or weak to work. The SS used various methods to murder these prisoners, including lethal injections and gassing. Mengele routinely carried out such selections at Birkenau, leading some prisoners to refer to him as the “angel of death.” Prisoner Gisella Perl, a Jewish gynecologist at Birkenau, later recalled how Mengele’s appearance in the women’s infirmary filled the prisoners with terror:” 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.” And he did. When a typhus epidemic began in the women’s camp, Mengele cleared one block of six hundred Jewish women and sent them to their deaths in the gas chambers. The building was then cleaned and disinfected and the occupants of the neighboring block were bathed, de–loused, and given new clothing before being moved into the clean block. This process was repeated until all of the barracks were disinfected. Similar procedures were used for later epidemics of scarlet fever and other diseases, with infected prisoners being killed in the gas chambers. Join World History channel and get access to benefits: Disclaimer: All opinions and comments below are from members of the public and do not reflect the views of World History channel. We do not accept promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on attributes such as: race, nationality, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation. World History has right to review the comments and delete them if they are deemed inappropriate. ► CLICK the SUBSCRIBE button for more interesting clips: #worldwar2videos #ww2 #worldhistory