"Mengele's Children"

"I cannot tell you how I felt. It is impossible to put into words how I felt. They had taken away my father, my mother, my two older brothers - and now, my twin."

~ Moshe Offer

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Dr. Josef Mengele, often referred to as "The Angel of Death", or "the notorious doctor of Auschwitz", rightly earned these nicknames. He was infamous for his gruesome and inhumane experiments he conducted upon twins, and people with other unusual physical traits. The twins however, were his primary focus and fascination. For, if he could manipulate the DNA of the Aryan twins and ensure that women would always give birth to only Aryan twins, there was hope for the future. His work was done as part of Hitler's "Final Solution", and the quest for a pure Aryan race. Mengele played a vital role in this, when on the ramp, he sent all non-Aryans to the gas chamber, and took the Aryan twins to continue his search for a way to produce the perfect race.

Read a very extensive and informative article about Mengele Here.

Handsome, well-dressed, and calm of demeanor are all ways to describe Mengele's appearance. This attractive outward appearance, however, was merely a facade for his murderous, devious, and gory actions.

To most of the children, the thought of Mengele brought to mind a happy, smiling "Uncle Mengele" who often brought them new clothes, candy, and talked and even played with them. They were provided decent accommodations, good food, an education, special jobs, and were even allowed to play games. These twins had it the best out of anyone in the entire camp. These, however, had not been to the lab yet.

Children who were experimented upon.

For further details and a very informative article, see Mengele's Twins.

In his lab, Mengele performed heinous experiments and surgeries on his patients. Some of them involved removal of sexual organs, amputation of limbs, dissection, painful injections of chemicals and diseases, removal of spinal fluid, dyeing and altering eye color, and massive blood drawing and transfusion. He would also Euthanize them, to compare autopsies. Of course, his experiments, more often than not, left the children dead. The rest suffered the rest of their lives with paralysis, blindness, sterility, and deformities. Their mental anguish was immeasureable.

Rene and Renate (Irene) Guttmann

were subject to Mengele's

experiments. Both survived and,

after the liberation of the camps,

were adopted by a Jewish family

in the United States.

Courtesy of USHMM