Josef Mengele-Angel of Death

Josef Mengele was born in Günzburg on 16 March 1911, the oldest of three sons of Walburga (née Hupfauer) and Karl Mengele. His two younger brothers were Karl Jr. and Alois.

There is an eerie coincidence here, Alois was also the name of the Father of the man he came to admire and serve, Adolf Hitler.

I will not go too deep into the crimes of Josef Mengele as such, because so much has already been written about him, even I have done several pieces in the past. His Father Karl Mengele, a prosperous manufacturer of farming implements. In 1935 Josef got a PhD in physical anthropology at the University of Munich. He also held a doctoral degree in genetic medicine.

A privileged and educated man and yet he could not see how inhumane he was. Or maybe he didn’t want to see. With a slight flick of the finger he would decide who would live or die. Even those who initially were selected to live were subjected to medical experiments or slave labour, eventually often resulting in death.

The most disturbing fact about Mengele is that he died a free man. I have no doubt that he was helped escape Germany after the war and not necessarily only by fellow Nazis. It would not surprise me if he actual had surrendered to the allies, he would have been part of Operation Paperclip, the operation which ensured that many of the Nazi scientists got jobs in the USA and other countries, and not just mediocre positions but highly paid jobs within the scientific fraternity.

But the fact that many of his crimes were well documented and used as evidence during the International Military Tribunal, probably meant that the allies could not be seen endorsing this Angel of Death. Having that said if they would have been serious in capturing him, it would have been very easy to do so because he wasn’t really that hard to find.