Dr.
Josef Mengele, nicknamed The Angel Of Death, and the
other Nazi doctors at the death
camps tortured men, women and children and did medical experiments
of unspeakable horror during the Holocaust. Victims were put into
pressure chambers, tested with drugs, castrated, frozen to death. Children
were exposed to experimental surgeries performed without anesthesia,
transfusions of blood from one to another, isolation endurance, reaction
to various stimuli. The doctors made injections with lethal germs, sex
change operations, removal of organs and limbs.
At Auschwitz Josef Mengele
did a number of medical experiments, using twins. These twins as young
as five years of age were usually murdered after the experiment was over
and their bodies dissected.
Mengele injected chemicals into the eyes of the children in an attempt
to change their eye color. He
carried out twin-to-twin transfusions, stitched twins together,
castrated or sterilized twins. Many twins had limbs and organs removed
in macabre surgical procedures, performed without using an anesthetic.
Only
a few of the children survived Auschwitz. They later recalled how they
were visited by a smiling Uncle Mengele who brought them candy and
clothes. Then he had them delivered to his medical laboratory either in
trucks painted with the Red Cross emblem or in his own personal car.
Josef Mengele was the chief provider for the gas chambers at Auschwitz -
and did well! When it was reported that one block was infected with
lice, Mengele solved the problem by gassing all the 750 women assigned
to it.
The memory of this slightly built man, scarcely a hair out of place, his
dark green tunic neatly pressed, his face well scrubbed, his Death's
Head SS cap tilted rakishly to one side, remains vivid for those who
survived his scrutiny when they arrived at the Auschwitz railhead.
Polished boots slightly apart, his thumb resting on his pistol belt, he
surveyed his prey with those dead gimlet eyes. Death to the left, life
to the right.
Josef Mengele and the other camp
doctors - masterminds of the horrors of Nazi
genocide - were found to be
psychologically normal. They were men of fine standing, cultured,
husbands who morning and night kissed their wives, fathers who tucked
their children into bed ...
