biography
pronunciation:
[menggele]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1911–79)
|
| biography:
| Physician, born in Günzburg, S Germany. He studied philosophy in Munich, where he encountered the racial ideology of Alfred Rosenberg. He later studied medicine at the University of Frankfurt, after which he joined the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene (1934). An ardent Nazi, he served as medical officer with the Waffen SS during World War 2, and was appointed chief doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp where Jews were selected for labour, extermination, or medical experimentation. He became known as ‘the Angel of Death’. After the war he escaped, reportedly surfacing in South America (1949); it is believed that he befriended another Nazi, Wolfgang Gerhard, in Brazil (1961). A team of forensic experts determined that Mengele assumed Gerhard's identity when he died and was buried under that name. |
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