In 1979, a certain Wolfgang Gerhard, a quiet 67-year-old German emigrant who settled here after the Second World War, drowned off the coast of Brazilian Sao Paulo. The old man was buried in a local cemetery and soon forgotten about him. However, 7 years later, Wolfgang’s neighbors accidentally received folders with his archive. Opening the papers, the neighbors gasped - these were descriptions of inhumane experiments on children. Their author was the most wanted Nazi criminal Josef Mengele, a doctor whose medical experiments included thousands of Auschwitz prisoners. Just think: the monster who created a real hell on earth, sending hundreds of people to the next world every day, lived in a real paradise on the Brazilian coast for 35 post-war years. This is the very case when there is no talk of justice.

Josef Mengele was the eldest son in the family. Known fact, the child is formed in the image and likeness of the parents. Looking at them, he acquires certain features and qualities that will be fully revealed in mature age. This is what happened with Joseph. His father paid practically no attention to the children, and his mother was a despotic fury prone to sadism. So the question arises, how should a child grow up when the father pays practically no attention, and the mother does not skimp on beatings at the slightest disobedience or poor grades? The result was a brilliant doctor and a cruel sadist.

Josef was barely 32 years old when he entered service at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The first thing he did was eliminate the typhus epidemic. In a peculiar way, of course: Josef ordered the complete burning of several barracks where the disease was noticed. Effective, to say the least.

But the main thing that Mengele became famous for was his interest in genetics. stumbling block Nazi doctor there were twins. Perform experiments without anesthetics? Easily. Dissect still living babies? Exactly what is needed. You can also stitch twins together, change their eye color using chemicals, develop a substance that causes infertility, and so on. The list of inhumane experiments can be continued endlessly.

Another question arises, why was the doctor from hell most interested in the twins? Let's go back to basics. Even in pre-war Germany, the authorities noticed that the birth rate was decreasing and infant mortality was increasing; this pattern was true for representatives of the Aryan nation. Other races and nationalities living in Germany had no problems with fertility at all. Then the German government, frightened by the prospect of the extinction of the “chosen” race, decided to do something. Joseph was one of the scientists tasked with increasing the number of Aryan children and reducing their mortality. Scientists have focused on artificially breeding twins or triplets. However, the offspring of the Aryan race had to have blond hair and blue eyes - hence Mengele's attempts to change the eye color of children through various chemicals.

First, the experimental children were carefully selected. The assistants of the ‘Angel of Death’ measured the height of the children and recorded their similarities and differences. The children then met Josef in person. He infected them with typhus, gave them blood transfusions, amputated limbs and transplanted various organs. Mengele wanted to track how the identical organisms of twins would react to the same intervention in them. Then the experimental subjects were killed, after which the doctor carried out a thorough analysis of the corpses, examining internal organs.
Mengele himself believed that he was acting for the benefit of science.

Naturally, many legends have developed around such a colorful character. One of them, for example, says that Dr. Mengele’s office was decorated with the eyes of children. However, these are just fairy tales. Josef could simply spend hours looking at body parts in test tubes or spending time doing anatomical research, dissecting bodies, wearing an apron stained with blood. Colleagues who worked with Josef noted that they hated their jobs, and in order to somehow relax, they got completely drunk, which could not be said about the ‘Angel of Death’. It seemed that his work not only did not tire him, but even gave him great pleasure.

Now many are wondering whether the doctor was an ordinary sadist covering up his atrocities scientific activities. According to the recollections of his colleagues, Mengele often took part in executions himself: he beat people, threw them into pits with lethal gas.

When the war ended, a manhunt was announced for Josef, but he managed to escape. He spent the rest of his days in Brazil, eventually taking up medicine again. He made his living mainly by performing abortions, which were officially prohibited by the country's authorities. Retribution overtook him only nearly 35 years after the war.

The most amazing thing is that the story of “Doctor Death” does not end there. A few years ago, Argentine historian Jorge Camaraza wrote a book in which he claimed that Mengele took up fertility experiments again after escaping from justice. As an example, the researcher cited strange story the Brazilian town of Candido Godoy, where the birth rate of twins suddenly jumped sharply. Every fifth woman in labor gave birth to twins, and blonde ones at that! Kamarasa was sure that this was Mengele’s machinations. Local residents really remembered the strange veterinarian Rudolf Weiss, who came to the city to treat livestock, but examined not only animals, but also people. Whether Doctor Death has anything to do with this phenomenon is not known for certain.

Auschwitz prisoners were released four months before the end of World War II. By that time there were few of them left. Almost one and a half million people died, most of them Jews. For several years, the investigation continued, which led to terrible discoveries: people not only died in gas chambers, but also became victims of Dr. Mengele, who used them as guinea pigs.

Auschwitz: the story of a city

A small Polish town in which more than a million innocent people were killed is called Auschwitz all over the world. We call it Auschwitz. Concentration camps, experiments on women and children, gas chambers, torture, executions - all these words have been associated with the name of the city for more than 70 years.

It will sound quite strange in Russian Ich lebe in Auschwitz - “I live in Auschwitz.” Is it possible to live in Auschwitz? They learned about the experiments on women in the concentration camp after the end of the war. Over the years, new facts have been discovered. One is scarier than the other. The truth about the camp called shocked the whole world. Research continues today. Many books have been written and many films have been made on this topic. Auschwitz has become our symbol of painful, difficult death.

Where did they take place? massacres children and were carried out scary experiences over women? In Which city do millions of people on earth associate with the phrase “death factory”? Auschwitz.

Experiments on people were carried out in a camp located near the city, which today is home to 40 thousand people. This is a calm town with a good climate. Auschwitz was first mentioned in historical documents in the twelfth century. In the 13th century there were already so many Germans here that their language began to prevail over Polish. In the 17th century, the city was captured by the Swedes. In 1918 it became Polish again. 20 years later, a camp was organized here, on the territory of which crimes took place, the likes of which humanity had never known.

Gas chamber or experiment

In the early forties, the answer to the question of where the Auschwitz concentration camp was located was known only to those who were doomed to death. Unless, of course, you take the SS men into account. Some prisoners, fortunately, survived. Later they talked about what happened within the walls of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Experiments on women and children, carried out by a man whose name terrified the prisoners, were terrible truth, which not everyone is ready to listen to.

The gas chamber is a terrible invention of the Nazis. But there are worse things. Krystyna Zywulska is one of the few who managed to leave Auschwitz alive. In her book of memoirs, she mentions an incident: a prisoner sentenced to death by Dr. Mengele does not go, but runs into the gas chamber. Because death from poisonous gas is not as terrible as the torment from the experiments of the same Mengele.

Creators of the "death factory"

So what is Auschwitz? This is a camp that was originally intended for political prisoners. The author of the idea is Erich Bach-Zalewski. This man had the rank of SS Gruppenführer, and during the Second World War he led punitive operations. With him light hand Dozens were sentenced to death. He took an active part in suppressing the uprising that took place in Warsaw in 1944.

The SS Gruppenführer's assistants found a suitable location in a small Polish town. There were already military barracks here, and in addition, there was a well-established railway connection. In 1940, a man named He arrived here. He will be hanged near the gas chambers by decision of the Polish court. But this will happen two years after the end of the war. And then, in 1940, Hess liked these places. He took on the new business with great enthusiasm.

Inhabitants of the concentration camp

This camp did not immediately become a “death factory.” At first, mostly Polish prisoners were sent here. Only a year after the organization of the camp, the tradition of writing a serial number on the prisoner’s hand appeared. Every month more and more Jews were brought. By the end of Auschwitz they made up 90% of total number prisoners. The number of SS men here also grew continuously. In total, the concentration camp received about six thousand overseers, punishers and other “specialists.” Many of them were put on trial. Some disappeared without a trace, including Joseph Mengele, whose experiments terrified prisoners for several years.

We will not give the exact number of Auschwitz victims here. Let's just say that more than two hundred children died in the camp. Most of them were sent to gas chambers. Some ended up in the hands of Josef Mengele. But this man was not the only one who conducted experiments on people. Another so-called doctor is Karl Clauberg.

Beginning in 1943, a huge number of prisoners were admitted to the camp. Most of them should have been destroyed. But the organizers of the concentration camp were practical people, and therefore decided to take advantage of the situation and use a certain part of the prisoners as material for research.

Karl Cauberg

This man supervised the experiments carried out on women. His victims were predominantly Jewish and Gypsy women. The experiments included organ removal, testing new drugs, and radiation. What kind of person is Karl Cauberg? Who is he? What kind of family did you grow up in, how was his life? And most importantly, where did the cruelty that goes beyond human understanding come from?

By the beginning of the war, Karl Cauberg was already 41 years old. In the twenties, he served as chief physician at the clinic at the University of Königsberg. Kaulberg was not a hereditary doctor. He was born into a family of artisans. Why he decided to connect his life with medicine is unknown. But there is evidence that he served as an infantryman in the First World War. Then he graduated from the University of Hamburg. Apparently, he was so fascinated by medicine that he abandoned his military career. But Kaulberg was not interested in healing, but in research. In the early forties, he began searching for the most practical way to sterilize women who were not of the Aryan race. To conduct experiments he was transferred to Auschwitz.

Kaulberg's experiments

The experiments consisted of introducing a special solution into the uterus, which led to serious disturbances. After the experiment, the reproductive organs were removed and sent to Berlin for further research. There is no data on exactly how many women became victims of this “scientist”. After the end of the war, he was captured, but soon, just seven years later, oddly enough, he was released under an agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war. Returning to Germany, Kaulberg did not suffer from remorse. On the contrary, he was proud of his “achievements in science.” As a result, he began to receive complaints from people who suffered from Nazism. He was arrested again in 1955. He spent even less time in prison this time. He died two years after his arrest.

Joseph Mengele

The prisoners nicknamed this man the “angel of death.” Josef Mengele personally met the trains with new prisoners and carried out the selection. Some were sent to gas chambers. Others go to work. He used others in his experiments. One of the Auschwitz prisoners described this man as follows: “Tall, with a pleasant appearance, he looks like a film actor.” He never raised his voice and spoke politely - and this terrified the prisoners.

From the biography of the Angel of Death

Josef Mengele was the son of a German entrepreneur. After graduating from high school, he studied medicine and anthropology. In the early thirties he joined the Nazi organization, but soon left it for health reasons. In 1932, Mengele joined the SS. During the war he served in the medical forces and even received the Iron Cross for bravery, but was wounded and declared unfit for service. Mengele spent several months in the hospital. After recovery, he was sent to Auschwitz, where he began his scientific activities.

Selection

Selecting victims for experiments was Mengele's favorite pastime. The doctor only needed one glance at the prisoner to determine his state of health. He sent most of the prisoners to gas chambers. And only a few prisoners managed to delay death. It was hard with those whom Mengele saw as “guinea pigs.”

Most likely, this person suffered from an extreme form of mental disorder. He even enjoyed the thought that he had a huge amount of human lives. That is why he was always next to the arriving train. Even when this was not required of him. His criminal actions were driven not only by the desire for scientific research, but also by the desire to rule. Just one word from him was enough to send tens or hundreds of people to the gas chambers. Those that were sent to laboratories became material for experiments. But what was the purpose of these experiments?

Invincible faith in the Aryan utopia, explicit psychical deviations- these are the components of Joseph Mengele's personality. All his experiments were aimed at creating a new means that could stop the reproduction of representatives of unwanted peoples. Mengele not only equated himself with God, he placed himself above him.

Joseph Mengele's experiments

The Angel of Death dissected babies and castrated boys and men. He performed the operations without anesthesia. Experiments on women involved high-voltage electric shocks. He conducted these experiments to test endurance. Mengele once sterilized several Polish nuns using X-rays. But the main passion of the “Doctor of Death” was experiments on twins and people with physical defects.

To each his own

On the gates of Auschwitz it was written: Arbeit macht frei, which means “work sets you free.” The words Jedem das Seine were also present here. Translated into Russian - “To each his own.” At the gates of Auschwitz, at the entrance to the camp in which more than a million people died, a saying of the ancient Greek sages appeared. The principle of justice was used by the SS as the motto of the most cruel idea in the entire history of mankind.

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Josef Mengele was born in Bavaria in 1911. He studied philosophy at the University of Munich and medicine at Frankfurt. In 1934 he became a member of the SA, a paramilitary unit of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party), and in 1938 he joined the ranks of the SS.

Mengele worked at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. The topic of his dissertation: “Morphological studies of the structure of the lower jaw of representatives of four races.”

A general sadist

During World War II, Mengele served as a military doctor in the SS Viking Division. In 1942, he received the Iron Cross for saving two tank crews from a burning tank. After being wounded, SS Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Mengele was declared unfit for combat service and in 1943 was appointed chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

With the arrival of Mengele, Auschwitz became a "major scientific research center." The doctor's range of interests was wide. He began with “increasing the fertility of Aryan women.” It is clear that the material for research was non-Aryan women. Then the Fatherland set the exact opposite task: to find the cheapest and effective methods birth restrictions for “subhumans” - Jews, Gypsies and Slavs.

Having mutilated thousands of men and women, Mengele came to the conclusion: the most reliable way to avoid conception is castration. “Research” went on as usual. The Wehrmacht proposed to find out everything about the effects of cold on a soldier’s body (hypothermia). The experimental technique was very simple: a concentration camp prisoner was covered with ice, and “doctors” in SS uniform constantly measured his body temperature. When a test subject died, a new one was brought from the barracks. Conclusion: after cooling the body to a temperature below 30 degrees, it is most likely impossible to save a person. And the best way to warm up is a hot bath and “natural warmth” female body».

A study was commissioned by the Luftwaffe to study the influence high altitude on the pilot's performance. A pressure chamber was built in Auschwitz. Thousands of prisoners suffered a terrible death: with ultra-low pressure, a person was simply torn apart. Conclusion: it is necessary to build aircraft with a pressurized cabin. But not a single such aircraft took off in Germany until the end of the war.

Joseph Mengele, who became interested in racial theory in his youth, conducted experiments with eye color. He decided to prove that the brown eyes of Jews could never become the blue eyes of a “true Aryan.” He gave hundreds of Jews injections of blue dye, which were extremely painful and often led to blindness. The conclusion is obvious: a Jew cannot be turned into an Aryan.

Tens of thousands of people became victims of Mengele’s monstrous experiments. What is the value of research alone on the effects of physical and mental exhaustion on human body! And the “study” of three thousand young twins, of which only 200 survived! The twins received blood transfusions and organ transplants from each other. Sisters were forced to bear children from their brothers. Forced gender reassignment operations were carried out.

Before starting the experiments, the “good doctor” Mengele could pat the child on the head, treat him with chocolate...

However, the chief doctor of Auschwitz dealt not only with applied research. He was not averse to “pure science.” Concentration camp prisoners were infected with various diseases in order to test the effectiveness of new drugs on them. In 1998, one of the former prisoners of Auschwitz sued the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. The makers of aspirin were accused of using prisoners to test the new sleeping pill. Judging by the fact that soon after the start of the “approbation” the concern additionally “acquired” another 150 prisoners of Auschwitz, no one was able to wake up after the new sleeping pills.

By the way, other representatives of German business also collaborated with the concentration camp system. The largest chemical concern in Germany, IG Farbenindustri, made not only synthetic gasoline for tanks, but also Zyklon-B gas for the gas chambers of the same Auschwitz. After the war, the giant company was “disintegrated.” Some of the fragments of IG Farbenindustry are well known in the world as drug manufacturers.

And what did Joseph Mengele achieve? Nothing. The conclusion that if a person is not allowed to sleep and not fed, he will first go crazy and then die cannot be considered a scientific result.

Quiet "retirement"

In 1945, Josef Mengele destroyed all the “data” he had collected and escaped from Auschwitz. Until 1949, he worked quietly in his native Günzburg at his father’s company. Then, using new documents in the name of Helmut Gregor, he emigrated to Argentina. He received his passport quite legally, through the Red Cross. During those years, this organization issued passports and travel documents to tens of thousands of refugees from Germany. Perhaps Mengele's fake ID was not carefully checked there. Moreover, the art of forging documents in the Third Reich was at its best.

This is how Mengele ended up in South America. In the early 1950s, when Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest (with the right to kill upon arrest), the Nazi criminal moved to Paraguay, where he disappeared from view.
At the same time, for 40 years after the end of World War II, “fake” Mengeles appeared in a variety of places. Thus, in 1968, a former Brazilian policeman claimed that he allegedly managed to discover traces of the Angel of Death (as Mengele was nicknamed by the prisoners) on the border of Paraguay and Argentina.

Shimon Wiesenthal, founder of the Jewish Center for the Collection of Information on Nazi Criminals, announced in 1979 that Mengele was hiding in a secret Nazi colony in the Chilean Andes. In 1981, a message appeared in the American Life magazine: Mengele lives in the Bedford Hills area, located 50 kilometers north of New York. And in 1985, in Lisbon, one suicide left a note admitting that he was a wanted man. Nazi criminal Joseph vom Mengele.

Where was he found?

Only in 1985 did it become known about the true location of Mengele, or rather, his grave. An Austrian couple living in Brazil reported that Mengele was Wolfgang Gerhard, who had been their neighbor for several years. The couple claimed that he drowned six years ago, that he was then 67 years old, and indicated the location of his grave: the town of Embu.

In the same year, the remains of the deceased were exhumed. At every stage of this action, three independent teams of forensic experts were involved, and live television broadcast from the cemetery was received in many countries around the world. The coffin contained only the decayed bones of the deceased, but everyone was eagerly awaiting the results of their identification.

The scientists' chances of identifying the deceased were considered quite high. The fact is that they had at their disposal an extensive archive of data about Mengele: the SS file cabinet from the war contained information about his height, weight, skull geometry, and condition of his teeth. The photographs clearly showed the characteristic gap between the upper front teeth.

The specialists who examined the Embu burial had to be very careful when making their conclusions. The desire to find Joseph Mengele turned out to be so great that there have already been cases of his erroneous identification, including deliberately falsified ones. Many such deceptions are described in the book Witness From the Grave by Christopher Joyce and Eric Stover.

How was he identified?

The bones discovered in the grave were subjected to a thorough examination, which was carried out by three independent groups of experts: from Germany, the USA and the Shimon Wiesenthal Center, located in Austria. After the exhumation was completed, scientists examined the grave a second time, looking for possibly fallen dental fillings and bone fragments. Then all parts of the skeleton were taken to Sao Paulo, to the Institute of Forensic Medicine, where further research continued.

The results obtained, compared with data on the identity of Mengele from the SS file, gave experts the basis to almost certainly consider the examined remains to belong to a wanted war criminal. However, they needed absolute certainty; they needed an argument to convincingly support such a conclusion. And then Richard Helmer, a West German forensic anthropologist, joined the work of the experts, thanks to whose participation it was possible to brilliantly complete the final stage of the entire operation.

Helmer was able to recreate the appearance of a deceased person from his skull. It was difficult and painstaking work. First of all, it was necessary to mark the points on the skull that served as starting points for restoration appearance faces, and accurately determine the distances between them.

The researcher then created a computer “image” of the skull. Further, based on his professional knowledge of the thickness and distribution of soft tissues, muscles and skin, he received the following computer image, which already clearly reproduced the features of the face being restored. The final—and most critical—moment of the entire procedure came when the computer-generated face was combined with the face in Mengele's photograph.

Both images matched exactly. Thus it was finally proven that the man who hid for many years in Brazil under the names of Helmut Gregor and Wolfgang Gerhard and drowned in 1979 at the age of 67 was indeed the Angel of Death of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the cruel Nazi executioner, Dr. Josef Mengele.

Vadim ILYIN

I continue to publish materials that I commemorate the 65th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. This time the hero of my story is the famous “angel of death from Auschwitz” Dr. Mengele.

Josef Mengele (German: Josef Mengele; March 16, 1911, Günzburg, Bavaria - February 7, 1979, Bertioga, São Paulo, Brazil) was a German doctor who conducted experiments on prisoners of the Auschwitz camp during World War II. Dr. Mengele was personally involved in the selection of prisoners arriving at the camp, and during his work sent more than 40,000 people to the gas chambers of the death camp.

After the war, he moved from Germany to Latin America, fearing persecution. Attempts to find Mengele to bring him to trial were unsuccessful, although, according to Rafi Eitan and another Mossad veteran, Alex Meller, they tracked down Mengele in Buenos Aires during the operation to kidnap Adolf Eichmann, but captured him at the same time with Eichmann or immediately after the latter's capture was too risky. He died in 1979 in Brazil. Among Josef Mengele's acquaintances, the name was Beppo (Italian Beppo, Italian diminutive of Giuseppe - Joseph), but he became known to the world as the “Angel of Death from Auschwitz” (the prisoners nicknamed him the Angel of Death).

The first concentration camp in Germany was opened in 1933. The last one working was captured Soviet troops in 1945. Between these two dates there are millions of tortured prisoners who died from backbreaking work, strangled in gas chambers, shot by the SS. And those who died from “medical experiments.” No one knows exactly how many of these last ones there were. Hundreds of thousands. Why are we writing about this many years after the end of the war? Because inhumane experiments on people in Nazi concentration camps are also History, the history of medicine. Its darkest, but no less interesting page...

Medical experiments were carried out in almost all the most large concentration camps Nazi Germany. Among the doctors who supervised these experiments there were many completely different people. Dr. Wirtz was involved in lung cancer research and explored the possibilities surgical intervention. Professor Clauberg and Dr. Schumann, as well as Dr. Glauberg, conducted experiments on sterilization of people in the concentration camp of the Konighütte Institute.

Dr. Dohmenom in Sachsenhausen worked on research into contagious jaundice and the search for a vaccine against it. Professor Hagen in Natzweiler studied typhus and also looked for a vaccine. The Germans also researched malaria. Many camps conducted research into the effects of various chemicals on humans.

There were people like Rasher. His experiments in studying methods of warming frostbitten people brought him fame, many awards in Nazi Germany and, as it later turned out, real results. But he fell into the trap of his own theories. In addition to his main medical activities, he carried out orders from the authorities. And by exploring the possibilities of infertility treatment, he deceived the regime. His children, whom he passed off as his own, turned out to be adopted, and his wife was infertile. When the Reich found out about this, the doctor and his wife were sent to a concentration camp, and at the end of the war they were executed.

There were mediocrities, such as Arnold Dohmen, who infected people with hepatitis and tried to treat them by puncturing the liver. This heinous act had no scientific value, which was clear to Reich specialists from the very beginning. Or people like Hermann Voss, who did not personally participate in the experiments, but studied the materials of other people’s experiments with blood, obtaining information through the Gestapo. Every German medical student knows his anatomy textbook today.

Or such fanatics as Professor August Hirt, who studied the corpses of those who were exterminated at Auschwitz. A doctor who experimented on animals, on people, and on himself.

But our story is not about them. Our story tells of Josef Mengele, remembered in History as the Angel of Death or Doctor Death, a cold-blooded man who killed his victims by injecting chloroform into their hearts so he could personally perform autopsies and observe their internal organs.

Josef Mengele, the most famous of the Nazi doctor-criminals, was born in Bavaria in 1911. He studied philosophy at the University of Munich and medicine at the University of Frankfurt. In 1934 he joined the SA and became a member of the National Socialist Party, and in 1937 he joined the SS. He worked at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. Dissertation topic: "Morphological studies of the structure of the lower jaw of representatives of four races."

After the outbreak of World War II, he served as a military doctor in the SS Viking division in France, Poland and Russia. In 1942, he received the Iron Cross for saving two tank crews from a burning tank. After being wounded, SS-Hauptsturmführer Mengele was declared unfit for combat service and in 1943 was appointed chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The prisoners soon nicknamed him "the angel of death."

In addition to its main function - the destruction of "inferior races", prisoners of war, communists and simply the dissatisfied, concentration camps performed another function in Nazi Germany. With the arrival of Mengele, Auschwitz became a "major scientific research center." Unfortunately for the prisoners, the range of Joseph Mengele’s “scientific” interests was unusually wide. He began with work on “increasing the fertility of Aryan women.” It is clear that the material for research was non-Aryan women. Then the Fatherland set a new, directly opposite task: to find the cheapest and most effective methods of limiting the birth rate of “subhumans” - Jews, Gypsies and Slavs. Having mutilated tens of thousands of men and women, Mengele came to the conclusion: the most reliable way to avoid conception is castration.

“Research” went on as usual. The Wehrmacht ordered a topic: to find out everything about the effects of cold on a soldier’s body (hypothermia). The experimental methodology was the most simple: a concentration camp prisoner is taken, covered on all sides with ice, “doctors” in SS uniforms constantly measure body temperature... When a test subject dies, a new one is brought from the barracks. Conclusion: after the body has cooled below 30 degrees, it is most likely impossible to save a person. The best remedy to warm up - a hot bath and “the natural warmth of the female body.”

The Luftwaffe, the German air force, commissioned research on the effect of high altitude on pilot performance. A pressure chamber was built in Auschwitz. Thousands of prisoners suffered a terrible death: with ultra-low pressure, a person was simply torn apart. Conclusion: it is necessary to build aircraft with a pressurized cabin. By the way, not a single one of these aircraft took off in Germany until the very end of the war.

On his own initiative, Joseph Mengele, who became interested in racial theory in his youth, conducted experiments with eye color. For some reason, he needed to prove in practice that the brown eyes of Jews under no circumstances could become the blue eyes of a “true Aryan.” He gives hundreds of Jews injections of blue dye - extremely painful and often leading to blindness. The conclusion is obvious: a Jew cannot be turned into an Aryan.

Tens of thousands of people became victims of Mengele’s monstrous experiments. Just look at the research on the effects of physical and mental exhaustion on the human body! And the “study” of 3 thousand young twins, of which only 200 survived! The twins received blood transfusions and organ transplants from each other. Sisters were forced to bear children from their brothers. Forced gender reassignment operations were carried out. Before starting the experiments, the good Doctor Mengele could pat the child on the head, treat him with chocolate...

However, the chief doctor of Auschwitz was engaged not only in applied research. He was not averse to “pure science.” Concentration camp prisoners were deliberately infected with various diseases in order to test the effectiveness of new drugs on them. Last year, one of the former prisoners of Auschwitz sued the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. The makers of aspirin are accused of using concentration camp prisoners to test their sleeping pill. Judging by the fact that soon after the start of the “approbation” the concern additionally purchased 150 more Auschwitz prisoners, no one was able to wake up after the new sleeping pills. By the way, other representatives of German business also collaborated with the concentration camp system. The largest chemical concern in Germany, IG Farbenindustri, made not only synthetic gasoline for tanks, but also Zyklon-B gas for the gas chambers of the same Auschwitz. After the war, the giant company was “disintegrated.” Some of the fragments of IG Farbenindustry are well known in our country. Including as drug manufacturers.

In 1945, Josef Mengele carefully destroyed all the collected “data” and escaped from Auschwitz. Until 1949, Mengele worked quietly in his native Günzburg at his father’s company. Then, using new documents in the name of Helmut Gregor, he emigrated to Argentina. He received his passport quite legally, through... the Red Cross. In those years, this organization provided charity, issued passports and travel documents to tens of thousands of refugees from Germany. Perhaps Mengele's fake ID simply could not be thoroughly checked. Moreover, the art of forging documents in the Third Reich reached unprecedented heights.

One way or another, Mengele ended up in South America. In the early 50s, when Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest (with the right to kill him upon arrest), Joseph moved to Paraguay. However, all this was rather a sham, a game of catching Nazis. Still with the same passport in the name of Gregor, Joseph Mengele repeatedly visited Europe, where his wife and son remained. The Swiss police watched his every move - and did nothing!

The man responsible for tens of thousands of murders lived in prosperity and contentment until 1979. The victims did not appear to him in his dreams. Justice was not served. Mengele drowned in the warm ocean while swimming on a beach in Brazil. And the fact that the valiant agents of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad helped him drown is just a beautiful legend.

Josef Mengele managed a lot in his life: live a happy childhood, get an excellent education at the university, do happy family, raise children, experience the taste of war and front-line life, work out" scientific research", many of whom had important For modern medicine, since vaccines were developed against various diseases, and many other useful experiments were carried out that would not have been possible in a democratic state (in fact, the crimes of Mengele, like many of his colleagues, made a huge contribution to medicine), finally, being already in his old age, Joseph got a relaxing holiday on the sandy shores Latin America. Already in this well-deserved rest, Mengele was more than once forced to remember his past deeds - he more than once read articles in newspapers about his search, about the fee of 50,000 American dollars assigned for providing information about his whereabouts, about his atrocities against prisoners. Reading these articles, Joseph Mengele could not hide his sarcastic, sad smile, for which he was remembered by many of his victims - after all, he was in plain sight, swimming on public beaches, conducting active correspondence, visiting entertainment venues. And he could not understand the accusations of committing atrocities - he always looked at his experimental subjects only as material for experiments. He saw no difference between the experiments he carried out on beetles at school and those he carried out in Auschwitz.

The first concentration camp in Germany was opened in 1933. The last one working was captured by Soviet troops in 1945. Between these two dates there are millions of tortured prisoners who died from backbreaking work, strangled in gas chambers, shot by the SS. And those who died from “medical experiments.” No one knows exactly how many of these last ones there were. Hundreds of thousands. Inhumane experiments on people in Nazi concentration camps are also history, the history of medicine. Its darkest, but no less interesting page...



Josef Mengele, the most famous of the Nazi doctor-criminals, was born in Bavaria in 1911. He studied philosophy at the University of Munich and medicine at the University of Frankfurt. In 1934 he joined the SA and became a member of the National Socialist Party, and in 1937 he joined the SS. He worked at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. Dissertation topic: "Morphological studies of the structure of the lower jaw of representatives of four races."

After the outbreak of World War II, he served as a military doctor in the SS Viking division in France, Poland and Russia. In 1942, he received the Iron Cross for saving two tank crews from a burning tank. After being wounded, SS-Hauptsturmführer Mengele was declared unfit for combat service and in 1943 was appointed chief physician of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The prisoners soon nicknamed him "the angel of death."



Dr. Mengele had to answer the question: how to increase the reproductive capacity of the German people so that it meets the needs of the planned large-scale settlement of the occupied regions of the countries by Germans of Eastern Europe. His focus was on the problem of twins, as well as the physiology and pathology of dwarfism. The experiments were carried out on monozygotic twins, mainly children, dwarfs and persons with congenital disabilities. They were looking for such people among those arriving at the camp.
Tens of thousands of people became victims of Mengele’s monstrous experiments. Just look at the research on the effects of physical and mental exhaustion on the human body! And the “study” of 3 thousand young twins, of which only 200 survived! The twins received blood transfusions and organ transplants from each other. Sisters were forced to bear children from their brothers. Forced gender reassignment operations were carried out. Before starting the experiments, the good Doctor Mengele could pat the child on the head, treat him with chocolate...

The twins had blood transfused from one to the other and X-rays were taken of them. The second stage covered a comparative analysis internal organs, which was performed during the autopsy. Such an analysis would be difficult to carry out under normal conditions due to the low likelihood of both twins dying at the same time. In the camp, comparative analysis of twins was carried out hundreds of times. For this purpose, Dr. Mengele killed them with phenol injections. He once led an operation in which two gypsy boys were sewn together to create Siamese twins. The children's hands were severely infected at the sites of resection of blood vessels. Mengele usually, without any anesthesia, cut off part of the liver or other vital organs from Jewish children and killed them with monstrous blows to the head, if there was a need for the newly deceased “guinea pig”. He injected chloroform into the hearts of many children, and he infected his other subjects with typhus. Mengele injected pathogenic bacteria into the ovaries of many women. Some twins with different colors Eye colorants were injected into the eye sockets and pupils to change eye color and explore the possibility of producing Aryan twins with blue eyes. In the end, the children were left with granular clumps instead of eyes.

The Wehrmacht ordered a topic: to find out everything about the effects of cold on a soldier’s body (hypothermia). The experimental methodology was the most simple: a concentration camp prisoner is taken, covered on all sides with ice, “doctors” in SS uniforms constantly measure body temperature... When a test subject dies, a new one is brought from the barracks. Conclusion: after the body has cooled below 30 degrees, it is most likely impossible to save a person. The best way to warm up is a hot bath and the “natural warmth of the female body.”

In 1945, Josef Mengele carefully destroyed all the collected “data” and escaped from Auschwitz. Until 1949, Mengele worked quietly in his native Günzburg at his father’s company. Then, using new documents in the name of Helmut Gregor, he emigrated to Argentina. He received his passport quite legally, through... the Red Cross. In those years, this organization provided charity, issued passports and travel documents to tens of thousands of refugees from Germany. Perhaps Mengele's fake ID simply could not be thoroughly checked. Moreover, the art of forging documents in the Third Reich reached unprecedented heights.
One way or another, Mengele ended up in South America. In the early 50s, when Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest (with the right to kill him upon arrest), Iyozef moved to Paraguay. However, all this was rather a sham, a game of catching Nazis. Still with the same passport in the name of Gregor, Joseph Mengele repeatedly visited Europe, where his wife and son remained. The Swiss police watched his every move - and did nothing.


The terrible experiments on people by Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death of Auschwitz,” did not end after his flight to South America. His dream came true. Argentine historian Jorge Camaraz's new book, Mengele: Angel of Death in South America, argues that Joseph Mengele's experiences did not end when he fled to South America after the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. There is evidence that the “Auschwitz Angel of Death” continued his terrible experiments in Brazil, in a small town that later received the nickname “City of Twins.”

Josef Mengele managed a lot during his life: lived a happy childhood, received an excellent education at the university, had a happy family, raised children, experienced the taste of war and front-line life, engaged in “scientific research,” many of which were important for modern medicine, since Vaccines against various diseases were developed, and many other useful experiments were carried out that would not have been possible in a democratic state (in fact, the crimes of Mengele, like many of his colleagues, made a huge contribution to medicine), finally, being already on the run, Joseph received a quiet rest on the sandy shores of Latin America. Already in this well-deserved rest, Mengele was more than once forced to remember his past deeds - he more than once read articles in newspapers about his search, about the fee of 50,000 American dollars assigned for providing information about his whereabouts, about his atrocities against prisoners. Reading these articles, Joseph Mengele could not hide his sarcastic, sad smile, for which he was remembered by many of his victims - after all, he was in plain sight, swimming on public beaches, conducting active correspondence, visiting entertainment venues. And he could not understand the accusations of committing atrocities - he always looked at his experimental subjects only as material for experiments. He saw no difference between the experiments he carried out on beetles at school and those he carried out in Auschwitz.
He lived in Brazil until February 7, 1979, when he suffered a stroke while swimming in the sea, causing him to drown.