Dr. Josef Mengele - The Man and the Myth

The New Stürmer

Year 2002

Jesus said, the Jews are liars, hypocrites, and deceivers. They twist the truth to their benefit and give us lies.

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Even this week I send you an article written by my good friend James L. Choron.  This article is long, but it is worth to be read.

Dear kindred and fellow Aryans

Dr. Josef Mengele - The Man and the Myth

by
James L. Choron

Much debate is focused on Josef Mengele, the infamous doctor of Auschwitz, commonly referred to as the "Angel of Death". Supposedly, his most famous role was played out as the selector on the platform at Auschwitz whose whims sent one either to the gas chambers or to the camp. While his presence on the platform cannot be denied, many, if not most of the charges leveled against him are not only unproven, but unprovable, dependant upon the so-called “memories” of a series of “witnesses”, many of whom were not only children at the time, but children who could not speak the German language, and were only able to “identify” Mengele many years later, and after much “refreshing” of their memories by a series of “helpful” investigators, such as notorious publicity hound and grandstander, Simon Wiesenthal.

Contrarily, there is nothing in the background of Josef Mengele to indicate the type of deep psychosis and deviation that he is credited with later in life. If anything, his early life can be called “normal” and “mundane” by any standards. He was, in fact, the privileged, middle child of a prominent family. Josef Mengele was the second son of a well-to-do Bavarian industrialist whose family still runs an implement factory in Germany. He is described by those who knew him in his youth as a serious student and a young person with obvious intelligence and ambition.

In 1931 at the age of 20, like most young men of his time, he joined the Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet); he joined the SA in 1923 and applied for party membership in the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party) in 1937. Upon being accepted into the Nazi party, he applied for membership in the Waffen SS, the elite military organization of the party, roughly equivalent to the American Green Berets. This was a logical step for an aspiring young physician who wished to be associated with an organization which had access to the best possible supplies, equipment and facilities. In his university studies, Mengele had chosen to concentrate on physical anthropology and genetics. Therefore, he eventually found himself working under Dr. Otmar von Verschuer at the Frankfurt University Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene… a prestigious post for a young doctor, still in his twenties.

In the late 1920's, prior to his active service with the Waffen SS, he had published three articles, one of which was his dissertation in the Anthropological Institute at the University of Munich and which was entitled "Racial-Morphological Examination of the Anterior Portion of the Lower Jaw in Four Racial Groups". His medical dissertation, published in 1938, was entitled "Genealogical Studies in the Cases of Cleft Lip-Jaw-Palate". This was a predecessor to his larger work on genetic abnormalities and indirectly on twins which was allegedly to take place at Auschwitz. A third article - entitled "Hereditary Transmission of Fistulae Auris" was published in conjunction with research done on the Lenz-Vershuer principle of "irregular, dominant hereditary process". It appeared in 1928 that Mengele was destined for the academia. This is hardly a background that fits in with the popular myth of Mengele the Monster.

However, the route to a professorship was interrupted in 1938-1939 when he began his military experience by serving six months with a specially trained mountain light-infantry regiment. In 1940 he was placed in the reserve medical corps, following which he served three years with a Waffen SS unit. It was during this time period he was wounded and declared medically unfit for combat. Because he had acquitted himself brilliantly in the face of the enemy during the Eastern Campaign, he was promoted to the rank of captain. It should be mentioned at this point that Mengele was a reserve officer, and the single promotion to captain was the last that he was to receive. He never exceeded this rank. This fact is important in considering the level of responsibility he, as a very junior officer, allegedly carried at Auschwitz later in his career.

According to Dr. Hans Münch, who turned “state’s evidence” in an attempt to lighten his own sentence at the hands of a “war crimes” tribunal, a colleague of Mengele’s at Auschwitz, Mengele arrived at the camp in a somewhat privileged position - he had been wounded on the Eastern front and was the recipient of an array of medals, including the Iron Cross. According to Münch, Mengele selected Auschwitz because of the opportunities there to continue his research. According to another source (Lifton, The Nazi Doctors) he did receive financial support for his work there. Support for continuing his professional career in genetics appears in another book, And the Violins Stopped Playing written by Alexander Ramati, where it is reported that a Professor Epstein told a comrade that "he (Mengele) has offered to prolong my life. Mind you, not to save it, just to prolong it, if I prepare a scientific paper on noma, which he would publish under his own name. It will keep him away from the front, he said, and justify his presence here as a scientist." Two things should be mentioned at this point, first of all, officers in the German Military… any branch of the German Military… did not select their duty assignments. They had no control over where they were assigned, at all. Secondly, from the evidence of his previous record in combat, and his obvious bravery in action, it does not seem in character that Josef Mengele would be attempting to be kept “away from the front”.

No doubt exists that Mengele was an active member of the Auschwitz garrison after he arrived there in 1943. Considering the staffing conditions (the camp was never at higher than 70% of its medical compliment, due to the requirements of units at the front) at the camp, he had little choice. Most doctors who have testified and prisoners who have testified have indicated he was ubiquitous, and, not surprisingly, given the source, stories do exist of his selection activities and of his medical involvement. The Frankfurt Court which indicted him charged him with "hideous crimes" committed alone or with others "willfully and with bloodlust". Included in the crimes against humanity were selections, lethal injections, shootings, beatings and other forms of deliberate killing. He was religiously involved in all aspects, but particularly in the ‘twins experiments’, according to members of C.A.N.D.L.E.S., twins who “survived” his alleged experiments.

Descriptions of him vary, but most indicate that he was a very attractive man, always well groomed and very aristocratic in stature. Prisoners remember him as the man with the riding crop in his right hand and as the man who wore immaculately clean uniforms and boots with a high polish. This description could, however, be applied to any number of camp officers, not just Mengele in particular, or members of the medical staff, in general. The name Mengele has, in fact, over the years, become rather a generic term for SS Doctor, and is used quite freely to describe any number of different members of the Auschwitz Medical Department. He has been “described” repeatedly by large numbers of people who had no dealings with him at all, or saw him, if at all, on a single occasion at their arrival to the camp, and it is hard to imagine how inmates, at the point of arrival in the camp, could know the name of any camp officer, let alone that of a mere captain in the medical corps.

Of all the alleged aspects of Mengele’s character which are of interest, his research on twins is the most notable. It is the focus of the C.A.N.D.L.E.S. organization, which is made up of “survivors” of the concentration camp at Auschwitz/Birkenau. Beginning in 1944, twins were selected and placed in special barracks. Some of those selected - like Irene and Rene Guttman were already in the camp. Others like Eva and Miriam Mozes were selected on the ramp and placed in the twins barracks. It is believed that Mengele had worked with twins under Verschuer at the University of Frankfurt. If this is the case, then Auschwitz offered Mengele unlimited number of specimens where twins could be studied at random. According to Dr. Miklos Nyiszli in Auschwitz: A DOCTOR’S EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT, twins provided the perfect experimental specimens, since, supposedly, one could serve as a control while the other endured the experiments. It was, and still is, a commonly repeated tale that when a twin went to the camp infirmary, (s)he never returned and that the other twin disappeared as well (This is reported in graphic detail in Eva Mozes Kor, Echoes from Auschwitz, but is not substantiated by independent observation). Nyiszli describes how shots of phenol were allegedly used to kill the second twin.

Twins in the experiments describe three days of what must have been psychological examination and three days of laboratory experiments. "Three times a week we were marched to Auschwitz to a big brick building, sort of like a big gymnasium. They would keep us there for about six or eight hours at a time - most of the days. ..... We would have to sit naked in the large room where we first entered, and people in white jackets would observe us and write down notes. They also would study every part of our bodies. They would photograph, measure our heads and arms and bodies, and compare the measurements of one twin to another. The process seemed to go on and on." (Echoes from Auschwitz, Kor). The laboratory experiments were described by Kor as follows: "Most of the time, they would take blood from one arm, and they gave us shots in the other." (Echoes from Auschwitz, Kor). While the taking of blood and the giving of injections is unpleasant, especially to children, it does not reek of torture. Nor does the alleged dissection of corpses, as reported by Nyiszli and Lu Lifton, sound in the least unusual. It is still a common practice to perform autopsies on deceased children, and to file complete documentation with regard to the analysis of the corpse.

Even the most rabid of the so-called “victims”, admit that being a twin, regardless of age, sex or race meant survival in the Auschwitz of 1944. Some 3,000 children (or about 1,500 sets of twins) were selected for the experiments. It is important to note here that none of the children involved report being terrified of him but rather they were often intimidated by some of what he did. This is, of course, true of all physicians. They knew of his temper and his passion for his work. Yet, they were also aware of his role in their survival. "Being on Mengele’s list was better than being on no list," said Eva Mozes Kor. In fact, he was highly protective of the twins in his charge; yet, this is not generally a part of the popular myth concerning the man which is promoted by the witch hunters of the “War Crimes” and “Human Rights” community.

Of the children involved, about 200 were alive when the camp was liberated by the Soviet Army on January 27, 1945, the majority of the others died of disease or the malnutrition which was stalking all of Germany, not just the camps, at this time. These are the children shown so repeatedly in documentaries walking between the wires of the Auschwitz I camp. Today they reside all over the world and they seek information on what, if anything, was actually done to them. Their files have never been located and what was done to them remains a mystery today. This is not surprising, considering the chaos which followed the Red Army’s “liberation” of Poland, and all other areas which they occupied in the final days of the war in Europe.

To these twins, what happened to Mengele remains a mystery as well. While the bones found in 1985 have been identified by the authorities in charge of the investigation as Mengele’s, many refuse to believe that he is dead. And they still seek vengeance on a man who, very likely, is responsible for their being alive today.

***

In order to have a better grasp of the activities of Josef Mengele, and better make a judgment as to whether the many and various “sins” accredited to him are fact or myth, one must, of necessity know a bit about his background. What kind of man can transform, or be transformed into a monster of the proportions ascribed to Josef Mengele?

Josef Mengele was the eldest of three sons born to Karl and Walburga Mengele in the Bavarian village of Gunzburg. Karl was a local industrialist who owned a plant that manufactured farming equipment. He was known as a stern but fair employer and a hard worker. It was his wife Walburga, however, whom his employees feared the most. An immense woman with a terrible temper, she was often known to storm onto the floor of her husband’s factory and publicly chastise individual employees for laziness and poor workmanship. Warnings were hurriedly passed down the production line whenever Walburga was seen approaching the factory, and workers scrambled to stay clear of her wrath.

Walburga ruled her home with an equal amount of firmness, demanding respect and obedience from her three sons, Josef, Alois, and Karl, Jr. A devout Catholic, Walburga saw to it that her boys strictly practiced the faith of the Church. She was equally as cold and demanding in her relationship with her husband, Karl. One afternoon, Karl arrived home in a new automobile he had purchased in order to celebrate the growing success of his factory. However, instead of thrilling and impressing his wife with this purchase, Karl was greeted with spiteful admonishments for having so foolishly spent money on something as frivolous as a car without first consulting with her. It was a moment that exemplified the extent to which Walburga sought total control over her household and the lives of those who lived in it.

It is clear that his mother’s behavior and the relationship she shared with Karl must have left a lasting impression on young Josef. He, himself, described his father as a cold man, distant and preoccupied with his work at the factory. Walburga is described as someone incapable of loving. While she may have indeed been able to mold a disciplined, respectful son in Josef, some would contend that her cold-hearted methods may well have contributed to her son’s capacity for murder and bloodlust as an SS doctor at Auschwitz. This is unlikely, however, in view of the view held not only by the Catholic faith, but most Germans of her time, in general, with regard to what constituted proper behavior, and with the public display of morality which was expected at the time.

Despite the supposed lack of love and affection in his home, young Josef is remembered as a bright, cheerful boy in Gunzburg. Peers and adults alike greeted him as "Beppo," an affectionate nickname for the handsome, engaging young child. While never the top student in his classes, Josef nevertheless, was considered by most to be a bit on the “brainy” side, and did well. He was recognized as a bright and ambitious student who made up with hard work what he lacked in ability. He was the model of a well-behaved student, earning verbal compliments from his otherwise strict teachers, and high marks for conduct and punctuality. This is hardly the psychological profile of a sociopath or psychopath of the scope necessary to commit the atrocities attributed to Josef Mengele at Auschwitz.

As Beppo matured into adolescence, he continued to refine his social skills, becoming a strikingly handsome young man. Mengele is remembered as someone who exuded a natural self-confidence, a charming and articulate speaker who was much sought after by the village’s young women. His perfectly-styled dark hair, the carefree light in his eyes, and his winsome smile, combined with his extraordinary social graces, imbued Mengele with an aura of flair, charm and charisma. It was at this early age that Mengele acquired the habit of dressing exclusively in hand-tailored clothing and sporting what would become his trademark, white cotton dress gloves, gloves that have been used by several Auschwitz survivors to distinguish him from other SS doctors. Apparently, he was the only officer in the camp to wear gloves… a standard part of the uniform worn by all German officers.

It was during this period that Josef and his ambition came into direct conflict with the wishes of his father, Karl. Josef’s father wished for his eldest son to work for the family factory in Gunzgburg, perhaps as an accountant. However, young Josef dreamt of a career far beyond the confining realm of business, and far beyond the boundaries of his provincial Bavarian home. Throughout his youth Josef dreamt of leaving Gunzburg and pursuing a career in science and anthropology. Certainly not fields associated with mass murderers and pathological killers. Making no secret of his ambitions, Josef once prophetically boasted to a friend that his name would one day appear in the encyclopedia. In 1930 Josef graduated from the Gunzburg gymnasium, or high school, and passed his Abitur, the preliminary college entry examination. While his score was unremarkable, it was good enough for him to be accepted to the University of Munich. Munich is the Capital of Bavaria, and at the time was the heart of the growing National Socialist movement, led by a political revolutionary named Adolf Hitler. 

Mengele left Gunzburg for Munich in October of 1930 to begin his studies at Munich University. He enrolled as a student of Philosophy and Medicine, degrees that would ultimately lead his career path to the Heart of Darkness, Auschwitz. At the same time when young Mengele was beginning his studies, the City of Munich was in the throes of an ideological revolution. In 1930 the Nazis were the second-largest party in the German parliament. Adolf Hitler used Munich as the primary stage from which he would achieve domination over all of German society. His hateful, frenzied, nationalistic speeches incited his Bavarian audiences, and intoxicated them with visions of a new German Empire populated by the German Super-Race. It is needless to say that the popularity of Hitler and his movement was the direct result of the combination of three issues which combined to create a fertile field for many different political theories. These issues were, first of all, the global economic depression which had reduced Germany as a whole to near abject poverty, secondly, the ineffectual government of the Weimar Republic which had been forced on Germany by the victorious Allies at the end of the First World War, replacing the strong central government of the German Empire with one that could barely be called a government at all, and finally the odious and excessive reparation payments being demanded of Germany by France, England and the other Allies. In short, Hitler and Nazism were creatures of the Versailles Treaty and the Global Economy. These issues guaranteed Hitler, and others like him a receptive audience, and a willing following, especially among the young, who had no real memories of the horrors of the First World War. There was also a genuine fear, on the part of most Germans, of the Soviet Union and the Communism that had sprung forth there in 1917. This was especially true among the merchant/industrialist classes, like the Mengele family, who were the backbone of the free enterprise system in Germany, and, of course, it’s staunchest supporters.

Like most academicians, Mengele had remained apolitical up until this point in his life. He was satisfied in his pursuit of his personal goals in science and medicine, and life’s leisure pleasures. His quest for success and renown was confined to the realm of anthropology and academia. However, he easily succumbed to the contagious Nazi hysteria that swept up so many of his peers. In his memoirs, which came to light after his death, he wrote:

My political leanings were, I think for reasons of family tradition, national conservative. I had not joined any political organization. But in the long run it was impossible to stand aside in these politically stirring times, should our Fatherland not succumb to the Marxist-Bolshevik attack. This simple political concept finally became the decisive factor in my life.

In time, around the end of 1931, Josef Mengele joined a nationalistic organization called the Stahlhelm, or the Steel Helmets. The Stahlhelm wore decorative German uniforms and paraded to nationalist music during public events. While they were not yet affiliated with the Nazi Party at this time, they nonetheless shared much of the same basic nationalistic ideology.

Mengele continued his studies, focusing on anthropology and paleontology, as well as medicine. His growing passion, and his area of specialization in Medicine, was eugenics, the search for the keys to unlock the secret of genetics and reveal the sources of human deformities and imperfections. While his interest in this field of study arose at a time when a number of prominent German academics and medical professionals were espousing the theory of "unworthy life," a theory which advanced the notion that some lives were simply not worthy of living, there is no evidence that he subscribed to this theory. It was in the field of genetics that Mengele began to strive in his efforts to distinguish himself, to both gain renown and respect as a scientific researcher and to advance the perfection of the human race. His academic passion revealed little to nothing of the murderous zeal that was supposedly to one day result from it. One of his university colleagues, Professor Hans Grebe, has stated that "There was nothing in his personality to suggest that he would do what they say that he did (as an SS doctor at Auschwitz)"

If Mengele himself became a cold-blooded monster at the height of his Nazi career, he certainly learned at the feet of some of Germany’s most diabolical minds. As a student Mengele attended the lectures of Dr. Ernst Rudin, who posited not only that there were some lives not worth living, but that doctors had a responsibility to destroy such life and remove it from the general population. His prominent views gained the attention of Hitler himself, and Rudin was drafted to assist in composing the Law for the Protection of Heredity Health, which passed in 1933, the same year that the Nazis took complete control of the German government. This unapologetic Social Darwinist contributed to the Nazi decree that called for the sterilization of those demonstrating the following flaws, lest they reproduce and further contaminate the German gene pool: feeblemindedness; schizophrenia; manic depression; epilepsy; hereditary blindness; deafness; physical deformities; Huntington’s disease; and alcoholism. While much is made of this in some circles, Rudin was only one of many lecturers and professors that the young Mengele was exposed to, and there is no evidence that he came to accept this theory above any other, or that he had any particular tie to Rudin.

In 1934, Hitler ordered the SA, or Brownshirts, to absorb the Stahlhelm organization, automatically making Mengele a member. Interestingly, however, a kidney ailment which left him in a weakened condition, forced him to resign from the organization. He was now free to devote all of his time to his studies. Five years after entering the University, Mengele was awarded a Ph.D. for his thesis entitled "Racial Morphological Research on the Lower Jaw Section of Four Racial Groups." Through rather dry scientific prose Mengele postulated that it was possible to detect and identify different racial groups by studying the jaw. While devoid of any racist (specifically anti-Semitic) overtones, Mengele’s argument paralleled those made by others who claimed that physical characteristics such as the jawbone or the shape of one’s nose could be used to determine if someone was Jewish. In 1936 Mengele passed his state medical examination and began working in Leipzig at the university medical clinic.

The next year, 1937, proved to be a turning point in Mengele’s career. He was recommended for and received a position as a research assistant with the Third Reich Institute for Hereditary, Biology and Racial Purity at the University of Frankfort. He was assigned to work for Professor Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, one of the premier minds in the field of genetics. Von Verschuer was a public supporter of Hitler’s, praising him for "being the first statesman to recognize hereditary biological and race hygiene." In von Verschuer Mengele seemed to find the parental adulation and affirmation so sorely missing from his childhood. As von Verschuer provided Mengele with that for which he had longed for all his life, Mengele returned the gesture with an unbending willingness to please his mentor.

Mengele became a member of the NAZI Party in 1937, some fifteen years after it’s founding, and in May of 1938 he applied for membership with and was accepted into the Schutzstaffel… in its military branch, the Waffen SS. This same year, Frankfort University awarded Mengele his medical degree. It was also in 1938 that he received his first experience in military training, spending three months training for combat with the Wehrmacht, or German Army. For the rest of 1938 until 1940 Mengele remained with the Institute, assisting von Verschuer and reviewing the work of other researchers. In 1939 war broke out, and Mengele was electrified with the hope of fighting for Germany. He was not disappointed; although he had to wait until June of 1940 due to his prior kidney ailment.

Mengele continued to distinguish himself, this time as a soldier. As a lieutenant, he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class in June of 1941 on the Ukrainian Front. In January of 1942, while serving with the SS Viking Division deep behind Soviet lines, he pulled two German soldiers from a burning tank, and was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, as well as the Black Badge for the Wounded and the Medal for the Care of the German People. Wounds he received during this second campaign prevented Mengele from returning to combat. Instead, he was posted at the Race and Resettlement Office in Berlin, where he was also promoted to the rank of captain, the last promotion that he would receive. By this time his mentor, Professor von Verschuer, was also stationed in Berlin at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Hereditary Teaching and Genetics. Within a year after being posted to Berlin, Dr. Josef Mengele received a new assignment. In May of 1943, Mengele departed from Berlin for his next assignment: the concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland.

Beyond doubt, Auschwitz was a gruesome kingdom of human misery. Barracks and their inhabitants were inundated with the foulest of sanitary conditions. Diseases such as typhus and diarrhea were rampant, as were lice, vermin and fleas. It was over this kingdom which Dr. Josef Mengele and other physicians sought to preside. Mengele’s stated mission at Auschwitz was to perform research on human genetics. His work was funded through a grant that Professor von Verschuer had secured through the German Research Council in August of 1943. The supposed goal of Mengele’s work was to unlock the secrets of genetic engineering, and to devise methods for eradicating inferior gene strands from the human population, supposedly as a means to creating a Germanic super-race. Note that, in the original orders sending Mengele to Auschwitz, the words “genetic engineering”, “eradication of inferior strands” and “super-race” are nowhere to be found. He was dispatched to Auschwitz as a physician. Considering that he was an injured veteran, no longer fit for front line service, this does not seem the least unusual, in that more fit physicians were, at the time, badly needed at the front.

Mengele supposedly set out to immediately distinguish himself from the other SS doctors at Auschwitz. He already stood apart as the only doctor in the camp to have been decorated for his conduct in battle. According to many so-called witnesses, Mengele made certain to festoon his impeccable SS uniform with the medals he had been awarded. He often made reference to his experiences on the front, and was obviously very proud and protective of his medals. While reported in such a way as to make Mengele appear to be an arrogant, obnoxious proponent of the “master race” in its most vile context, there would seem, on the surface at least, nothing unusual in a soldier being proud of his decorations and wearing them whenever this was possible.

Survivors of Auschwitz speak of Josef Mengele as a beast… a monster… but the stories of him that are reported by these survivors are so inconsistent in their nature as to cast serious doubt on their veracity on the part of any but the most prejudiced of listeners. Supposedly, within a few days of Mengele’s arrival in Auschwitz, a typhus epidemic that broke out in the camp. In order to control it, Mengele allegedly ordered a thousand Gypsy men and women who had the disease to the gas chambers, while sparing the lives of German Gypsies. The significance of this incident, if in fact it occurred at all, is that while Mengele supposedly adhered to the belief that Gypsies were a subspecies of the human race, and therefore were "unworthy life", he nevertheless spared the lives of German Gypsies. According to the Freudian analysts who have attempted to paint a portrait of a monster, this resulted from the fact that Mengele himself had many Gypsy aspects to his own physical appearance, from his tawny skin to his dark hair and eyes and was therefore part of a psychological need to purge the world of those things which he hated about his own self. At the same time, he was willing to spare German Gypsies… his own countrymen. This is circular logic at its best. In point of fact, the captain, regardless of his position as a camp physician, did not have the authority to authorize a mass execution. This was done by the Camp Commandant, who was, at this time Rudolph Höss. At most, Mengele reported the actual outbreak of the disease and the numbers effected. The decision as to what would be done, and its implementation, was both up to Höss, the Camp Commandant.

According to Dr. Ella Lingens, an Austrian doctor who was imprisoned at Auschwitz for attempting to hide some Jewish friends, Mengele relished his role as selector: Lingens stated that “Some like Werner Rhode who hated his work, and Hans Konig who was deeply disgusted by the job, had to get drunk before they appeared on the ramp. Only two doctors performed the selections without any stimulants of any kind: Dr. Josef Mengele and Dr. Fritz Klein. Dr. Mengele was particularly cold and cynical. He (Mengele) once told me that there are only two gifted people in the world, Germans and Jews, and it’s a question of who will be superior. So he decided that they had to be destroyed”. Testimony such as this might be valuable, if it were not coerced. At the time that Lingens made this statement, she was attempting to avoid similar charges herself. This fact casts at least some doubt upon the validity of the claim.

Mengele supposedly performed this task with relish, appearing at selections to which he had not been officially assigned, always dressed in his best dress uniform. He carried himself with grace and ease in his shiny black boots, his neatly pressed trousers and jacket, and his white cotton gloves, while a sea of misery washed up at his feet in the form of exhausted and starving prisoners. Of course, this “constant” presence on the ramp occasionally made it necessary for Mengele to be at two, or even three different places at the same time, sometimes on opposite sides of the camp, which is also well documented. Is it possible that there was more than one Dr. Josef Mengele at Auschwitz?

Dr. Olga Lengyel, another inmate-doctor, who desperately wanted to avoid being tried for “Crimes against Humanity”, blithely recalls Mengele’s demeanor on the ramp. ”How we despised his detached, haughty air”, she said, “his continual whistling, his frigid cruelty. Day after day he was at his post, watching the pitiful crowd of men and women and children go struggling past, all in the last stages of exhaustion from the inhuman journey in the cattle trucks. He would point with his cane at each person and direct them with one word: "right" or "left." He seemed to enjoy his grisly task”.

This "frigid cruelty" Dr. Lengyels spoke of would oftentimes give way to a searing hot rage which Mengele would unleash without warning upon those who sought to challenge the order he sought to establish in the camp. Inmate-doctor Gisela Perl recalls an incident when Mengele caught a woman in her sixth attempt to escape from a truck transporting victims to the gas chamber “He grabbed her by the neck and proceeded to beat her head to a bloody pulp. He hit her, slapped her, and boxed her, always her head -- screaming at the top of his voice, "You want to escape, don’t you. You can’t escape now. You are going to burn like the others, you are going to croak, you dirty Jew." As I watched, I saw her two beautiful, intelligent eyes disappear under a layer of blood. And in a few seconds, her straight, pointed nose was a flat, broken, bleeding mass. Half an hour later, Dr. Mengele returned to the hospital. He took a piece of perfumed soap out of his bag and, whistling gaily with a smile of deep satisfaction on his face, he began to wash his hands”. Unlike the others, Dr. Pearl made her comments years after the fact, while in Israel. While not having a pressing matter of life or death in the balance, her testimony is still somewhat questionable, owing simply to the location and the amount of time which had passed.

Despite his well documented split personality which gave him the ability to be both frigid and detached as well as cruel and brutal, Mengele also demonstrated a carefree, charming side which he used to disarm both colleagues and victims alike. He acted in a caring, concerned manner when confronted with exhausted women and their children on the ramp, only to send them to the gas chambers a moment later. His movie star looks and his confident, authoritative manner made him sexually desirable to the very women that he degraded, tortured and murdered. The totally unpredictable nature of Mengele’s personality became his most powerful tool for exerting control over both prisoners and prison personnel, for it instilled a deep-seated primal fear into all those with whom he came into contact. This same “unpredictability” also tends to make any serious researcher wonder as to whether the “witnesses” in question are describing the same man, or simply attaching a well-known name to anyone with whom they had dealings. The bestiality attributed to Josef Mengele is so out of character with his earlier life and all that is known about his upbringing and development, one must ask this question.

In addition to the selections and beatings, Mengele supposedly occupied his time with other numerous acts of the basest cruelty, including the dissection of live infants; the castration of boys and men without the use of an anesthetic; and the administering of high-voltage electric shocks to women inmates under the auspices of testing their endurance. On one occasion Mengele was alleged to have sterilized a group of Polish nuns with an X-ray machine, leaving the celibate women horribly burned. Bear in mind that Josef Mengele was a practicing Catholic, and had been brought up within the strict confines of that church’s belief system. The Catholic faith was at that time, and still is, a minority faith in Germany, and Catholics are not at all popular. A man dedicated to “rising at any cost”, as Mengele is often described by his accusers, would have abandoned, at least publicly such a faith. Josef Mengele did not, making this story completely unbelievable.

In 1981, at the insistence of the Israeli and U.S. Governments, the West German Prosecutor’s Office drew up 78 different indictments against Mengele, typically and not surprisingly, charging him with the most heinous and bestial crimes against humanity, including:

Having actively and decisively taken part in selections in the prisoners’ sick blocks, of such prisoners who through hunger, deprivations, exhaustion, sickness, disease, abuse or other reasons were unfit for work in the camp and whose speedy recovery was not envisaged… Those selected were killed either through injections or firing squads or by painful suffocation to death through prussic acid in the gas chambers in order to make room in the camp for the "fit" prisoners, selected by him or other SS doctors… The injections that killed were made with phenol, petrol, Evipal, chloroform, or air into the circulation, especially into the heart chamber, either with his own hands or he ordered the SS sanitary worker to do it while he watched.

Mengele allegedly even introduced sexual degradation to the already dehumanizing process of selection… a common charge leveled for its “shock” value, and for its ability to “disgust” the average person. Inmates from the various women’s barracks were supposedly paraded before him, stripped totally nude. He often would make each woman stop and answer the basest questions regarding the intimate details of their sexual lives. According to the supposed witnesses, he supposedly constantly referred to Jewish woman as "dirty whores," a Freudian allusion to the possibility that his supposed cruelty was at least in part rooted to a secret sexual longing for these women whom the Reich had deemed as verboten, forbidden. This accusation being leveled at a man who has been repeatedly described as “handsome” and “charming”, who could, undoubtedly have used his position to obtain any woman he desired. In point of fact, Mengele, even after fleeing Germany, as far is as known, was completely loyal to his wife and family. As a side note, one must point out that Mengele’s wife, at that time, was quite a nice looking woman. It is impossible to believe that a man of Josef Mengele’s intelligence would seek any sort of relation with a woman who was not demonstrably superior to the one which he currently had.

Over and over, those researching this case are told of how Mengele provided endless examples of his devotion to the Nazi order, and the cruel and murderous lengths he was prepared to reach in order to preserve it. On one occasion a camp Kapo (as is usual in such stories, no one who has ever told it has ever been able to come up with a name for the man), one of the Jewish inmates who assisted the Nazi’s in driving inmates to the gas chambers, attempted to retrieve some inmates from the gas chamber line and place them in the labor line. Mengele was so furious that he murdered the Kapo with his own pistol. On another occasion, when the crematoria became too full to accommodate the thousands of Jews streaming into the camp, he had trenches dug, which were then filled with gasoline and set ablaze. Both, the dead and the living, adults as well as children and infants, were thrown bodily into these pits to be destroyed under Mengele’s supervision. Still, one must wonder who, exactly made these claims. If it is true, then not everyone was killed, as the statement leads one to believe. It is also a question-begging point as to how such a witness, in the heat of the moment and in fear of his/her life, could recall the name and fact of the officer who allegedly performed these acts. Once again one must raise the question that if, in fact, these things occurred, was it, in fact, Josef Mengele who was present, or is this simply a well known name which has been applied to the perpetrator long after the fact.

A Russian inmate named Annani Silovich Petko supposedly witnessed a scene that defies description and comprehension. This man, who has never been located since the statement was made, supposedly stated, “After a while a large group of SS officers arrived on motorcycles, Mengele among them. They drove into the yard and got off their motorcycles. Upon arriving they circled the flames; it (sic) burned horizontally. We watched to see what would follow. After a while trucks arrived, dump trucks, with children inside. There were about ten of these trucks. After they had entered the yard an officer gave an order and the trucks backed up to the fire and they started throwing those children right into the fire, into the pit. The children started to scream; some of them managed to crawl out of the burning pit. An officer (not Mengele) walked around it with sticks and pushed back those who managed to get out. Höss (the Auschwitz commandant) and Mengele were present and were giving orders”.

This story has all of the classical elements of a grotesquely constructed "urban legend". It takes place in a location which has become synonymous with "horror" and evocative of "outrage"...the” horror of burning", it involves the most innocent of all victims...children, and it involves the two most well known names from the particular location, Höss and Mengele... On top of that, it is allegedly an “eyewitness" account. In short, it constitutes an almost "perfect" horror story.

If the story itself is true, which is doubtful in the extreme, in the final sentence, there is possibly a grain of truth concerning Dr. Mengele. The invisible Russian states that Höss, the Camp Commandant was there giving the orders. It is entirely possible that Mengele, as a doctor, was compelled by his duties to witness such an act. This does not make him responsible for it, and it is unlikely that he, due to his rank, was in a position to give any orders at all. It has never been denied that Mengele was at Auschwitz. It has only been called into question as to whether or not he was responsible for all of the acts of which he has been accused. It is necessary to point out, at this point, that any German soldier, more especially an officer, who refused to carry out such orders was, as a matter of routine, shot. This is in answer to those who would say that Mengele should have “declined” or “refused” such orders. While this might well be the “noble” thing to do, there is hardly, one would think, one individual in ten thousand who would do so, knowing the consequences.

The body of so-called evidence against Mengele is staggering in both its enormity and variety in the acts of physical and emotional cruelty that he visited upon thousands of helpless victims. It is so much so, that one must wonder how a single human being found time in the day to accomplish it all. His behavior practically escapes description, while his motives are virtually beyond analysis. Taken as a whole this lends credibility to the theory that many of the “witnesses” to these acts are, in fact, simply attributing a well known name to any person in authority that happened to be present at the time. The only other possible explanation is schizophrenia, which, as a label describing Josef Mengele, is so far-fetched as to be completely out of the question. This is especially true in light of the fact that, for a man who supposedly so relished his role as SS doctor and researcher, who allegedly adhered so harshly to the Nazi concept of order and discipline, he consistently displayed not pleasure but detachment from the torment and suffering around him. His overall behavior was that of a man who had a job to do… an odious and distasteful job, but one which had to be done, nevertheless. There is no evidence to point to the “smiling monster” that has been described by so many so-called witnesses.

Dr. Josef Mengele left Auschwitz on January 17, 1945, as the Soviet army advanced towards Berlin. During the first few years of the post-war era, Mengele lived on farm near his native Gunzburg. He assumed a false identity, and worked as a farm hand, keeping informed of events through secret contacts with old Gunzburg friends. He had at first aspired to continue his career as a research scientist, under the assumption that, in time, the hysteria concerning all former SS physicians would subside. Soon, however, became increasingly apparent that the Allies were not going to let, what the press and the Zionist movement had painted as notorious war criminals such as him, simply resume the lives that they had enjoyed prior to the war without paying for their alleged crimes. Mengele finally decided that he was no longer safe in Europe and escaped; first to neighboring Italy, and then by ocean liner bound for Argentina. It would prove to be the wise thing to do, and almost certainly saved his life.

Mengele arrived in Argentina in 1949, a country that was ruled by the extremely popular Colonel Juan D. Peron. The right-wing ruler had already cultivated a friendly relationship with Germany, as well as with the German expatriate community in Argentina. Mengele was able to slip unnoticed into such a setting with ease and had soon established a network of loyal friends who were willing to help him assume a new identity in South America. It is noteworthy to mention that no one who knew him during this time ever witnessed any behavior or attitudes which would reinforce the popular myth of Josef Mengele as an vicious, violent, anti-Semitic monster. In fact, his life, at this time seems to have been rather ordinary and mundane.
 

Mengele was to spend the next thirty years on the run, hounded by the “international” authorities. While he received aid and shelter from his family, and from sympathizers in Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, Mengele was also inadvertently assisted by a lack of commitment on the part of the West German government to bring the so-called Angel of Death to “justice”. There was a similar lack of interest on the part of the United States Justice Department, which at the time, at least, was not interested in pursuing an individual, based solely on circumstantial and third-hand evidence. The Israeli government had no such lack of interest or lack of commitment to his capture, trial and execution… that being the foregone conclusion to their search. In fact, Israeli agents were close to seizing Mengele on a handful of occasions in the early-to-mid 1960s. However, international uproar over Israel’s kidnapping of alleged war criminal Adolf Eichmann from Argentina in 1960, and his execution in violation of every known international law, along with pressing security issues involving hostile Arab states, sidetracked Israeli efforts to pursue Mengele.

While Nazi-hunters such as the grandstanding and self aggrandizing Simon Wiesenthal continued to press for Mengele’s capture and execution, the doctor seemed to drop off the radar screen of most international governments. Interest in his case was suddenly reinvigorated when, on January 17, 1985, some forty-odd years after the fact, a group of Auschwitz “survivors” returned to the death camp to memorialize friends and family who had perished there. A week later, many of the same so-called “survivors” gathered in Jerusalem to try Mengele in absentia. The fact that the alleged “crimes” had not been committed in Israel, a state which, at the time did not even exist, and which, owing to this, had no legitimate claim to jurisdiction in any case arising from the capture of Josef Mengele, had no bearing on the event. This grandiose display of posturing and grandstanding was, naturally, televised around the globe, and for four consecutive nights, the airwaves were filled with images of the so-called “survivors” recounting their gruesome, barbaric treatment at the hands of Josef Mengele. However, with their usual willingness to pander to the popular myth in spite of a noted lack of substantiated evidence, within less than a month, both the United States Justice Department and the Israeli government had announced that the case of Josef Mengele was officially reopened and strategies were redrawn to bring the alleged Nazi doctor to "justice".

However, these efforts came to an abrupt halt, when, on May 31, 1985, West German police, prodded by the German Government’s pandering to the U.S. State Department and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, raided the home of Hans Sedlmeier, a lifelong friend of Mengele’s, and one of his contact people in Europe. The police seized several letters from Mengele and other German expatriates living in Brazil, and Brazilian authorities were immediately notified. Within a week Brazilian police, under the same kind of pressure, had identified the families that had aided Mengele and others in their attempt to avoid an Eichman-like kidnapping and kangaroo court. Through them they were able to locate the grave where Mengele’s body had been buried after a drowning accident in 1979. Forensic tests on the skeletal remains confirmed that the body was indeed that of Josef Mengele.

Mengele’s death, seemingly, but not surprisingly, was not enough. The so-called “survivors” of Mengele’s alleged treatment who had longed all of their post-war lives to confront this “cruel and demonic” man continued to deny that this could indeed be him. Many persist in insisting that he is still alive, and continue to dwell on their sociopathic desire for “revenge”. Those unfortunate people live for the day when they will be able to extract “justice” for their alleged suffering from the man who was supposedly responsible for so much of it, both during and after the war. Fortunately, Dr. Josef Mengele has escaped earthly “judgment” and the usual “justice” meted out by such obviously demented people through that act over which he, as a physician, sought to wield total control - death itself.

 

If Jewish audacity/swindle, Chuzpe, is right, then resistance must be a national duty.

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