tell me about dr. joseph mengele and why he is relevant to this course on the holocaust

by Lola Schultz Published 2 years ago Updated 1 year ago 6 min read

He is mainly remembered for his actions at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he performed deadly experiments on prisoners, as a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be killed in the gas chambers and as one of the doctors who administered the gas.

Who is Dr Mengele and what role did he play in Chapter 3?

Josef Mengele was an infamous Nazi doctor who selected which prisoners would be sent to labor and which would die.) When Eliezer is questioned, he lies and says that he's 18 and a farmer, rather than 15 and a student. Near Eliezer, there's a pit of fire into which small children are being dumped—alive.

Who was the good doctor of Auschwitz?

Hans Wilhelm MünchHans Wilhelm Münch (14 May 1911 – 6 December 2001), also known as The Good Man of Auschwitz, was a German Nazi Party member who worked as an SS doctor during World War II at the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1943 to 1945 in German occupied Poland.

Who was Angel of Death?

Josef MengeleOn May 24, 1943, the extermination camp at Auschwitz, Poland, receives a new doctor, 32-year-old Josef Mengele, a man who will earn the nickname “the Angel of Death.” Born March 16, 1911, in Bavaria, Mengele studied philosophy under Alfred Rosenberg, whose racial theories highly influenced him.

Where is Auschwitz?

southern PolandLocated in southern Poland, Auschwitz initially served as a detention center for political prisoners. However, it evolved into a network of camps where Jewish people and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state were exterminated, often in gas chambers, or used as slave labor.

What language do Auschwitz speak?

German languageOne part of the Nazi camp slang was German language terminology for people, things and events in the camps, where many ordinary German words acquired specific meanings and associations. Another was ad hoc slang based on the various native languages of inmates from different countries.

How did Josef Mengele escape?

Mengele eluded capture in spite of extradition requests by the West German government and clandestine operations by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. He drowned in 1979 after suffering a stroke while swimming off the coast of Bertioga, and was buried under the false name of Wolfgang Gerhard.

Who is the original angel?

Prairie JohnsonThe series is about Prairie Johnson, an adopted young woman who resurfaces after having been missing for seven years. Upon her return, Prairie calls herself "the OA" (for "original angel"), has scars on her back, and can see, despite having been blind when she disappeared.

Who is the angel with the key to the bottomless pit?

Museum HoursArtistAlbrecht Dürer, German, 1471-1528TitleThe Angel with the Key of the Bottomless Pit Die Apokalypse | The Apocalypse (series title)Datebetween 1496 and 1497Mediumwoodcut printed in black ink on laid paperDimensionsSheet (trimmed to image): 15 1/2 × 11 1/8 inches (39.4 × 28.3 cm)4 more rows

What type of angel is Gabriel?

Who is the Archangel Gabriel? The angel Gabriel is the herald of visions, messenger of God and one of the angels of higher rank. He makes God's message understandable to people and helps them to accept it with a pure heart. Until 1970, Catholics celebrated the feast of the Archangel on March 24.

What does Auschwitz mean in English?

Nazi concentration campBritish Dictionary definitions for Auschwitz Auschwitz. / (German ˈauʃvɪts) / noun. an industrial town in S Poland; site of a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.

Which German city is closest to Auschwitz?

Auschwitz-Birkenau is 75 kilometers west of Krakow. You can get to Auschwitz-Birkenau by car, bus or train. The closest town to Auschwitz is Oswiecim.

What was the worst concentration camp in Germany?

AuschwitzAuschwitz was the largest and deadliest of six dedicated extermination camps where hundreds of thousands of people were tortured and murdered during World War II and the Holocaust under the orders of Nazi dictator, Adolf Hitler.

Overview

Josef Mengele , also known as the Angel of Death (German: Todesengel), was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and physician during World War II. He is mainly remembered for his actions at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he performed deadly experiments on prisoners, as a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be killed in the gas chambers and as one of th…

Early life

Mengele was born in Günzburg on 16 March 1911, the eldest of three sons of Walburga (née Hupfauer) and Karl Mengele. His two younger brothers were Karl Jr. and Alois. Their father was founder of the Karl Mengele & Sons company (later renamed as Mengele Agrartechnik [de]), which produced farming machinery. Mengele was successful at school and developed an interest in music, art, and skiing. He completed high school in April 1930 and went on to study philosoph…

Military service

The ideology of Nazism brought together elements of antisemitism, racial hygiene, and eugenics, and combined them with pan-Germanism and territorial expansionism with the goal of obtaining more Lebensraum (living space) for the Germanic people. Nazi Germany attempted to obtain this new territory by attacking Poland and the Soviet Union, intending to deport or kill the Jews and Slavs living there, who were considered by the Nazis to be inferior to the Aryan master race.

Auschwitz

In 1942 Auschwitz II (Birkenau), originally intended to house slave laborers, began to be used instead as a combined labour camp and extermination camp. Prisoners were transported there by rail from all over Nazi-controlled Europe, arriving in daily convoys. By July 1942, SS doctors were conducting "selections" where incoming Jews were segregated, and those considered able to work we…

After Auschwitz

Along with several other Auschwitz doctors, Mengele transferred to Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Lower Silesia on 17 January 1945, taking with him two boxes of specimens and the records of his experiments at Auschwitz. Most of the camp medical records had already been destroyed by the SS by the time the Red Army liberated Auschwitz on 27 January. Mengele fled Gross-Rosen on 1…

In South America

Mengele worked as a carpenter in Buenos Aires, Argentina, while lodging in a boarding house in the suburb of Vicente López. After a few weeks, he moved to the house of a Nazi sympathizer in the more affluent neighborhood of Florida Este. He next worked as a salesman for his family's farm equipment company, Karl Mengele & Sons, and in 1951 he began making frequent trips to Paraguay as a regional sales representative. He moved into an apartment in central Buenos Air…

Exhumation

Meanwhile, sightings of Mengele were being reported all over the world. Wiesenthal claimed to have information that placed Mengele on the Greek island of Kythnos in 1960, in Cairo in 1961, in Spain in 1971, and in Paraguay in 1978, eighteen years after he had left the country. He insisted as late as 1985 that Mengele was still alive—six years after he had died—having previously off…

Later developments

In 2007, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received as a donation the Höcker Album, an album of photographs of Auschwitz staff taken by Karl-Friedrich Höcker. Eight of the photographs include Mengele.
In February 2010, a 180-page volume of Mengele's diary was sold by Alexander Autographs at auction for an undisclosed sum to the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. The unidentified previo…