German physician and member of the Nazi party who was known as the “Angel of Death” at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. He was the subject of a 40-year international hunt in the postwar years, known for being the butcher who had supervised the torture and death of as many as 400,000 Jews in a maniacal quest for racial purity.
Mengele was born into a prominent family in Gunzburg, a small town half way between Stuttgart and Munich. He was the eldest son of Karl Mengele, an autocratic man, and Walburga, his mother. Mengele had two brothers: Karl, a lawyer, and Alois, who worked in the family farm machinery business. He studied medicine and philosophy at the University of Munich. After obtaining his doctorate, he went to work at the University of Leipzig Medical School in 1936 but soon asked to be transferred to the University of Frankfurt to work in its Institute for Racial Purity. In 1937, attracted by Hitler’s racial purity theories, he became a Nazi. He received his M.D. in July 1938. In 1939, he joined the Waffen SS, the military arm of the Schutzstaffel, formed originally as Hitler’s personal bodyguard.
Mengele was transferred at the beginning of the Russian assault in June 1941 to the Ukrainian front, and was wounded at Rostov the following year. He was promoted to captain, and on 5/30/1943, transferred to the Auschwitz prison camp in southern Poland as its chief medical officer. Less than a month after his arrival, he developed malaria and injured his hip in a motorcycle accident, July 1943. It was at Auschwitz where he began his grisly genetic research on twins and other subjects.
He escaped from Auschwitz just in advance of the Russian troops on 1/17/1945, and was captured by the Allies in Saxony five months later. Released three months after that, he worked on a farm in Rosenheim for the next few years. In January 1946, his mother died. In August 1948, he returned to Gunzburg.
Fearful of being recognized, Mengele escaped Germany through Switzerland, arriving in Italy on 4/18/1949. Jailed for a phony identification card, he was eventually released, then went to Argentina three months later under the alias of Helmut Gregor and with a passport featuring a picture of his brother.
He set up a medical practice in one of the northern suburbs of Buenos Aires and in 1954, became an Argentinean citizen. An arrest warrant was issued for him by the German government in June 1959, so he moved to neighboring Paraguay. The following November, his father died. In October 1960 he left Paraguay for Brazil due to the increase of Israeli commando units hunting for him. For the next year, he lived with a benefactor and in October 1961 he moved in with friends of his benefactor, the Stammers. A somewhat turbulent relationship existed for the next 14 years between Mengele and the Stammers, and Mengele moved alone to San Paulo.
He married Irene Schoenbein on 7/28/1939. They had a son, Rolf, born in April 1944. They were divorced in 1954. He married his brother Karl’s widow in 1956.
Mengele’s health began to deteriorate and on 5/17/1976, he had a stroke. He went to Bertioga, near Sao Paulo on 2/07/1979. Towards sundown on that day, he drowned in four feet of water, apparently having suffered another stroke while swimming.
On 5/31/1985, a surprise raid by West German police uncovered letters and documents that led police to the Stammers in Brazil. For identification, Mengele’s remains were dug up from a cemetery in Embu near Sao Paulo, Brazil on 6/06/1985.
Link to Wikipedia biography