Reading homework

The article, “Josef Mengele,” discusses how Mengele or ‘Angel of Death’ became a German physician during the World War II era who was a major SS captain at Auschwitz who used prisoners to experiment on. Originally, he was born to wealthy parents and went to university to become a doctor. Shortly after, he joined the Nazi party and quickly increased in rank to become the main doctor at Birkenau. One of his main responsibilities was the selection where he got to decide who lived and who would die in the gas chambers. He also used this selection to pick inmates for his experimentation, especially twins. After the war, he was considered a war criminal, but ultimately fled to South America. He died in a pool in 1979 while on a vacation, so he was never caught alive.

I find it hard to believe that something so horrible as Mengele’s experiments on these prisoners, came something that could save lives. After reading this, I know what he did to these innocent victims, but through my own experience in school, I also know that many lifesaving medicines and procedures came out of the Nazis testing. Also, I do know that other famous scientists, like Davinci, used similar approaches to studying the body. It is the evolution of human study in curing and treating diseases.

A question I do have after this reading is how did Mengele continue living his life in South America without guilt? What he did to the innocent victims was gruesome and evil, yet he continued on with his life. He died at a vacation resort, and there seemed to be a disconnection with his life in South America to his life in Germany and Poland. Since he was authorized to experiment and kill inmates, shouldn’t he have some sort of remorse?

Overall, the article, “Josef Mengele” discussed how Mengele came to a powerful position in the Nazi party and did horrible experiments on the inmates at Auschwitz. A human can be a brutal and unkind individual, but hopefully can learn from this and prevent it from happening again.