Surname 1

Student’s Name:

Professor’s Name:

Course:

Date:

The Holocaust: Eye Witness Accounts of Dr. Mengele’s Experiments

War has many devastating effects on the community as it does not discriminate between

people causing adverse effects to both adults and children alike. The results of war stay with the

victims for more extended periods as they struggle to come to terms with some of the losses they

caused by the war. The second half of the 20th century was characterized by many wars that led

to millions of deaths, and some of the effects of those wars are still experienced to date. Some of

the consequences that result from war include loss of life, physical harm leading to disability,

damage of property, and loss of homes as people flee to areas that they consider to be much safer

than their homes, therefore, acquiring refugee status. Most of the people affected in times of war

are women and children, as they get exposed to both physical and sexual brutality. Children get

exposed to the same fate as their parents, who make them grow up with a negative perception of

the world. This paper will focus on the experiences of the holocaust victims with a focus on the

experiments of Dr. Josef Mengele and the psychological challenges associated with these

experiments.

The Holocaust

The holocaust was one of the darkest times in the history of Europe. The Nazi soldiers

moved from one region to another, capturing people and taking them to the mines where they
 Surname 2

were forced to work regardless of hardship. The conditions at the mines were horrible, and some

people lost their lives due to the ill-treatment and the harsh conditions the soldiers subjected us

to. Most people had made up hiding locations dug on the ground where they would stay with

their families for days to protect themselves from the Nazis (Claims Conference par 6). The only

people who went out of these hiding points were the men who fend for food for the rest of the

family. However, some of them were captured and taken to the camps, leaving the families in

great sorrow and under the care of the women. Communication became rare among people due

to the hiding system, as many people preferred staying in the security of their hiding grounds.

When the Nazis realized these hiding techniques, they began raiding the hideouts one after the

other. Since movement was restricted within the hideouts, no warnings were passed about the

raids. The Nazi soldiers were cruel and subjected Jews to horrible living conditions. They had

their fun by inflicting pain on the detainees at the camp (Claims Conference par 7). Most of the

people who did not seem healthy enough to work were subject to mass killing by a firing squad.

Other captives in the camp were forced to watch the mass assassinations as a strategy to inflict

fear and mitigate any form of opposition.

Dr. Mengele’s Experiments

Dr. Joseph Mengele is a prominent name for all the bad reasons following his

participation in one of the inhuman experiments conducted on the Jews at the Auschwitz

Concentration camp. The German officer and physician are believed to have engineered the

death of approximately four hundred thousand Jews between 1943 and 1945. Multiple

eyewitnesses have come forward over the years to describe some of the horrific incidents

associated with Dr. Mengele’s experiments which were aimed at the development of a super race

(Max par 1). The eyewitness accounts were aimed at bringing publicity to the actions of Mengele
 Surname 3

during the holocaust to ensure that he would be held accountable for his crimes against

humanity. According to a testimony by Gideon Hausner, an Israeli Jurist, “The Nazis regarded

Auschwitz as the ideal place for experimentation, for the creation of supermen, and Josef

Mengele was the symbol of Nazi cruelty and mysticism” (Turda, 46) The eyewitness accounts

portray the German physician as a narcissistic individual who had little regard for human life.

Among those who had survived the holocaust were healthcare practitioners who Mengele

believed would play an integral role in the success of his experiments. Miklos Nyiszli is one of

the Jews that survived the holocaust due to their profession in healthcare (Halioua and Marmor

746). In his memoirs, he recounts how Dr. Mengele had asked his group whether it included

pathologists. Though he was not an expert in the field, he had little knowledge of how some

procedures would be performed. As such, he stepped forward from the group, alongside fifty

other individuals. “Dr. Mengele ordered all doctors to step forward; he then approached the new

group, composed of some fifty doctors, and asked those who had studied in a German university,

who had a thorough knowledge of pathology and practiced forensic medicine, to step forward”

(Turda, 49). Nyiszli was able to develop a close relationship with Mengele and was accorded

special treatment compared to other captives within the camp. He was even allowed to dress

differently from other prisoners on Mengele’s orders. Their relationship surpassed that of a

doctor and prisoner as Mengele considered him more of a partner in his project.

According to Nyiszli, the experiments conducted by Mengele had three main aims:

determining the causes and origin of twin births, determining the causes of dwarf and giant

births, and determining the causes and intervention strategies against the dry gangrene of the face

(Turda 50). Another physician who interacted with Mengele was Ella Lingens, sent to the camp

following her role in helping the Jews escape from the Nazis. She recounted some of Mengele's
 Surname 4

strategies in understanding the causes and intervention strategies of spotted fever. “Lingens

described how Mengele sent an entire block of 700 inmates to the gas chambers to fight an

epidemic of spotted fever. She said he then had the block disinfected and populated by deloused

inmates from other barracks. Repeating the process over and over, Mengele eventually brought

spotted fever under control, she said” (Broder par 9). The success rates of Mengele’s

experiments were a motivation that led the German’s to view him as a necessary evil that would

work to their advantage.

Dr. Mengele’s obsession with twins became the basis for which he led a significant

number of Jews to their death during the holocaust, which was to be one of the horrifying

moments in German history. All those who survive the atrocities of the physician were twins

with whom he had a great interest as part of his big plan to create supermen (Max par 2).

However, in the cause of his endeavors, he exposed the Jews to different forms of atrocities that

earned him the nickname “Angel of death,” which has been embraced by all who heard of his

reputation (Claims Conference par 6). Vera Alexander, one of the eyewitnesses who appeared at

the tribunal to build a case against Mengele, provides a unique account of the obsession that

Mengele had with twins. She was a warden in a block that had been used to house 100 Gypsy

twins who were to be experimented upon (Broder par 10). She describes an incident where

Mengele impregnated one of the girls with the sperm of another twin, hoping that the girl would

be able to conceive twin babies. During the girl’s pregnancy, the doctor pampered her and gave

her all the attention she required to ensure no complications during her pregnancy period.

However, Mengele was quite disappointed at the gestation period when the girl gave birth to a

single child. “When he saw that there was only one baby and not twins, he tore the baby right out

of the mother`s uterus, threw it into an oven, and walked away” (Broder par 12). His actions
 Surname 5

depict his low regard for human life and his obsession with his experiments. While the twins had

an advantage during the holocaust, they would be able to escape the painful death to which other

Jews were subjected. Being the subject of Mengele’s experiments was equally traumatizing.

According to an account by Vera Kriegel, twins were subjected to various horrific

experiments by the physician. While this appeared to expose them to various healthcare

challenges, it was also the only reason why Dr. Mengele had an interest in them, thereby

guaranteeing their survival. Kriegel gave a harrowing account of how she had watched the

guards crush babies' skulls using their rifle butts (Broder par 20). These were babies who had not

been lucky enough to be born as twins; hence could not make any contributions to Mengele’s

experiments. Kriegel had been lucky enough to have a twin sister with whom they had been

captured and locked up in a cage while being subjected to different kinds of experiments by the

physician. She recounted their ordeal in the small cage that had become their new home.

“Mengele came every day and injected them with a solution that caused violently nor for tests”

(Broder par 21). The narcissistic behaviors of the physician portray him as a psychopath who

took great pleasure in infecting pain on his captives. This is depicted in Kriegel’s account of how

Mengele plucked out the eyes of his victims and kept them on a wall as souvenirs. “I saw a

collection of hundreds of human eyes pinned to the wall. It was like a collection of butterflies…

Later I told my sister that I had just seen a whole wall of eyes looking at me” (Broder par 21)

According to Kriegel, her survival depended on the fact that the physician needed her for the

experiments. Despite being unruly and less cooperative with the physician during the

experiments, he did not harm her due to the role she played in the experiments.

Ruth Ellias’s account of Dr. Mengele’s experiments shows the lengths to which the

German Dr. was willing to go in order to create the superior race. After giving birth to a daughter
 Surname 6

at the Auschwitz camp, the child became the subject of Mengele’s experiments. The physician

ordered the bandaging of her breasts to prevent her from breastfeeding the child. The primary

aim of those experiments was to establish how long the baby would survive without feeding

(Halioua and Marmor 745). From the nature of the experiment, she knew that her child had

already been condemned to death. “Elias said she tried to feed the baby with half-chewed bread

wrapped in a piece of linen dipped in coffee, but the baby lost weight, and finally, it couldn`t cry,

only whimper” (Broder par 15). One week after the delivery, her return to the barracks was

ordered, and she believed that she was fated for the gas chamber. One of the Jewish doctors

presented her with a horrifying solution that would make Mengele lose interest in her. However,

the solution involved the death of her child. “A Jewish doctor told her that the child could not

live and suggested that Mengele might lose interest in her and not order her killed if the baby

was dead” (Broder par 17). With this revelation, Ellias was forced to kill her daughter using a

morphine injection given to her by the Jewish doctor. When Mengele arrived the next morning,

he showed no interest in Ellias as he was only interested in the child. However, he could not find

the child amidst the huge pile of corpses that were lying outside the barracks.

Psychological Effects of Mengele Experiments

Mengele’s experiments were comprised of horrifying activities that had devastating

psychological effects on the witnesses. The large-scale murder of inmates in the gas chamber

was one of the significant incidents that occurred during the experiments, which had traumatic

effects on the witnesses. The large-scale murder of newborn babies by the mere fact that they

were not twins also had a psychological impact on the witnesses (Claims Conference par 8).

Human beings are automatically programmed to care for children due to their helpless nature.

They were exposing such defenseless beings to gruesome deaths, such as having their heads
 Surname 7

crushed with guns, triggers a traumatic response from the witnesses. The psychological impact of

Mengele’s experiments on the witnesses can be attributed to the fact that most of the atrocities

that were performed on the children were carried out in the presence of their parents. Some of

these incidents included throwing a newborn baby into an oven and starving another child to

establish how long it would survive with hunger. Both incidents were witnessed by the parents of

the unfortunate babies hence subjecting their trauma from the incidences (Claims Conference par

9). The people who worked alongside Dr. Mengele are also victims of these traumatic incidences

of which they were forced to participate to guarantee their survival. The twins who had survived

the holocaust also suffered from the trauma of the experiments performed on them by the

physician. Despite the traumatic nature of these incidences, Dr. Mengele’s insistence on finding

ways to torture the inmates depicts him as a psychopath who had no respect for human life.

Conclusion

The holocaust consisted of a wide array of narcissistic events to which the Nazis

subjected the Jews. Most of the Jews were forced to hide in underground caves to avoid being

captured and sent to the camps where they were murdered and subjected to other forms of

atrocities. The events at the Auschwitz Concentration camp were some of the horrific incidents

that involved human experiments engineered by Dr. Mengele, a Nazi physician obsessed with

creating a super race. Dr. Mengele’s demining experiments were facilitated by his belief that the

Germans were a superior race than other races such as the Jews and Polish. His experiments

were aimed at finding the cure for spotted fever, which saw him condemn many inmates to the

gas chamber until the disease was eventually contained, establishing the cause of twin births and

determining the origins of dwarfism and giant births. Following his interest in twins, most of the

survivors in the Auschwitz Concentration camp were twins who the physician reserved for the
 Surname 8

multiple dehumanizing experiments that he intended to perform. While multiple births occurred

within the camp, only the children who were part of twin births could survive, while children

who were the product of single births were subjected to gruesome deaths, with others being

subject to dehumanizing experiments. Dr. Mengele’s experiments were a clear demonstration of

the great lengths that the Germans were willing to go to eliminate the Jews and other races that

they considered inferior.

Works Cited

Broder, Jonathan. "AUSCHWITZ SURVIVORS RECALL HORROR OF NAZI

EXPERIMENTS". Chicago Tribune, 1985, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-

1985-02-07-8501080137-story.html. Accessed 4 July 2021.

Claims Conference, Claims. "Personal Statements From Victims Of Nazi Medical Experiments -

Claims Conference". Claims Conference, 2020,

https://www.claimscon.org/about/history/closed-programs/medical-experiments/personal-

statements-from-victims/. Accessed 4 July 2021.

Halioua, Bruno, and Michael F. Marmor. "The Eyes Of The Angel Of Death: Ophthalmic

Experiments Of Josef Mengele". Survey Of Ophthalmology, vol 65, no. 6, 2020, pp. 744-

748. Elsevier BV, doi:10.1016/j.survophthal.2020.04.007. Accessed 4 July 2021.

Max, Authur. "Survivors Describe Nazi Doctor's Experiments". AP NEWS, 1985,

https://apnews.com/article/5acecc21be6552829c51504751efad1a. Accessed 4 July 2021.

Turda, Marius. "The Ambiguous Victim: Miklós Nyiszli's Narrative Of Medical Experimentation

In Auschwitz-Birkenau". Historein, vol 14, no. 1, 2014, p. 43. National Documentation

Centre (EKT), doi:10.12681/historein.232. Accessed 4 July 2021.