The Angel Of Death Essay Research Paper

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The Angel Of Death Essay, Research Paper The medical professions of Germany, including academic medicine, played a critical role in the evolution of Nazism s programs of human destruction, programs that were based in genocide and the exploitation of the dead. The atrocities associated with the Holocaust are staggering, especially when the words Auschwitz and Mengele are mentioned. Dr. Josef Mengele was a man that was twisted by Nazi ideology and notions of Aryan supremacy into a madman who was responsible for so many deaths at Auschwitz. Through his responsibilities as a selector at the arrival gates and a human experimenter in his laboratory behind the scenes, Mengele brutalized and slaughtered thousands of men, women and children. Once he had acquired a sense of power and

control from being stationed at Auschwitz, Josef Mengele grew insane with this power and became an actual angel of death , victimizing the feeble and weak at the arrival gates and performing unethical human experiments on so many young subjects. In October of 1930, Josef Mengele enrolled at Munich University and began studying philosophy and medicine. # At about the same time, the City of Munich was going though ideological revolution due to the rising popularity and power of the Nazi party. Professor Rudolf Hess proclaimed at a mass meeting that National Socialism is nothing but applied biology .# This speech was very inspirational to Josef Mengele because he viewed himself as a Nazi revolutionary and a biological revolutionary .# As Mengele became more involved with National

Socialism, he acquired his doctorate from 2 Munich and moved to Frankfurt to study under Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, who ultimately set the foundation for the racial research performed by Mengele at Auschwitz. The main emphasis of his research in Frankfurt was the importance of heredity within the context of Nazi race science .# After joining the Nazi party in the summer of 1937 and the Schutzstaffel (SS), which was Hitler s elite corps of race guardians, in May of 1938, Mengele was involved in active trench duty until he got injured in battle and was unfit to fight thereafter.# He would then be assigned as a physician at Auschwitz in May of 1943.# With all the medical, philosophical, political and militia training, Josef Mengele was evidently deeply influenced by these

National Socialist ideologies that would eventually set the stage for the medical atrocities that he would order and perform at Auschwitz. As like many other doctors at Auschwitz, Dr. Josef Mengele was assigned to supervise the selections of incoming transports of prisoners. These selections determined who would be put immediately to death, and who would become prisoners in the camp. Dr. Olga Lengyel, an inmate doctor, recalls that He [Mengele] would point with his cane at each person and direct them with one word: right or left . He seemed to enjoy his grisly task .# With this motion of left and right , Mengele would inevitably acquire the title of Angel of Death because of his power over so many lives. One of the barbers in 3 Auschwitz mentioned what Mengele s attitude was

towards these selections: Only if there is a demand for workers does Dr. Mengele pass Jews into camp, the barber said, adding, At times they are short of gas .# Gas chambers were not the only method of execution used. Lethal injections and firing squads were used many times in order to make room for the healthy, working prisoners. However, one of the main reasons that Mengele wanted to be at the gates when the new trains arrived, was to ensure that all twins would be sent to his laboratory. Mengele ordered the SS guards who assisted him in the selection process to scour the lines of prisoners for twins. Zwillinge, zwillinge, or Twins, twins would be shouted by the guards as they would search the trains.# Even when Mengele was not scheduled to be at the ramps, he would often be