Mengele, << MEHNG geh luh, >> Josef (1911-1979), a German doctor, personally selected over 400,000 prisoners to die in gas chambers at Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp during World War II (1939-1945). Camp inmates called him the “Angel of Death.” He also conducted inhumane experiments on inmates.
Mengele was born on March 15, 1911, in Gunzburg, Germany. In the 1930’s, he became a doctor and participated in German nationalist groups. He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and served as a medical officer in the German army. He worked at Auschwitz from 1943 until 1945. United States troops captured Mengele but freed him before learning his identity. He then went into hiding.
In 1949, Mengele moved to Argentina. Efforts to capture him increased in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. In 1959, Mengele fled to Paraguay, then, in 1960, to Brazil. He died on Feb. 7, 1979. His death was not discovered until 1985, when his remains were found buried under a false name at a cemetery in Embu, Brazil. Scientific tests proved the remains to be Mengele’s.
See also Auschwitz; Nazism; Snow, Clyde.
