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Josef Mengele, Auschwitz's most notorious Nazi doctor, was never captured after World War II. If he had been put on trial for his crimes, what...

Josef Mengele makes only a small appearance in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, but his story is one of the most shocking to come out of the Holocaust. Mengele was a physician and member of the SS. Originally a battlefield surgeon, he was transferred to Auschwitz in early 1943. While at Auschwitz he performed medical experimentation on Jewish prisoners, mainly children, to test his theories about heredity. These ‘experiments’ included infecting children with different diseases,...

Josef Mengele makes only a small appearance in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, but his story is one of the most shocking to come out of the Holocaust. Mengele was a physician and member of the SS. Originally a battlefield surgeon, he was transferred to Auschwitz in early 1943. While at Auschwitz he performed medical experimentation on Jewish prisoners, mainly children, to test his theories about heredity. These ‘experiments’ included infecting children with different diseases, amputating limbs, and dissection of still living people. Mengele escaped before the Red Army liberated the camp. He fled to South America, where he died in 1979.


To understand what may have happened to Mengele if he had been caught, it is necessary to look at what happened to Nazis who were put on trial after the war. In 1960, SS lieutenant colonel Adolf Eichmann was apprehended in South America. Eichmann had personally orchestrated much of the Holocaust during the war. The Israeli government put Eichmann on trial, and he was found guilty. He was executed by hanging in 1962. One can assume that Mengele would have faced a similar fate.

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