“Angel of Death” from Auschwitz, German-occupied Poland

The third German reich, 1933 – 1945, the glorious period of the Nazis, was when they massacred over 10 million people which included 6 million Jews. This Holocaust still haunts millions of people all over the globe, however some never seem to stop praising Adolf Hitler for his benevolent contribution to mankind; promoting the eradication of Jews. 

Many intellectuals have said that Hitler was not a man, but a mindset; a mindset that is embedded into the rapid processing of many minds all over the world. It is there. It always has been. Thousands of Nazis had similar fury and madness engraved in their minds, and they used their imagination to create new methods of torture. 

An example of this was the Nazi Josef Mengele who was born in 1911, to the German Empire and served the German government from 1938 to 1945. In 1942, after being posted in the Jewish death camp in Auschwitz, German-occupied Poland, Mengele was involved with the gas chambers that wiped away hundreds of Jews after they suffocated and choked on poisonous gases. 

Future Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele, here in Frankfurt circa 1935, trained with Germany’s top eugenicists.

Mengele was a man of science, a physician with formal education. His areas of interest included genetics and he was particularly interested in eye colors. Being in charge of the Jewish death camp in Auschwitz gave him an opportunity to study what intrigued him. Mengele is known for removing heterochromatic eyes from people and sending them to Berlin for further examination, and for injecting eyes of many children with adrenaline in order to determine whether they changed colour and how environmental factors would affect the eyes. 

Other than that, the existence of twins also fascinated him. He was inquisitive as to how two beings could have features that were completely identical and wished to explore their genetical structure. What was required were sets of identical twins that could suffer without protest under his experiments and these requirements were met since he was in Auschwitz, where there was an abundance of Jews which had no authority of their own. Being a physician by profession, he held onto his duty as the protector of souls with great irony. In the Auschwitz camp, with obvious detestation, performed experiments that horrify many and still remain a mystery with regards to why? and how?

Mengele conducted many experiments that were performed on around 1,500 pairs of twins, including the Holocaust survivors, a set of young identical twin girls, Eva and Miriam Mozes Kor. When these girls arrived at the camp in Auschwitz, they were immediately separated from their family, as the Nazis had recognized them as subjects for Mengele’s experiments on twins. 

Liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops in 1945. Eva and Miriam are shown holding hands in the very front.

Eva Mozes Kor, who experienced time in Auschwitz as one of the famous Mengele twins, in an interview said that one of the aims of Mengele’s genetics laboratory and the research on twins was a part of an effort to advance Hitler’s quest to produce an Aryan master race. 

“Miriam and I were part of a group of children who were alive for one reason only — to be used as human guinea pigs,” she wrote. “Three times a week we’d be placed naked in a room, for six to eight hours, to be measured and studied.”

Luckily, these two young girls survived the experiments. They were part of the liberated Jews at Auschwitz. However, what remains a question is understanding how despite his education and vast knowledge, could Mengele, along with hundreds of other Nazi scientists, do something so immensely cruel? Is this the extent to which we have failed humanity? We witness similar activities being practiced around us: hatred and violence overwhelms our world. Will there be an end to it? Ever?

A picture of Auschwitz taken after its liberation.