Why Josef Mengele?

I get asked a lot of the time what made me choose Josef Mengele as a focus to why I am writing about the Holocaust and why I have been so interested in the Doctors and the experiments which were done during World War II. This post will be about the reasons why and how I focus on the doctors of the Holocaust and what made me decide that Josef Mengele would be the focus of my writing, my studies and my book.

I of course am not saying I am not interested in other officers, of course that is completely wrong. I have always looked at the Holocaust in a whole, I don't only read about experiments or only read about Mengele. I do focus on the Holocaust as its full form so to speak.


The reason behind why Josef Mengele became such a big part of my research was mainly because he has become a man who seemed to do all the work, the other doctors such as Claudberg or even Brandt (Karl not Rudolf) are forgotten about. Mengele has been said to of done the Luffewaffe experiments (which were mainly done in Dachau) which involved icy water experiments, altitude tests and other experiments of that nature. Of course this wasn't Mengele, he was in Auschwitz... not Dachau. He has also been said to of done the experiments in Ravensbruck (cutting and infecting the wounds on women to see how they can heal and how quickly they heal etc) and so on and so forth.

 I felt pressured to tell the truth in what Mengele did, expelling the myths which lead to Holocaust deniers actually believing that they are right because of the myths (one example being that Mengele attached monkey arms to a child's body... complete lies) Mengele in fact did experiment on children a lot, mainly twins, people of disabilities and he also was extremely interested in Heterochromia (varied eye colour), something which also was a reason which I was interested in Mengele, as I myself have sectorial (or partial) Heterochromia.

This was mainly due to his influences back home, especially with Von Verschuer being his mentor and his boss. (Mengele is also confused with Von Verschuer through photos as the example to the right hand side, this is NOT Mengele) This isn't a rant complaining that no one knows what Mengele did, it's more so that we remember the other doctors who did criminal acts of human experimentation and killed thousands of innocent people.

Anyway. The reason Mengele really stood out to me was because of his crimes, the fact he got away with his crimes and died of drowning, caused by a stroke while swimming. Something about the experiments really grabbed me, I felt I had to tell the stories of the victims, I had to speak about what happened behind the closed doors, I had to educate who I could on all of the doctors. A lot of the people I have spoken to, didn't even know there was a Doctor's Trial as well, this was separate to the Nuremberg Trials and did end with a lot of the doctors being hanged for their crimes against humanity.

I first read about Mengele online, ever since he has become more and more of a focus in my work. I think the reason behind it was because he has become such a influence in the modern day literature and media. He is the influence behind characters who are in films and TV (American Horror Story season 2, X-men, Human Centipede and The Unborn, there are loads more but I'll be listing them for ages) Most of them not involving his real name of course, he is just used as the influence, sometimes using his real story too. (X-men and AHS do that) I found it amazing that we have such characters influenced by someone we probably wouldn't know unless we read more about it. He is constantly mentioned and I was slowly being sucked into the world of History. Of course I was already a History 'geek' so to speak but I wasn't so engrossed as I was before this.

There are many reasons why we become so engrossed with something, and something about the Holocaust and education really hooked me, I knew I had to follow this path and go on to teach people about Mengele, hence the book, that is why I am writing about him. Plus I have information which has never been seen before thanks to the connections I have made during this year. I hope one day to be the expert on Mengele, to be the person who can educate the world on what he did, meeting survivors of Mengele and talking with them.