Josef Mengele

Josef Mengele (16 March 1911 – 7 February 1979) was a German physician and Schutzstaffel (SS) officer who served as the chief medical officer at the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex from November 1943, where he conducted selections of arriving prisoners for labor or immediate gassing and performed pseudoscientific experiments on inmates, particularly twins, resulting in numerous deaths.

Born in Günzburg, Bavaria, Mengele earned a PhD in physical anthropology from the University of Munich in 1935 and a medical doctorate from the University of Frankfurt in 1938, with research interests in genetics and eugenics under mentor Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer. He joined the Nazi Party and SS in 1938, was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1940, transferred to the Waffen-SS, and served on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1943, where he was wounded and awarded the Iron Cross for bravery. Arriving at Auschwitz in May 1943 as an SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain), Mengele quickly assumed responsibility for prisoner triage on the ramp, deciding fates based on perceived utility for slave labor versus extermination, a role he executed with clinical detachment amid the camp's systematic murder of over one million people, primarily Jews.

In June 1935, Mengele earned a Doctor of Philosophy (Dr. phil.) degree in physical anthropology from the University of Munich. His dissertation, titled Rassenmorphologische Untersuchung des Unterkiefers des Juden ("Racial-Morphological Examination of the Lower Jaw of the Jew"), analyzed mandibular morphology using 34 Jewish skulls to identify supposed racial distinctions, a work later critiqued for its limited sample size but deemed methodologically competent by contemporaries like Wolfgang Mollison. This research reflected the era's emphasis on racial typology within German anthropology departments.