People sometimes think that Mengele was the only doctor at Auschwitz, but in fact, there were more than 30 physicians working there. Mengele, however, was the most notorious one. He also seemed to be the most enthusiastic scientist. He had a particularly evil mind. I will not write about his experiments because I have written about those, as have others. I am more interested in that evil twisted mind, a mind that could show kindness and extreme evil at the same time.
One survivor once said of Mengele.
“He was capable of being so kind to the children, to have them become fond of him, to bring them sugar, to think of small details in their daily lives, and to do things we would genuinely admire. And then, next to that, the crematoria smoke, and these children, tomorrow or in a half-hour, he is going to send them there.”
In the documentary The Last Laugh, Renee Firestone recalled her encounter with Mengele, where he examined her and her sister Klara. Mengele had seen Renee had some issues with her tonsils and told her to get that seen whenever she got the chance. At the same time, he sent her sister Klara to the gas chambers.
Even when Mengele showed up for the ramp selections when the transports arrived, some survivors recalled “the impression of a gentle and cultured man who had a cheerful expression on his face, almost like he had fun, he was very playful.”
On the other hand, he turned into extremely evil within seconds, especially when his rules were broken. One time, a mother refused to be separated from her teenage daughter. And she scratched the face of an SS guard—who was tasked to enforce Mengele’s decision. Mengele drew his gun and shot both the woman and her daughter. Still fuming with anger, he ordered that all the people from that transport whom he had previously selected as workers were to be sent to the gas chamber to be murdered.
One question I often ask myself is if the Nazis had never come to power, what kind of physician would Mengele have been? I believe the evil he displayed in the camps he worked in was already in him. That being a Nazi gave him the opportunity to carry out his evil acts and experiments legally.
Sources
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0039625720300734
https://candlesholocaustmuseum.org/file_download/inline/25d72a3f-bb51-4c0c-9c72-ac1ed390e57e
https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/553409
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