A horrifying Angel of Death
Mengele conducted experiments to change eye color by injecting dyes into the eyes of his subjects. Persons with heterochromatic eyes – meaning the two eyes are of differing coloration – Mengele had executed. The eyes were then removed and shipped off for further studies, usually to researchers in Berlin.
Mengele performed several experiments on dwarfs and children with abnormalities, usually including unnecessary medications and charting of the entire body with x-rays before killing them, dissecting the body, and sending the skeletons, organs, and all of the collected data to Berlin.
Not all of Mengele’s crimes were confined to the laboratory. Eyewitness testimony following the liberation of Auschwitz included other tales of horror. One witness described Mengele killing an infant by tossing it off of the roof of a camp building. Victims who refused to submit to his demands that they submerge themselves in nearly boiling water were summarily shot, to be immediately replaced by another inmate.
Mengele used prisoners to test the efficacy of anti-burn medications by first inflicting phosphorous burns on their bodies. Wounds were inflicted on prisoners and then deliberately infected, in order to test potential battlefield antibiotics. Prisoners who recovered from the torment were then gassed. Some prisoners were denied water until nearly dead of thirst, then given only seawater, under the guise of developing recovery plans for shipwrecked sailors. Death was painful and carefully monitored and Mengele became known as the Angel of Death.
By late 1944, the Russian armies had advanced perilously close to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, and Mengele and many of his associates prepared to flee. Some of the Jewish doctors who had assisted him were gassed, others managed to survive by expressing the need to pursue further study. Some escaped in the rising chaos of the collapse of Germany. In January 1945 Mengele moved to another camp in Silesia, taking with him his few surviving records and notes which had escaped the SS attempts to destroy the evidence of what had transpired at Auschwitz.