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Dr. Josef Mengele: Genetic Experimentation

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Dr. Josef Mengele: Genetic Experimentation
During World War II, scientific experimentation on concentration camp inmates was very popular among Nazi doctors to discover ways to prolong and enhance the Aryan race. Of these thirty or so doctors, Dr. Josef Mengele stands out (Tyson "The Experiments"). Dr. Josef Mengele, also known as the Angel of Death, was an infamous German Schutzstaffel, or SS officer, and physician at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. He was notorious for his ruthless ability to determine if prisoners were fit to work and for carrying out harmful and unscientific genetic experimentations on prisoners, usually young twins, nicknamed Mengele’s Children. His experimentations aimed to prove the superiority …show more content…

After his injury he returned to Germany in January of 1943, and began work under his former mentor Dr. Otmar von Verschuer, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics. In the spring of 1943 Mengele received a promotion to the rank of SS captain and on May 20, 1943 he transferred to Auschwitz. At Auschwitz, contrary to popular belief, Mengele was not the only physician nor was he the highest-ranking physician at the camp. He worked under SS captain Dr. Eduard Wirths, who controlled all medical matters of the camp as its garrison physician. Mengele began his career as the medical officer at Birkenau’s “Gypsy Camp” until it’s liquidation. Thereafter, Mengele became the Chief Campy Physician at Birkenau, still under the supervision of Wirths ("Josef …show more content…

“Once the SS guard knew we were twins, Miriam and I were taken away from our mother, without any warning or explanation. Our screams fell on deaf ears. I remember looking back and seeing my mother's arms stretched out in despair as we were led away by a soldier. That was the last time I saw her (Lagnado and Cohn 56).” After being taken from their parents the twins were tattooed and taken to the twin barracks, where they filled out forms and were questioned in order to discover any unusual traits (Rosenberg "Mengele's Children - The Twins of

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In Surviving the Angel Of Death: The True Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz written by Eva Mozes Kor and Lisa Rojany Buccieri tells the story of Eva and Miriam Kor’s time in the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. The day of their arrival to Auschwitz they were seperated from their family for being identical twins. The dawning horror that the events occurring to Eva and Miriam are not some horrific nightmare but their actual reality. From shaving their heads to painting large red x’s over the back of their clothing the SS officers were making sure that they were not going to escape. Eva struggles against the systematic branding the SS officers were doing created a blurred image because she no long wish to be a “sheep” while Miriam held still (pgs

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The Demented Doctor “The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we’re doing it.” said Josef Mengele. He knew his own wrong doings all too well. This seemed to be the hard cold truth to every soul that was taken by the “Angel of Death”.

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In 1933, the ‘Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring’ was passed, ordering forced sterilization of those who were considered to be Disabled. These people included those with deafness, blindness, physical deformities, epilepsy, schizophrenia, etcetera. (“Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases”). Hitler backdated his order to September 1st, 1939, the day World War II began, to make it appear as if this was a wartime measure. The individuals were taken to supposed “Eugenics Court” where doctors and lawyers loyal to Hitler reviewed the cases.

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During their time at Auschwitz, Eva and Miriam were put through many extremely harsh surgeries and experiments. Josef Mengele did many medical experiments at Auschwitz using twins. He did experiments without using anesthesia, and performed transfusions of blood to one twin to another. Mengele would also make injections with lethal germs, do sex change operations, and even removed organs and limbs of some helpless twins. The children that were as old as five and six years were usually murdered after the experiment was over.

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He also removed limbs and organs just so they could look alike. He tried to make siamese twins (There was one siamese twin that lasted for three days before it died). This is the most inhumane and most cruel out of all the experiments they did. Again, learning about what they did in the concentration camps teaches us more and more about how lucky we are living in this time period. We do not live in fear of being tortured or killed because of our ethnic background.

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With swiftness and the carelessness of a sociopath, Mengele would frequently come and go throughout the many camps and sentence Jews to death. All with no direct cause but it was assumed that those seen as too unfit to carry out work at an efficient rate would be disposed of without a second thought. Ordering and killing indirectly he came and went like death itself as he would mark down the numbers of the captives. “Dr. Mengele was holding a list: our numbers.

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Mengele was cruel to them and took away so many lives to corroborate or confirm to be the one to change the jews to the aryan race. Mengele did the

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Nomberg-Przytyk sent the prisoners away “with heavy hearts” so as to save their lives. She was faced with the dilemma of sending sick prisoners to certain death or to have them work in grueling conditions. She faced ethical dilemmas in this deliberately awful healthcare system as she turned down these sick inmates, reflecting limited resources and devalued lives. Nomberg-Przytyk's account of Mengele highlights the indifference held by Nazis towards prisoners, revealing abhorrent conditions in which healthcare and human dignity were severely lacking. These abhorrent conditions can be likened to the Texas prison

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All of the twins suffered the same horrible conditions. Many of them couldn’t take the pain and died only a few months after the experiments began. Survival was a few and far between occurrence during the experiments, and it caused lots of pain and suffering among the

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The prisoners were forced hard labor, and often worked to death. The prisoner’s barren labor was immensely important to the Germans due to ammunition production. Also, German physicians were assigned to do medical experiments on innocent prisoners. The experiments included decompression chambers, vast disease experiments, and many other petrifying experiments. Sadly, a large amount of people perished in these experiments.

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Josef developed these interests in a wide variety of medical aspects such as Heterochromia, which is the difference in coloration of the iris in twins. He attempted to artificially change eye colors, and collected the eyes of victims that he had murdered for his experimentation. Mengele’s experimentation with Dwarfism was quite unusual. He was strangely kind to the subjects, complimenting them and providing them with sweets and toys. However, the showering of affection may have blurred the horrific purpose behind the experimentation.

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Also, the Germans saw, heard, and knew about the mass killings being carried out as the Jews were being taken away and deported, but they all decided to keep quiet and turn a blind eye to the injustice happening around them, none of them stood up for the Jews, they only stole from them. According to “United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,” the author explains “German physicians helped carry out Nazi eugenic racial policies aimed at increasing the births of hereditary healthy "German-blooded" persons and decreasing those of persons viewed as genetically "defective" and a burden on national resources.” This proves that the German Physicians voluntarily assisted the Nazis by carrying out their racial policies aimed at killing the Jews. The Nazi soldiers followed Hitler's instructions involuntarily and they did it for a prize or a reward, while the German physicians did it at their own will. This means that they were not expecting anything in return, and they did it to discriminate against the Jews and begin the

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If Dr. Mengele believed that they were indeed sick or if he believed the person is to weak to perform labor, he would send them to the crematory to die (Wiesel

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Medical Experiments and the Nuremberg Trials Imagine a normal day in a concentration camp, being starved and worked to death and being tortured on a daily basis. This was only a small portion of the torture the Jews went through during their life in the Holocaust. A major part of it was the medical experiments and the Euthanasia murders. Sadly, the Nazis would kill German Jews and many other races to please Hitler.

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He was part of the Schutzstaffel branch of the Nazi Army. The nickname “Angel of Death” was given to him because he killed his patients while being their caregiver. In January 1937, at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene, he became the

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