History of Sorts

On May 23, 1943, Dr. Joseph Mengele started his “work” at Auschwitz. I am not going to say too much about this evil personified individual.

In particular, Mengele found pleasure in working in Auschwitz

The doctors in Auschwitz were all scheduled according to a work rota for the selections when new victims arrived by train, but Mengele was the only one to volunteer for the selections and would sometimes ask if he could take over a slot in the rota.

Mengele came from a very privileged background and had a PhD in Anthropology as well as a Doctorate in Medicine. He made weekly visits to the hospital barracks and sent to the gas chambers any prisoners who had not recovered after two weeks in bed.

Auschwitz gave him the opportunity to conduct experiments in order to continue his anthropology studies. The Nazi regime allowed him to experiment in the vilest of ways without impunity.

He was especially interested in twins. They had to undergo weekly examinations and measurements of their physical attributes by Mengele himself or one of his assistants.  Experiments performed on twins included unnecessary amputation of limbs, intentionally infecting one twin with typhus or other diseases, and transfusing the blood of one twin into the other.

On May 30, 1943, the SS assigned Mengele to Auschwitz. There is some evidence that Mengele himself requested this assignment. He worked as one of the camp physicians at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of the Auschwitz camps and also served as a killing center for Jews deported throughout Europe. In addition to other duties, Mengele was responsible for Birkenau’s Zigeunerlager (literally, “Gypsy camp”). Beginning in 1943, nearly 21,000 Romani men, women, and children (pejoratively referred to as Zigeuner or “Gypsies”) were sent to Auschwitz and imprisoned in the Zigeunerlager. When this family camp was liquidated on August 2, 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 the part of the Auschwitz camp complex called Auschwitz-Birkenau or Auschwitz II. In November 1944, he was assigned to the Birkenau hospital for the SS.

Mengele was transferred to Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp in Lower Silesia on January 17, 1945. He brought with him—two boxes of examples and records of his experiments. He managed to escape Gross-Rosen on February 18, a week before the Soviets arrived, disguised as a Wehrmacht soldier.

Mengele was captured by the Allies in June 1945 when he was picked up by an American patrol. He was traveling under his own name at the time, but the wanted criminal list hadn’t been efficiently distributed, and he did not have the SS blood group tattoo, so the Americans let him go. Mengele spent some time working as a farmhand before deciding to skip out of the country in 1949.

On April 17, 1949, Mengele traveled to Genoa with the aid of a network of former SS members. He obtained a passport under the alias “Helmut Gregor” from the International Committee of the Red Cross and sailed to Argentina in July.

Despite many attempts to catch him, he was able to elude justice. I have always been skeptical about this. I think that the Allies never really wanted to catch him because if they had, it would have been easy enough to do so. He was more or less hiding in plain sight in Argentina.

Eventually,  in 1979, he drowned while swimming in the Atlantic Ocean after suffering a stroke.

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Source

Yad Vashem