1. Josef Mengele performed deadly experiments on prisoners with no medical basis at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp, where he was a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be murdered in the gas chambers, and was one of the doctors who administered the gas.
Josef Mengele joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS in 1938.
Josef Mengele was assigned as a battalion medical officer at the start of World War II, then transferred to the Nazi concentration camps service in early 1943.
Josef Mengele was assigned to Auschwitz, where he saw the opportunity to conduct genetic research on human subjects.
Josef Mengele's experiments focused primarily on twins, with no regard for the health or safety of the victims.
Josef Mengele initially lived in and around Buenos Aires, but fled to Paraguay in 1959 and later Brazil in 1960, all while being sought by West Germany, Israel, and Nazi hunters such as Simon Wiesenthal, who wanted to bring him to trial.
Josef Mengele eluded capture in spite of extradition requests by the West German government and clandestine operations by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
Josef Mengele drowned in 1979 after suffering a heart attack while swimming off the coast of Bertioga, and was buried under the false name of Wolfgang Gerhard.
Josef Mengele's remains were disinterred and positively identified by forensic examination in 1985.
Josef Mengele was born into a Catholic family in Gunzburg, Bavaria, on 16 March 1911, the eldest of three sons of Walburga and Karl Josef Mengele.
Josef Mengele was successful at school and developed an interest in music, art, and skiing.
Josef Mengele completed high school in April 1930 and went on to study philosophy in Munich, where the headquarters of the Nazi Party were located.
Josef Mengele attended the University of Bonn, where he took his medical preliminary examination.
In 1935, Josef Mengele earned a PhD in anthropology from the University of Munich.
The American author Robert Jay Lifton notes that Josef Mengele's published works were in keeping with the scientific mainstream of the time, and would probably have been viewed as valid scientific efforts even outside Nazi Germany.
On 28 July 1939, Josef Mengele married Irene Schonbein, whom he had met while working as a medical resident in Leipzig.
Josef Mengele joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the in 1938.
Josef Mengele received basic training in 1938 with the and was called up for service in the in June 1940, some months after the outbreak of World War II.
Josef Mengele soon volunteered for medical service in the, the combat arm of the SS, where he served with the rank of SS- in a medical reserve battalion until November 1940.
Josef Mengele was next assigned to the SS Race and Settlement Main Office in Poznan, evaluating candidates for Germanization.
In June 1941, Josef Mengele was posted to Ukraine, where he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class.
Josef Mengele was declared unfit for further active service in mid-1942, when he was seriously wounded in action near Rostov-on-Don.
Josef Mengele was promoted to the rank of in April 1943.
In early 1943, Von Verschuer encouraged Josef Mengele to apply for a transfer to the concentration camp service.
Josef Mengele's application was accepted and he was posted to Auschwitz, where he was appointed by SS- Eduard Wirths, chief medical officer at Auschwitz, to the position of chief physician of the at Birkenau, a subcamp located on the main Auschwitz complex.
Josef Mengele's work involved carrying out selections, a task that he chose to perform even when he was not assigned to do so, in the hope of finding subjects for his experiments, with a particular interest in locating sets of twins.
Josef Mengele was one of the SS doctors responsible for supervising the administration of Zyklon B, the cyanide-based pesticide that was used for the mass killings in the Birkenau gas chambers.
Josef Mengele enlisted the assistance of prisoner Berthold Epstein, a Jewish pediatrician and professor at Prague University.
Josef Mengele used Auschwitz as an opportunity to continue his anthropological studies and research into heredity, using inmates for medical experimentation.
Josef Mengele was particularly interested in identical twins, people with heterochromia iridum, dwarves, and people with physical abnormalities.
Elizabeth Moscowitz, who was a member of the Ovitz family, testified that upon seeing her and other members of her family Josef Mengele exclaimed "Now I have work for 20 years".
When visiting his young subjects, he introduced himself as "Uncle Josef Mengele" and offered them sweets.
Nyiszli recalled one occasion where Josef Mengele killed 14 twins in a single night by injecting their hearts with chloroform.
Josef Mengele believed that he was responsible for an unknown number of deaths via other experiments, lethal injections, beatings, and shootings.
Josef Mengele eventually escaped from Germany on 17 April 1949, convinced that his capture would mean a trial and death sentence.
Josef Mengele's wife refused to accompany him, and they divorced by proxy in Dusseldorf in 1954.
Josef Mengele worked as a carpenter in Buenos Aires, Argentina, while lodging in a boarding house in the suburb of Vicente Lopez.
Josef Mengele moved into an apartment in central Buenos Aires in 1953, used family funds to buy a part interest in a carpentry concern, and then rented a house in the suburb of Olivos in 1954.
Files released by the Argentine government in 1992 indicate that Josef Mengele may have practiced medicine without a license while living in Buenos Aires, including performing abortions.
Josef Mengele used this document to obtain a West German passport using his real name and embarked on a trip to Europe.
Josef Mengele met with his son Rolf and his widowed sister-in-law Martha, for a ski holiday in Switzerland; he spent a week in his home town of Gunzburg.
When he returned to Argentina in September 1956, Josef Mengele began living under his real name.
Josef Mengele returned to Buenos Aires several times to settle his business affairs and visit his family.
Josef Mengele's name was mentioned several times during the Nuremberg trials in the mid-1940s, but the Allied forces believed that he was probably already dead.
Josef Mengele reportedly worked as a veterinary surgeon under the alias of 'Francisco Fischer' while living in Hohenau, before leaving Paraguay for Brazil sometime in 1964.
Josef Mengele was hoping to track down Mengele so that he too could be brought to trial in Israel.
Harel's inquiries at a machine shop where Josef Mengele had been part owner failed to generate any leads, so he was forced to abandon the search.
Josef Mengele stayed with Gerhard on his farm near Sao Paulo until a more permanent accommodation could be found, which came about with Hungarian expatriates Geza and Gitta Stammer.
The couple bought a farm in Nova Europa with the help of an investment from Josef Mengele, who was given the job of managing for them.
In February 1961, West Germany widened its extradition request to include Brazil, having been tipped off to the possibility that Josef Mengele had relocated there.
Meanwhile, Zvi Aharoni, one of the Mossad agents who had been involved in the Eichmann capture, was placed in charge of a team of agents tasked with tracking down Josef Mengele and bringing him to trial in Israel.
The Stammers' friendship with Josef Mengele deteriorated in late 1974, and when they bought a house in Sao Paulo, he was not invited to join them.
Josef Mengele suffered a stroke in 1976, experienced high blood pressure, and developed an ear infection which affected his balance.
Josef Mengele's body was buried in Our Lady of the Rosary cemetery in Embu das Artes under the name "Wolfgang Gerhard", whose identification Mengele had been using since 1971.
Sightings of Josef Mengele were being reported all over the world in the decades following the war.
In February 2010, a 180-page volume of Josef Mengele's diary was sold by Alexander Autographs at auction for an undisclosed sum to the grandson of a Holocaust survivor.