Traveling in grotesque, rickety cattle cars, without food, water or toilets, many Jews, Roma and enemies of the Nazis arrived at the concentration camp from Auschwitz tired, hungry and confused. As the huge cattle car doors opened in the blinding sunlight, the frightened people could barely make out the silhouettes of the terrifying uniformed men who carried rifles and shouted orders at them, while hastily dragging the bodies away. tired standing in the carriage doors. German shepherd dogs, on the ends of the SS guards' leashes, barked furiously and angrily at the crowd of starving individuals. Amidst the shouting, barking and confusion, one figure stood out clearly: Josef Mengele. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay Born on March 16, 1911, Josef was the first child of Karl and Walburga Mengele after Walburga's first tragic stillbirth. The Mengele family lived in the small, picturesque town of Gunzburg, located in southern Germany, Bavaria, along the mighty Danube River. Before Josef was born, his father, Karl, ran an agricultural machinery factory with a mechanic named Andreas Eisenlauer. In 1907, the factory burned to the ground, leaving Karl and Andreas with enough insurance funds to rebuild the factory from scratch on land outside the city. After a few years, with only seven men on the payroll, Andreas left the partnership due to ill health, handing over all power to Karl. The business prospered quickly under Karl's sole control; By the time Josef was born, his father had become rich enough to buy a Benz car. After purchasing the expensive car, Karl arrived home to surprise his wife, but received only disapproval and disgust from his cold and uncaring wife. The ill-tempered woman was feared by many townspeople and factory workers; the domineering Walburga was often seen as a person incapable of love. Whether because of his ruthless and domineering wife or his desire to continue his successful career in the agricultural machinery business, Karl spent more and more time in the factory and on the road, traveling from farm to farm in his brilliant Benz in order to convince farmers to buy his agricultural machines. Despite Karl's frequent absences from home, the family grew. Josef's younger brother, Karl Jr., was born in 1912, leaving Josef with even less of the already meager love and affection his parents had to offer. As World War I unfolded, Josef's youngest brother Alois was welcomed into this world, and Karl Sr. soon after left to fight in the war, granting all powers of the company to Walburga, a ruthless tyrant and formidable. Walburga commanded the factory in a disciplined and brutal manner. Under Walburga's control, the factory enters into a profitable contract to manufacture special military equipment for the Kaiser. At home, Walburga disciplinarily raised her sons as strict Catholics and constantly demanded their obedience to the Church, as well as to herself. Nicknamed “Beppo” by his friends, family and townspeople, Josef was considered an ambitious and bright young boy. Many considered him the model of obedience within the community. At the age of six, Josef nearly drowned after falling into a deep barrel of rainwater that he was playing with. During his childhood, he again came close to death, when he suffered a horrific case of blood poisoning. Throughout his childhood, Josef nurtured adeep resentment towards his younger brothers, notably Karl, whom he always strived to surpass. With maturity came brotherly love and a close bond between the three, who struggled with the deterioration of relations between their unloving parents. Never top of the class, Josef did well in school. He often received compliments and good grades because of his good behavior and punctuality. As a teenager, he wrote a fairy tale play called "Travels to Liechtenstein", which was performed for a children's orphanage. At age 15, he was diagnosed with osteomyelitis, an infection of the bone marrow caused by bacterial or fungal infection, which can produce enough pus to form an abscess that blocks blood flow to the marrow. In some cases, osteomyelitis can paralyze a person. Discouraged by his mother's strict Catholic upbringing, Mengele became cynical about the Church and distanced himself from it more as he grew up. He remained involved in the good of the community, despite his disdain for the Church, joining both the Red Cross and a local patriotic youth group. Along with his punctuality and charisma, Mengele became handsome as he grew into a young adult. He began to take pride in his appearance, adding his good looks to the other traits that described him as suave and charming. In 1930, Josef graduated from Gymnasium, with declining grades and ambitions to pursue his favorite subjects, anthropology and genetics. He thought his family would be proud to have a scientist in the family, the first scientist Mengele. Unfortunately, his father had other plans for the family's eldest son, to run the family business that had brought them so much wealth. Leaving his confined parents and education behind, Mengele moved to Munich, where his grades earned him acceptance to the University of Munich to study philosophy and medicine. Munich, at that time, was transforming from the capital of Bavaria to the capital of anti-Semitism. Adolf Hitler and his racist propaganda circulated throughout the city, creating an army of supporters young and old. As Hitler spoke about Jewish vermin and Aryan nationalism, Mengele listened, indifferent to the words he heard. On September 14, 1930, as Mengele began his academic career at the University of Munich, the National Socialist Party claimed 18 percent of the vote. in the Reichstag elections, making it the second largest party in the German parliament. The 6.4 million votes cast in favor of the party allowed the party to win 107 seats in the Reichstag, compared to 12 seats the previous year. Mengele became increasingly interested in eugenics, the study of the genetic reasons for human deformities and imperfections. In 1931, Mengele became a member of the Steel Helmuts, an organization of military veterans who shared many of the same beliefs as Hitler, but was not yet affiliated with the Nazi Party. Despite Josef's disinterest in the Nazi Party, his father, Karl Sr., took an interest in it, plotting diabolically to advance his business. In Munich, Hitler began to influence many medical experts and academics of the time through his impassioned speeches about "unworthy lives" and racial purification. One of these scholars, Dr. Ernst Rudin, regularly lectured Mengele at the university, planting the seed that would one day create a cold-blooded killer. Rudin outwardly supported Hitler, believing that "unworthy" individuals should not live and that doctors have a responsibility to "take care" of such "unworthy" people. In fact, Rudin's vocal opinions were heard loud and clear by Hitler himself, and in 1933 Rudin was recruited toplay a complex role in the creation of the law for the protection of hereditary health. The law required the sterilization of individuals with unfit characteristics, such as physical abnormalities, manic depression, epilepsy, schizophrenia, hereditary blindness, or Huntington's disease. Surrounded by scientifically racial propaganda, Josef became increasingly interested in genetic abnormalities and diseases and sought, through his research, to prove his claims. In the years to come, it was this burning desire to prove his claims about human genetics and anomalies that would make him the cold-hearted monster of Auschwitz. Shortly after the Nazis took power in 1933, the SA absorbed the Steel Helmuts organization, yet ironically Mengele, suffering from kidney problems, had to resign from the organization exhausted and in poor health. The lack of commitment allowed him to devote more time to his research and continuing his studies. After five years of hard work at the University of Munich, Mengele earned a doctorate. by his long-time mentor, Professor T. Mollinson. Mollinson openly supported Hitler's ideals and even allowed his scientific work to be tainted with racial prejudice and slander. Mengele, however, remained impartial when it came to his research. His degree thesis, entitled "Racial Morphological Research on the Lower Jaw Section of Four Racial Groups", argued that there was a clear and concise difference between the groups, but lacked the explanation of the inferiority and superiority that many of his colleagues included. in their scientific research. During the summer of the following year, Josef passed his medical exams and was quickly placed in a full-time paid position as a resident trainee doctor at the University Medical Clinic in Leipzig. There he met the love of his life and his first wife, Irene Schoenbein, the daughter of the university president, who was studying art in Florence. After four months in the difficult position of junior resident physician, Mengele was tired of hospital work and desperately yearned to do the work that struck his passion, genetics. On New Year's Day 1937, on the recommendation of Professor Mollinson, Mengele was appointed research assistant in the laboratory of Professor Otmar Freiherr von Vershuer at the Third Reich Institute for Hereditary, Biological and Racial Purity at the University of Frankfurt. A distinguished geneticist in Europe, von Vershuer engaged in research on twins, the very beast that would eventually consume Mengele's work at Auschwitz. Von Vershuer became a mentor and father figure to Mengele, who in turn became von Vershuer's favorite student. At the Institute, both men continued the Nazi ideal of "racial purification" and sterilization of unfit or unworthy individuals. The preservation and succession of the Aryan race of Nordic origin constituted a profound theory and practice at the Institute. In addition to von Vershuer's twin research, Mengele and his mentor conducted talks on "racial purity" at the Institute and sentenced many patients to sterilization as a prerequisite for their release. Together, they also conducted interviews with possible criminals who violated the Nuremberg Racial Law, determining whether a person was truly of Jewish origin. His work brought him closer to the Nazi ideals he had once ignored. Less than five months after his employment at the Institute, Josef joined the Nazi Party, NSDAP member 5574974. A year after joining, Mengele was accepted into the elite SS (Schutszshaffel), due to racial history pure and intact of his family as well as his devotionindisputable to the racial purity of the Aryan race. When admitted to this small army of Hitler's racial guards, Mengele chose not to have his blood type tattooed on his arm; an act that would save his life in the years to come. The same year, the Frankfurt Institute awarded Mengele his medical degree, an award that could have been given because of his party affiliation, his ties to senior Nazi officials, and his friendly Nazi mentor, who loved Josef and his commitment to the party. In July 1939, Mengele finally married his longtime love, Irene, after a tedious inspection of her fiancé's family lineage of racial purity. After much debate over his legally non-existent Aryan great-grandfather, the marriage was permitted, but it was never considered a pure Aryan marriage, nor would his children be considered "pure". He and his wife would never receive gifts from Himmler for every child produced. A few weeks later, when war broke out, Josef rushed to defend Germany against the degenerate races. He went to the battlefield in 1940 as a member of the Waffan medical corps. A few weeks after his arrival on the Ukrainian front, he obtained the second class of the Iron Cross. A year later, Mengele heroically pulled two Germans from a burning tank behind the enemy line and earned himself the Iron Cross First Class. Additionally, until he suffered injuries that permanently prevented him from serving in the German army, Josef earned the Black Badge for the Wounded and the Medal for Care of the German People. Towards the end of 1942 he was permanently banished from his father's battlefields. After the war in Germany, Mengele joined his mentor, von Vershuer, in Berlin at the Office of Racing and Resettlement. Five months after his assignment to the Office of Race and Resettlement, Mengele received another posting, sending him to Poland, to Auschwitz, where he was to serve as an inmate doctor for the women. His task as an inmate doctor was to choose which of the new arrivals would be sent to work in the concentration camp and which would be sent immediately to the gas chamber to be slowly murdered using Zyklon B gas. Mengele adapted to the new environment and new work quickly and painlessly. He was happy to have so many subjects at his disposal for research on twins and genetics. Lacking the disgusted aversion of many doctors assigned to detention for the unbearable conditions and mistreatment at Auschwitz, Mengele seemed to relish the power he had as he stood impeccably on the railing. his perfectly ironed uniform, his shiny black boots and crisp white gloves, his riding crop in his hand and a smile on his face. Most of the detained doctors arrived on the ramps drunk, chilling their senses and emotions in the face of the decisions they would have to make and the barbarity unfolding before their eyes. Even when he was not assigned to a selection process, Mengele arrived on the ramp, sober and graceful in his tidy suit. A fellow inmate doctor, Dr. Olga Lengyel, remembers Mengele's cheerful and unsettling attitude on the ramp during the selection processes: how we despised his detached and haughty demeanor, his continuous hissing and his icy cruelty. Day after day he stood at his post, watching the pitiful crowd of struggling men, women and children pass by, all exhausted from the inhumane journey in the cattle trucks. He pointed at each person with his riding crop and directed them with a single word: “right” or “left.” He seemed to enjoy his macabre task (Lynott). From his first days at campof women, Mengele sent an entire hospital ward of 600 sick women to the gas chamber. He often tormented the women he sent to their deaths, forcing them to parade naked in front of him and other SS guards, while calling them "dirty whores" and arresting some to ask them for intimate details about their sexual experiences. (Lynott). and in a cold manner, Mengele possessed a temper that raged like the ocean, often abruptly and unexpectedly. Another fellow inmate, a doctor, Gisella Perl, remembers an episode of rage by Mengele who attacked a prisoner who had tried for the sixth time to escape while she was being transported with others prisoners towards the gas chamber: He grabbed her by the neck and started beating her head until she was reduced to a bloody pulp. He hit her, slapped her, punched her, always on the head, shouting at the top of his lungs: "You want to escape, don't you. You can't escape now. You'll burn like the others, you will croak, you dirty Jew. As I watched, I saw his two beautiful, intelligent eyes disappear under a layer of blood, and in a few seconds his straight, pointed nose was nothing more than a flat mass. broken and bleeding Half an hour later, Dr. Mengele returned to the hospital. He took a piece of fragrant soap from his bag and, whistling cheerfully with a smile of deep satisfaction on his face, he began to wash himself. hands (Lynott). Always passionate about his genetic research, Mengele ran a laboratory at Auschwitz where he studied twins, dwarves and any other deformed beings he encountered on the ramp. He provided larger food rations to his subjects, as well as better sleeping conditions He wore more than the rags many prisoners wore outside the laboratory and allowed his subjects to keep their hair, unlike the camp workers, whose hair was shaved upon arrival. Although Mengele provided his subjects with better living conditions than the camp allowed the prisoners, he had no better opinion of them than of the prisoners. He believed that Jews and Roma were vermin who threatened the vitality of the German super-race. As Mengele taught from his early graduate years at the University of Munich, Mengele supported the Nuremberg Racial Law and was more than willing to make better use of the lives of the "undeserving" through his research. On the ramp, he and his assistants would swarm the crowd of dirty prisoners looking for twins. As men shouted “Twins, twins,” mothers held their twin babies tightly, unsure whether abandoning them would give them a chance at freedom or send them straight to the gas chamber. The twins who were found and taken to Mengele's laboratory suffered horribly at the hands of the bloodthirsty madman. He often bled children and transferred the blood of one pair of twins into another pair of twins, causing the children to suffer unbearable headaches and high fevers that lasted for days. He once bled a child to death. Mengele liked to use one twin as a control and the other as an experiment. He subjected the children to solitude in cages, various painful stimuli to test their reactions, surgeries to remove organs or limbs without anesthesia, and infectious agents, to test how long the twin could remain infected with a deadly disease. Mengele embarked on the distortion of “noma”, which particularly caught his attention. Caused by the filthy and brutal conditions of Auschwitz, nomas are cases of gangrene in the face and mouth. Mengele searched frantically during his stay at Auschwitz for a.