Dr mengele twins experiment
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Four decades after World War II ended, there was still a clear message in 1985: The horrors inflicted by the Nazis SS Hauptsturmführer doctor had not been forgotten nor dismissed as acceptable wartime behavior.
Erwin W. Rugendorff, MD, PhD
Olga Lengyel: Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor's True Story of Auschwitz.
The defeat of Nazi Germany led to a reckoning for Mengele's actions, but he managed to evade capture, fleeing to South America.
Josef Mengele: The Angel of Death's Experiments
Josef Mengele, infamously known as the "Angel of Death," was a physician whose sinister experiments at Auschwitz epitomized the depths of human cruelty during the Holocaust.
The selection process at Auschwitz often meant that twins were separated from their families, destined for a life of horror in Mengele's clinical environment. But though twins remain invaluable to researchers today, twin studies are still a subject of debate among scientists eager to sidestep their hideous history.
While Clauberg and Schumann were busy with experiments designed to develop methods for the biological destruction of people regarded by the Nazis as undesirable, another medical criminal, SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Mengele, M.D., Ph.D., was researching the issues of twins and the physiology and pathology of dwarfism in close cooperation with the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Genetics, and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem.
Translated from Polish by Witold Zbirohowski-Koṥcia, 2010
Gerald L. Posner and John Ware: Mengele: The Complete Story. Their stories of strength serve as a testament to the human spirit’s ability to endure and overcome. Scientist Josef Mengele, infamously known as the "Angel of Death," subjected twins at Auschwitz to brutal experiments that measured the effects of various diseases and medical procedures.
It also convinced other eugenicists that twins were the ideal way to study nature and nurture. Ironically, the very type of experimentation Nazi physicians thought would uphold the pseudoscience they used to justify genocide ended up undermining the field of eugenics. Witness Vera Alexander described how he sewed two Gypsy twins together back-to-back in an attempt to create conjoined twins.
Mengele’s mocking smile and soft but deadly touch earned him the title “The Angel of Death”. They supported one another during harrowing moments, creating a network of hope. This latter disease, widespread in Mengele’s “Gypsy Family Camp”, had been previously almost unknown in Europe. Many of his subjects died while undergoing these procedures.
Frances Galton, a British scientist who coined the term “eugenics” in 1883, had used twin studies in his earliest eugenic research. He concluded that similarities between twins were due to their genetics. “He took a piece of perfumed soap out of his bag and, whistling gaily with a smile of deep satisfaction on his face, he began to wash his hands”.
Usually painful and exhausting, these examinations lasted for hours and were a difficult experience for starved, terrified children (for such were the majority of the twins).