Elizabeth Feczko

Miss Schmidt

Honors English 9

February 27, 2018

An Annotated Bibliography: The Experiments of Dr. Mengele

Bulow, Louis. Josef Mengele and the medical experiments, www.mengele.dk/new_page_6.htm.

Dr. Mengele performed many brutal scientific experiments, ultimately to support Hitler’s

theory that “Aryans” were superior to all other races. The following are all types of

experiments that Dr. Mengele performed on his victims. High-altitude experiments were

designed to test the limits of endurance of humans at unnaturally high altitudes. He would

place patients in low-pressure chambers, stimulating the amount of pressure that would

be present at very high altitudes. During incendiary bomb experiments, Dr. Mengele

would purposely burn his victims using phosphorous, then test the effects of many

different liquids on the site of the burn. Freezing experiments were created to discover

the most effective way to heal someone suffering from severe cold. Victims were either

forced to stay in ice water for as long as three hours, or to sit outside naked for extended

periods of time in below freezing temperatures. After the freezing, different methods of

rewarming the body were tested. Seawater experiments were designed to find a way to

make seawater drinkable. The subjects of this experiment were deprived of all food, and

only given chemically processed seawater for extended periods of time. During the

malaria experiment, humans were purposefully infected with malaria through mosquitos

or injections. They would then be treated with various drugs, investigating the best way
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to immunize against and treat the disease. Victims of the mustard gas experiment were

deliberately injured, and their wounds were inflicted with mustard gas. Many different

treatments for healing were tested to see which was the most effective. The sulfanilamide

experiment tested the effectiveness of the antibacterial drug. Patients would be

purposefully wounded and infected, and their blood vessels were tied off to represent a

battle field wound. Wood shavings and ground glass were shoved into the wound to

aggravate the infection. Sulfanilamide and other drugs were then used on the wound to

test their effectiveness. In the spotted fever (typhus) experiment, victims were

deliberately infected with spotted fever to keep it alive, while many vaccines were tested.

The last experiments focused on the effects of poison on the human body. A variety of

poisons were secretly given to the patients through their food. These poisons usually

killed them, but if they lived through it, they were immediately shot for an autopsy. All of

these excruciating experiments done by Dr. Mengele left patients either dead or with

permanent disabilities and injuries.

Bulow, Louis. The twins Eva and Miriam Mozes survived Auschwitz,

www.auschwitz.dk/eva.htm.

Eva and Miriam Mozes were identical twins born in Romania on January 31, 1934. They

lived a good childhood up until 1944, when they were ordered to pack a few possessions

for relocation. They were first transferred to a ghetto and then to Auschwitz concentration

camp. When they first got off the cattle car, an SS officer ran towards Eva and her sister,

shouting, “Twins! Twins!” When their mother asked if this was a good thing, the SS

officer eagerly told her it was very good. He ripped Eva and Miriam away from their

mother, and that was the last time they saw her. The first introduction Eva had to life in
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Auschwitz was the first time she went to use the latrine. At the end of the children’s

barrack, many children’s corpses were lying on the ground, forcing her to step over them.

At that moment, she made a vow to never let herself or her sister end up on that floor.

The two of them were subject to painful, inhumane experiments done by the infamous

Dr. Mengele. After one test where Eva was injected five times, she was told she only had

two weeks to live. Eva also remembers a time where Dr. Mengele attempted to sew two

Gypsy twins together back to back into Siamese twins. She remembers their constant

screams, dying after just three treacherous days. The fact that Eva and Miriam survived

the horrors of Dr. Mengele was a miracle. When the camp was finally liberated, Eva and

Miriam were the first twins shown in the famous film taken by the Soviets. After they

were saved in 1950, they received visas to Israel and went there together, becoming

members of a kibbutz. In 1952, they joined the Israeli Army. Eva studied drafting and

Miriam studied nursing. In 1960, Eva married another Holocaust survivor named Michael

Kor and moved to the United States. Eva, Miriam, and other survivors of Dr. Mengele

returned to Auschwitz to conduct a mock trial of Dr. Mengele, which received

international news coverage. Throughout Eva’s life, she wrote many books and gave

many speeches about her experience. She also founded the Holocaust Museum and

Education center in Indiana, as well as the “Children of Auschwitz Nazi’s Deadly Lab

Experiments Survivors,” a group dedicated to reuniting survivors of Mengele.

Throughout each of their lives after the Holocaust, their health deteriorated due to the

works of Dr. Mengele. Eva has suffered from tuberculosis, and has had multiple

miscarriages. Miriam’s kidneys never finished forming, and she died of a rare form of
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cancer in 1993. Both Eva and Miriam Mozes’s lives were negatively impacted by Dr.

Mengele.

Rosenberg, Jennifer. “Mengele's Children: The Twins of Auschwitz.” ThoughtCo,

www.thoughtco.com/mengeles-children-twins-of-auschwitz-1779486.

When twins were brought to Auschwitz, there was a specific process that Dr. Mengele

followed for each and every one of them. Everyone who arrived at Auschwitz was sent

down a ramp to partake in the selection process. Dr. Mengele was often assigned as the

selector, making the decision between forced labor or immediate death for the prisoners.

SS Officers also had a specific order from Dr. Mengele to look for twins, or anyone with

a unique trait such as dwarfs, giants, a club foot, or two different colored eyes. Whenever

twins were spotted on the ramp, they were immediately pulled away from their families

and taken to Dr. Mengele. It is recorded that about 3,000 twins were taken to Dr.

Mengele, and only 200 survived. The twins were taken to the showers and then to the

barracks. They were tattooed with a specific number sequence and required to fill out a

form about their history. Dr. Mengele looked for unique traits on every twin that was

brought to him. To the children, Dr. Mengele covered up his brutality and acted like a

generous caregiver. He would pat them on the head, bring them candy, talk with them,

and even play with them. Before he began experimenting on them, he was not a cause of

fear. Every day, the twins woke up at 6:00 a.m. to report for roll call and eat a small

breakfast. They would report to “classes” for minimal instruction and were sometimes

allowed to play soccer. Their lives, before experiments began, were better than anyone

else at the camp. Dr. Mengele did a daily inspection on every twin, which included

drawing blood. Throughout their time in the camp, Dr. Mengele performed many other
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tests on the twins. They were periodically forced to undress and lie next to each other for

measurements. They were carefully measured for hours, with similarities considered

hereditary and differences considered effects of the environment. Along with usually

drawing blood, massive blood transfusions from one twin to another were regular. Twins

also underwent chemical injections in their eyes in an attempt to change their color to

blue, which caused severe infections and even blindness. In addition to injections in their

eyes, twins were injected in many other places on their body with no anesthesia. Diseases

would be purposely given to one twin and not the other. When one died, the other would

be killed immediately so autopsies could be done to examine the effects of the disease.

Many organ removals and amputation surgeries would be performed with no anesthesia.

After the death of his patients, Dr. Mengele would perform extensive autopsies as the

final experiment. The twins’ lives in the camp were good until they were subject to Dr.

Mengele’s unimaginable experiments.

Stockton, Richard. “The Sickening Experiments Of Dr. Josef Mengele, The Nazi "Angel Of

Death".” All That's Interesting, 14 Dec. 2017, www.allthatsinteresting.com/josef-

mengele-nazi-experiments.

Josef Mengele grew up in a rich family, always receiving good grades in school. After

receiving his first doctorate in anthropology, he became an assistant to Dr. Otmar

Freiherr von Verscheur. In 1937, he joined the Nazi party. He then joined the SS and

volunteered for the Waffen-SS military service. Mengele was severely wounded in battle,

returned to Germany to heal, and was stationed as a medical officer in Auschwitz in

1943. Along with every other doctor in the camp, Mengele was required to perform the

selection process at some point. This meant when new prisoners arrived, he had to make
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the decision between those sent to immediate death, saved for forced labor, and those

saved for medical experiments. While many other doctors found this job depressing,

Mengele adored it and even offered to fill in during other doctors’ shifts. His brutal

demeanor during this job earned him the nickname “White Angel” or “Angel of Death.”

Shortly after arriving at Auschwitz, he started and managed the human experiment

program. His experiments were excruciating and inhumane, and he had a particular

interest in twins. Most of his effort went towards trying to prove Nazi race theories but

failing. Many of his patients died because of his tests, and if they lived, he usually killed

them immediately and performed an autopsy on their bodies. In 1944, he earned an even

higher management position, which gave him the ability to make decisions that affected a

large number of people. His decisions were usually impulsive and very harmful. In 1945,

Mengele fled from Auschwitz to evade capture from the approaching Allies. He was

eventually captured by American patrol, but because the Nazi criminal list had not been

distributed effectively, he was set free. He worked in America as a farmhand before

moving to Brazil, Argentina, and then Paraguay under many different aliases. In Brazil in

1950, he opened an unlicensed medical practice, specializing in illegal abortions. He was

arrested when one of his patients died, but according to one witness, his friend showed up

to court with cash for the judge, who quickly dismissed the case. In 1979, Mengele, under

an alias, went swimming, suffered a stroke, and died. He was buried under the name

Wolfgang Gerhard. Gradually after his death, friends and family admitted they had

known where he had been hiding the whole time. In 1992, DNA evidence proved that the

body was in fact Mengele.

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Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

2017.

Elie Wiesel was born in 1932 and spent his childhood in Sighet, Romania. He was a very

dedicated Jew who spent much time reflecting on the faith. During World War II,

German officers were placed to watch over his town, and eventually established many

restrictions on the Jews. His city became a fenced-in ghetto where no one was permitted

to enter or leave. One day, a group of Jews were taken away from their homes, loaded

onto cattle cars, and transported to an unknown destination. This happened to family after

family until, finally, Elie’s family was taken on the last transport, squeezed with 80 other

people into a small cattle car. They did not know where they were headed, but they

eventually arrived at Auschwitz. Upon their arrival they witnessed live infants being

thrown into an open fire, and quickly became terrified. Elie and his father were separated

from his mother and three sisters, whom they never saw again. They waited in a long line

and when they got to the front, one man, Dr. Mengele, decided whether they would die

immediately or be forced into labor. Elie and his father both survived the selection

process and were sent to the Buna work camp. They traveled together from camp to

camp, Elie’s father becoming weaker and weaker. At each camp they lived in, they would

have to go through periodic selections determining if they were still capable enough to

work. Prisoners dreaded this process and knew that one simple point of a finger by a

heartless officer was the difference between their life and death. The prisoners were

treated horribly, nearly freezing and starving to death on multiple occasions. They were

once forced to run over 42 miles and those who stopped were shot on the spot. Elie and
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his father leaned on each other for support during their time of suffering, but eventually

Elie’s father could not go on any longer and died. Soon, Elie was liberated and officially

survived the Holocaust, although he became very sick and was hospitalized for many

months. Elie will never forget his traumatic experience during the Holocaust. The

infamous man who eagerly made the choice between life and death for him, along with

thousands of other people, was Dr. Mengele. He was well-known in the Holocaust for his

brutality in the selection process, as well as his gruesome experiments performed on

prisoners. Elie and his father had to face Dr. Mengele many times to await their fate.