Joseph Mengele

1911 – 1979

Josef Mengele was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer and physician who served as the chief camp doctor at Auschwitz-Birkenau from May 1943 until the camp's liberation in January 1945, and is remembered as the "Angel of Death" for his role at the unloading ramps personally selecting prisoners for the gas chambers. He performed lethal medical experiments on inmates, with a particular focus on identical twins, dwarfs, and people with heterochromia, including injections of dyes into eyes, surgical mutilations without anaesthetic, and infections with typhus and other pathogens for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics. He escaped Allied custody at the end of the war and lived as a fugitive in Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil for thirty-four years before drowning during a stroke at a São Paulo beach in February 1979.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM