Josef Mengele: Nazi Surgeon

Josef Mengele: Nazi Surgeon Doctors are thought of as kind, hardworking, and loving individuals. However, Nazi physician, Josef Mengele, is an exception. He began his reign of terror in 1943 after arriving at the infamous concentration camp, Auschwitz. Although the carnage he brought with him lasted approximately two years, his actions would set in motion the horrors that were illustrated in Elie Wiesel’s famous novel, Night. Mengele instilled fear into his inmates through his obsessions, the millions of deaths he took part in, and the experiments performed on the innocent prisoners. Tendencies are what make a man, but his obsessions are what break him. What is little known about Mengele is that he had multiple obsessions, whether it is personal hygiene or directing executions. Foremost, being the first person prisoners would see at their arrival in Auschwitz, he appeared very cleanly, almost hospitable. Although

He often performed experiments upon the inmates. He had a fixation on twins. He believed that with extensive research he could perhaps use twins to multiply the Aryan race, blonde hair, blue eyes, and the perfect race. This was known as the race purification program (Snyder 184). As part of the experiments he would sew children together, inflict pain on one to see if it affected the other, and he would often inject blue dyes into their eyes. This often led to either blindness or a severe and painful infection (Snyder 179). Also, he study the effects of Heterochromia, a defect that causes the pigmentation of both eyes to be different colors. Sometimes he would remove eyes from his test subjects and keep them in jars (Jewish Virtual Library 2). He also believed that the Jews were able to resist certain diseases because of his belief in wives tales and stereotypes. As a result, he exposed many of them to the Noma virus. The virus caused decaying holes in the cheeks of