Josef Mengele, The Angel of Death Josef Mengele was an important and influential person in history that had a negative impact on the world because he medically experimented on the members of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Josef Mengele was born on March 16, 1911 in Gunzburg, Germany into a wealthy family. His father, Karl Mengele, owned a local plant that manufactured farming equipment. His mother, Walburga Mengele, was very demanding and had a very short temper (“The Life of Josef Mengele”). In 1935 he earned a Ph.D. in physical anthropology at the University of Munich. In 1937 he became the assistant of Dr. Otmar Von Verschuer, known for his research of twins, which inspired Mengele’s later work with twins (“Josef Mengele, United States …show more content…
According to mengele.dk, his victims were put into pressure chambers, tested with drugs, castrated, and frozen to death. Children were exposed to experimental surgeries performed without anesthesia, transfusions of blood from one to another, isolation endurance, and reaction to various stimuli (“Josef Mengele and the Medical Experiments”). He became interested in twins after working with Dr. Otmar Von Verschuer and used them for medical research in order to trace the genetic origins of various diseases (“Josef Mengele, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum”). He performed many torturous and often fatal experiments on Jewish and Gypsy twins, most of which were children. He was also fascinated by heterochromia, a condition where an individual's irises differ in color and collected the eyes of his murdered victims."I was looking at a whole wall of human eyes. A wall of blue eyes, brown eyes, green eyes. These eyes they were staring at me like a collection of butterflies and I fell down on the floor." - Jona Laks, one of the twins that he experimented on (“The Twins of Auschwitz”). He also performed experiments to try to artificially change eye color (“Josef Mengele, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum”). He had many plans for all the research he collected but in 1945 the Soviet army made its way to Poland and he immediately fled Auschwitz. His name stood on a list of wanted war criminals.
Josef Mengele was born on March 16, 1911 in Gunzburg, Germany into a wealthy family. His father, Karl Mengele, owned a local plant that manufactured farming equipment. His mother, Walburga Mengele, was very demanding and had a very short temper (“The Life of Josef Mengele”). In 1935 he earned a Ph.D. in physical anthropology at the University of Munich. In 1937 he became the assistant of Dr. Otmar Von Verschuer, known for his research of twins, which inspired Mengele’s later work with twins (“Josef Mengele, United States …show more content…
According to mengele.dk, his victims were put into pressure chambers, tested with drugs, castrated, and frozen to death. Children were exposed to experimental surgeries performed without anesthesia, transfusions of blood from one to another, isolation endurance, and reaction to various stimuli (“Josef Mengele and the Medical Experiments”). He became interested in twins after working with Dr. Otmar Von Verschuer and used them for medical research in order to trace the genetic origins of various diseases (“Josef Mengele, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum”). He performed many torturous and often fatal experiments on Jewish and Gypsy twins, most of which were children. He was also fascinated by heterochromia, a condition where an individual's irises differ in color and collected the eyes of his murdered victims."I was looking at a whole wall of human eyes. A wall of blue eyes, brown eyes, green eyes. These eyes they were staring at me like a collection of butterflies and I fell down on the floor." - Jona Laks, one of the twins that he experimented on (“The Twins of Auschwitz”). He also performed experiments to try to artificially change eye color (“Josef Mengele, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum”). He had many plans for all the research he collected but in 1945 the Soviet army made its way to Poland and he immediately fled Auschwitz. His name stood on a list of wanted war criminals.