Mengele, Joseph
Mengele, Joseph
A German SS officer and medical doctor (1911–1979) at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi concentration camp. A notorious war criminal who, after being wounded in 1942 on the Russian front and pronounced unfit for combat, was assigned to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he personally selected 400,000 prisoners to die in the gas chambers. He performed pseudoscientific experiments and took a particular interest in twins: of the 3,000 twins who passed through the camp during World War II, only 26 pairs survived. In addition to the twin studies, he burned some prisoners in ovens to determine the time required for getting 1st-, 2nd- and 3rd-degree burns; in others, he assessed the amount of force need to crush a human skull.Menegele held a doctorate in anthropology from Universität München and degree in medicine from Universität Frankfurt.