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Think you know everything about the Nuremberg Trials and the infamous Josef Mengele? Think again! Dive into the chilling tale of the "Angel of Death," Nazi escape routes, and postwar mysteries that sound stranger than fiction. This video uncovers dark history and shocking facts you won't believe. Subscribe for more gripping stories and comment below with what fascinated you most! #history #WWII #Nazis #Nuremberg #TrueCrime
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@dentrolastoria
0:33 - Introduction to Nuremberg Trials
1:37 - Missing Defendants and Mengele's Identity
3:02 - Surviving Auschwitz and Mengele's Role
4:33 - Mengele's Early Nazi Career
7:07 - Auschwitz Experiments and Selections
9:13 - Mengele's Obsession With Twins
11:20 - Escape and Life in Hiding
14:16 - Final Years, Death, and Legacy
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@dentrolastoria
0:33 - Introduction to Nuremberg Trials
1:37 - Missing Defendants and Mengele's Identity
3:02 - Surviving Auschwitz and Mengele's Role
4:33 - Mengele's Early Nazi Career
7:07 - Auschwitz Experiments and Selections
9:13 - Mengele's Obsession With Twins
11:20 - Escape and Life in Hiding
14:16 - Final Years, Death, and Legacy
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LearningTranscript
00:00I
00:32When, after the war, the Nuremberg trials began, and pay attention, we're talking about trials,
00:38plural. I know many of you might think, wait, wasn't there just one? No, there were several.
00:44Anyway, as we were saying, after the war, the Nuremberg trials began,
00:48the Allies, the Allied powers, decided to shed light on that whole wide range of behaviors,
00:56decisions, and actions that the Nazi regime had carried out during the war, and in some cases,
01:02even before the war, for their own interests against humanity. There wasn't just the main
01:09Nuremberg trial, the one that put the leaders of the Nazi regime on trial. Almost all of them were
01:14present. Basically, only Bormann was missing, whose death in Berlin would be discovered several years
01:19later, but we've already talked about that in a video segment, and Eric Müller, the head of the
01:24Gestapo, who disappeared without a trace. There were also other trials, industrial trials,
01:29and the doctor's trial. Officially, United States, United States of America versus Karl Brandt and
01:37others. So, Karl Brandt was one of the many doctors, many physicians, many experts in medicine and genetics
01:47who had worked for the Nazi regime. For research, experimental research on human beings, both dead
01:53and alive, who in most cases did not survive the experiments or the genetic research. At the trial
01:59of the doctors that is taking place in Nuremberg, there are definitely two names missing. One is
02:06missing because he was underestimated. He was not considered important, or even was considered a minor
02:15figure and not central to the story. A huge mistake. His name was Atmar Fryer Von Ferscher, a university
02:24professor of genetics with a specialization in twins. Maybe this already tells you something.
02:29Exactly. Because the second missing name from the list, and that's because he was on the run. He was a
02:35student of Professor Von Ferscher, a student and a close collaborator. They had talked at length before
02:42and during the war. They had exchanged opinions and studies. He had been his student. He had been his
02:48disciple. He had been his collaborator. He was the one who had been nicknamed the White Angel or Todes
02:56Engel, the Angel of Death. We're talking about Joseph Rudolf Mengele. For those who lived in Auschwitz from
03:05May 1943 to January 1945 and survived that hell on earth, that extermination camp, that was Auschwitz, with its many
03:17interconnected sections, its sub camps, the crematoria, the gas chambers, the internal factories that consumed men and
03:23women. The infirmary barrack was no place of relief. On the contrary, sometimes it represented the nightmare, the
03:32nightmare on earth, the worst possible nightmare. In the infirmary, rather than healing people, they
03:37studied, they performed vivisections, they killed. This was because from May 1943 until a few days before
03:45the escape of the SS and the arrival of the Red Army. In that camp, in that infirmary, there was
03:53Joseph Mengele, Hauptsturmfuhrer of the SS, a man who should have devoted his life to the Hippocratic
04:01Oath, but instead had developed sadistic tendencies, but above all an interest, we could say an unhealthy
04:08one, absolutely inhuman in anthropology. Mengele had studied medicine. He had graduated in the years
04:16before, at the beginning of the war, right under the guidance of Atmar, Friar von Verschel, whose
04:23assistant he had been at the University of Frankfurt. But after graduating, Mengele had decided to join the
04:30Nazi party and later the SS. In 1940, he was called up for military service, almost a year after the
04:38outbreak of the war, and assigned to the medical corps. Initially, given his experience in the draft
04:46service with the Mountain Light Infantry and the Gebirgsjäger, it was thought that he could be
04:52assigned to the mountain troops. Instead, he had volunteered for the Waffen-SS, for the emerging
04:59Waffen-SS, the combat unit, the Praetorian unit of Hitler's Black Guard. And it was in this role that
05:06he was assigned as a medical officer to the Panzer Division Viking of the Waffen-SS, which had been sent
05:13to
05:14the Eastern Front during Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Here, it must be said,
05:21Joseph Mengele had also shown signs of courage. He saved the lives of two tank crewmen who had been
05:27trapped inside their burning panzer. And for this very reason, he earned the Iron Cross. Later, he
05:33suffered a minor wound. But whether it was minor or serious, what mattered to him was that after that,
05:40he was declared unfit for active service, unfit for combat, and therefore no longer suitable to be sent
05:47with the frontline units. Joseph Mengele was thus removed from the Waffen-SS list and transferred,
05:53transferred to the Central Office for Hygiene and Race. The office that was supposed to, theoretically,
06:01study Nazi genetics. It was the office that oversaw the infamously known Lebensborn farms. Those places
06:11where the regime sent selected women to give birth to the perfect male, the pure Aryan being,
06:19an aberration as we would see it today, a revolting form of eugenics. Men who play God,
06:25they think of themselves as deities with the power to decide the future of humanity. Joseph Mengele didn't
06:32stay long in that Central Office because in the spring of 1943, he received a new assignment. That of
06:41Chief Physician of the Subcamp of Roma and Sinti at Auschwitz in Birkenau, Auschwitz II. And as the medical
06:50officer in charge of that camp until August 44, when the camp itself was dismantled, the prisoners killed in the
06:58gas chambers and what remained. Transferred to the central part of Auschwitz, Mengele had started there a devilish
07:07career. They called him Der Weisse Mengele, the White Angel, simply because over his SS captain's uniform, he always
07:15wore a spotless white coat, just like a doctor. And with that, he would appear at the railway platform
07:21of Auschwitz-Birkenau. He selected upon arrival the new arrivals. On one side, those fit for work. On the
07:28other, those destined immediately for the gas chambers. His work as a diabolical doctor did not
07:33stop at the selections. He did much more. He made further selections. If a barrack, for example, was hit by
07:41an
07:41epidemic of epidemic typhus, he did not treat them. He ordered the guards to kill all the occupants
07:48and burn down the barrack. If in the children's barrack they wanted to make a selection, Mengele would
07:54arrive with a measuring stick, measure 150 centimeters from the ground, draw a line with chalk, and have all
08:02the children line up on that line. Whoever didn't reach the level on the line was killed right there,
08:07on the spot, with a gun pointed at their forehead and a bullet to the skull. Aberrant, isn't it? Aberrant
08:14for any human being, but even more so for a doctor, for someone who should have sworn to protect human
08:19life and do everything possible to save human lives. But Mengele was not a savior. He was the herald
08:26of death. Also because those who were called to the infirmary most of the time didn't go there for
08:33treatment. They were simply called because they were to be used like guinea pigs for experiments.
08:39The experiments most of the time ended with death. Death by a shot to the back of the head
08:43with a pistol. Death by beatings from the guards. Death by lethal injections of phenol, but also by air
08:52injected into the lungs or into the ventricle. Atrocious deaths. Those who survived were scarred for
08:58life. Missing one eye or both eyes. Castrated without anesthesia. Deprived of a leg. Sometimes with the
09:05fingers. Of their hands or feet. Reduced to stumps. This was Joseph Mengele. A diabolical doctor. A doctor
09:13who during his 21 months at Auschwitz would become a vivisectionist. An absolute terror. Especially for
09:23children. And for twins. Obsessed with twins. To the point of positioning himself on the platform to
09:31select them and preserve them for his studies. Every time he found monozygotic twins, the first
09:37thing Mengele did was to separate them from the group. Have them tattooed with a special code ZW
09:44Zwillinge twins. And identify which one was which between the two. The one who was born first. Who would become
09:52automatically that Zwillingen's father. That is the so-called twin father. Or rather the older twin.
10:00The superior twin. His studies on twins of a comparative nature, but also on the eyes of twins.
10:08And on the reproductive system of twins had become something heartbreaking. On the operating table,
10:15Joseph Mengele had tried to reproduce twins by operating on Romani children. Obviously failing
10:23and causing these children to die of gangrene. In other cases, Mengele had tried to find correlations
10:29between being twins and having certain particular abilities. Or on deformities. On the difference in
10:38color of the irises of the eyes. On any possible anomaly that could be found in children. Everything
10:47that Mengele did, according to scholars, was not in the name of science. It was in the name of a
10:53sick
10:53concept. A monstrous concept that mixed foolish beliefs, racial issues, ideology, pseudoscience,
11:03charlatanism, all mixed together in an orgy of power and fear. According to the prisoners,
11:10Mengele's look was contemptuous. He had a smile that terrified everyone. A smile and a look that seemed
11:17to say, I can decide who lives and who dies. I can decide how to kill you, when and with
11:24what degree
11:25of suffering. His twenty-one months at Auschwitz did not remain shrouded in silence at all. What he had
11:33done could not be erased. Those who survived Auschwitz and met Joseph Mengele described him in various
11:40ways. The angel of death. The black angel. The white angel. The doctor. The herald of the devil. The
11:48depraved doctor. All sorts of things have been said about him. When it became clear that Auschwitz had to be
11:54liquidated, Mengele tried in every way to erase the evidence of his experiments. He gathered the samples
12:02and his notes. What wasn't essential, he destroyed in the incinerator and the rest he packed into his
12:08boxes. Only the eyewitnesses and the living evidence remained. The last twins who survived his experiments
12:15had to die. But a few days before the arrival of the Red Army, the supplies of Zyklon B, the
12:22deadly
12:23pesticide used to kill the prisoners, had run out. The camp commander, Rudolf Huss, had no other choice.
12:29The Russians, upon arriving, would have discovered the horror of Auschwitz. A horror that also included
12:37the studies of Joseph Mengele. And now you may ask yourselves, how is it possible that such an inhuman
12:44being, such a vile creature, a disgrace to all of humanity, was never captured? You're right to ask this
12:50question. Well, in the vast sea of post-war confusion, with hundreds of thousands of refugees,
12:58displaced people, prisoners of war, and scattered soldiers surrendering, Mengele initially went
13:04unnoticed. No one paid attention to him. It took quite some time before anyone tried to look for him,
13:10but by then he had already disappeared. Mengele had already turned, in March of 45,
13:17to the first Nazi networks to escape abroad, to save himself. He certainly had no illusions about
13:24what his fate would be if he were arrested by the Allies or the Soviets. It was clear that if
13:30they had
13:30captured him in uniform, he would have risked dying instantly, being shot. Otherwise, he would have been
13:37put on trial and hanged. Mengele didn't want to end his life too soon. He wanted to enjoy it a
13:43bit longer,
13:44and maybe continue his studies. So he turned to what would later be known as the Odessa Network.
13:51Through the rotten lenient, the rat lines, the routes through the monasteries of Bavaria and Tyrol,
13:57he arrived in Termino, a town in South Tyrol. A town that would also become known for being a stop
14:04for another fugitive criminal we've already talked about, Adolf Eichmann. In Termino, at the municipal
14:10offices of Termino, first Eichmann, then Mengele, obtained a new identity. A fake identity. An identity
14:19that was used exclusively to escape. While Eichmann's fake identity was, Federico Bernd Wegener,
14:27a German-speaking South Tyrolean, Mengele had adopted the false name of Wolfgang Gerhardt,
14:34also a German-speaking South Tyrolean. And as such, he had been helped by the vicar-bishop
14:39of Bressanone, Alois Pompadil, who had vouched for him, to the point of granting him accommodation
14:47inside the apartments of the Curia in Bolzano. And later, another trip to Genoa, where Mengele had
14:57boarded one of the many steamships that sailed to Argentina. What might shock most of you is that
15:04in Argentina, they knew very well who Mengele was, who Eichmann was, and who all the other Germans
15:11arriving were. The Argentine immigration office had been warned. There would be some guests arriving,
15:19Germans on the run, Germans fleeing from justice. And yet, the Argentine government continued to
15:27grant visas, to grant entry permits, in some cases even to grant passports. Joseph Mengele became a guest,
15:35one of many, to the point that he even managed to be received at the presidential palace by Juan
15:42Domingo Perón and his wife Eva, who has been overly mythologized in recent years with musicals and other
15:48films. It was her, Eva Perón, who convinced her husband to support the cause of the German and
15:54Croatian refugees, who were not fleeing the war, but fleeing justice after having massacred entire
16:00populations in Europe. Mengele had gladly had tea with Eva Perón, and who knows if he told her what
16:08he had done at Auschwitz. In the meantime, he had been placed on the international wanted list. He was
16:14being sought by the United States, certainly not for Operation Paperclip, because someone like him,
16:19a butcher, wouldn't have been of interest. West Germany, the Z Commission of Ludwigsberg. He was being
16:25sought by the State of Israel, which, as with Eichmann, had a serious interest in bringing the murder
16:30of the Jewish people to justice. And, of course, he was also being sought by private individuals,
16:36starting with Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. Mengele certainly hadn't given up. He had kept his
16:42false identity for a few years, hoping that things would calm down. By the late 1950s, he had resumed
16:51using his original name, to the point of having it listed in the Buenos Aires phone book. What made him
16:58change his mind was the capture of Adolf Eichmann by a Shabbat commando in Argentina, who had exfiltrated
17:06the war criminal and brought him to Jerusalem for trial. Well, that act, that kidnapping, had frightened
17:12the angel of death once again, who from that moment started moving around again, almost crazed, using
17:19his old pseudonym, the one he used in Termino. And traveling first in Argentina, then in Uruguay,
17:25then in Paraguay, where, for a period, he was in the service of Alfredo Strassner, the Paraguayan
17:32dictator who massacred a large part of his own people. And finally in Brazil, in Brazil where he
17:38had decided to settle, once again hosted by a military dictatorship, and where, according to some
17:44observers, he had reportedly resumed part of his research, certainly without human subjects anymore,
17:50but still with a particular interest in genetics, twins, and ophthalmology. This was Joseph Mengele.
17:58Twice he managed to escape Mossad agents, the first time during the kidnapping of Eichmann.
18:03A team led by none other than Isser Harrell, little Isser, the commander of Mossad at the beginning of the
18:102060s in Israel, had tried to capture Mengele in Buenos Aires. They missed him by a hair,
18:17because Mengele had been warned after the kidnapping of Eichmann and disappeared suddenly.
18:23A second attempt took place in Brazil, but even here, the Mossad team arrived 48 hours too late. Mengele managed
18:31to escape, but not justice. A justice that manifested itself, if you want to believe,
18:37in karma or the divine in the form of a stroke that struck the diabolical doctor while he was
18:44in the water in the Atlantic Ocean, while he was taking a swim in 1979. That's how Joseph Mengele died,
18:53swimming in the sea, the victim of a stroke. And yet, for a long time, his death was not believed.
18:59There were fears that it was staged, a way to disappear, and buy more time, and more anonymity.
19:08It took years, many years, first with dental record checks, then with DNA taken from Joseph Mengele's
19:17brother and compared with the exhumed remains. A comparison that provided a reasonable degree of
19:23certainty. With 99.69% certainty, those remains were indeed Joseph Mengele's. His remains stayed for a
19:33while at the Institute of Pathological Anatomy in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and then were buried. The dark,
19:40grim, frightening legend of the angel of death ended like this. In Brazil. That Brazil from which,
19:47a few years earlier, a book and then a film had come, The Boys from Brazil. A terrifying plot of
19:54eugenics that stemmed directly from Mengele's actions, leading to the worst nightmare any human
20:04being could imagine to even recreate Adolf Hitler repeatedly in various places around the world to try
20:12or restore or revive the Third Reich. Of course, these are imaginative hypotheses born from the mind
20:20of a writer and then a film director. Yet, both in the book and in the movie, Mengele was present.
20:28His
20:28figure, still alive at the time, was evoked like the boogeyman, like a mythological monster, like that
20:35dark being that is conjured up to scare children and make them go to bed at night. This was Joseph
20:41Mengele.
20:42He was the personification of evil. The man who had twisted his own oath from saving as many lives as
20:50possible to taking lives for his anti-human and anti-scientific purposes. This was Joseph Mengele.
20:58This was his story. And I leave the final judgment to you on who this person was.
21:28a
21:30muffin
21:31is
21:32is
21:32is
21:33this
21:34the
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