Mengele: Unmasking the "Angel of Death"

by David G. Marwell

Overview

A "gripping…sober and meticulous" (David Margolick, Wall Street Journal) biography of the infamous Nazi doctor, from a former Justice Department official tasked with uncovering his fate.

Perhaps the most notorious war criminal of all time, Josef Mengele was the embodiment of bloodless efficiency and passionate devotion to a grotesque worldview. Aided by the role he has assumed in works of popular culture, Mengele has come to symbolize the Holocaust itself as well as the failure of justice that allowed countless Nazi murderers and their accomplices to escape justice. Whether as the demonic doctor who directed mass killings or the elusive fugitive who escaped capture, Mengele has loomed so large that even with conclusive proof, many refused to believe that he had died.

As chief of investigative research at the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations in the 1980s, David G. Marwell worked on the Mengele case, interviewing his victims, visiting the scenes of his crimes, and ultimately holding his bones in his hands. Drawing on his own experience as well as new scholarship and sources, Marwell examines in scrupulous detail Mengele’s life and career. He chronicles Mengele’s university studies, which led to two PhDs and a promising career as a scientist; his wartime service both in frontline combat and at Auschwitz, where his “selections” sent innumerable innocents to their deaths and his “scientific” pursuits—including his studies of twins and eye color—traumatized or killed countless more; and his postwar flight from Europe and refuge in South America.

Mengele describes the international search for the Nazi doctor in 1985 that ended in a cemetery in São Paulo, Brazil, and the dogged forensic investigation that produced overwhelming evidence that Mengele had died—but failed to convince those who, arguably, most wanted him dead. This is the riveting story of science without limits, escape without freedom, and resolution without justice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393867503
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/13/2021
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	312,275
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

David G. Marwell, former director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, is a historian who has served and led a number of government and nonprofit institutions. He lives in University Park, Maryland, with his wife, Judith.

Table of Contents

A Note on Sources ix

Preface xi

Part I Becoming Mengele

Chapter 1 "Brilliant Luminosity" 3

Chapter 2 Scientist and Soldier 33

Part II Auschwitz

Chapter 3 The Capital of the Holocaust 63

Chapter 4 "Serendipitous Transfer" 83

Chapter 5 "I'll Need to Buy a Crib for Rolf …" 117

Part III Flight

Chapter 6 Custody and Concealment 135

Chapter 7 Calm and Storm 159

Part IV Pursuit

Chapter 8 Prelude 197

Chapter 9 The Investigation 218

Chapter 10 São Paulo 236

Chapter 11 "A Biography of Bones" 253

Chapter 12 Doubts 277

Chapter 13 Progress and Stalemate 303

Chapter 14 Case Closed 315

Epilogue: Father and Son 333

Postscript 347

Acknowledgments 349

Notes 353

SS Officer Ranks 402

Selected Bibliography 403

Index 418

Editorial Reviews

"Has all the pleasures of a suspenseful crime novel, and all the inside detail of a police procedural…This absorbing, exhaustively researched work is surely destined to become the standard reference on its subject."

Jewish Book Council - Bob Goldfarb

"The most thorough-going account of Mengele’s life available to date."

The Spectator - Christopher Priest

"Definitive…Marwell’s authority as a scholar of this era is commanding."

Times Literary Supplement - Wendy Lower and Jonathan Petropoulos

"Gripping and disturbing."

LitHub CrimeReads - Molly Odintz

"Has much new to tell us, both about Mengele himself and, more significant, about the social and scientific milieu that allowed him to flourish."

The New Yorker - Adam Gopnik

"Chilling and masterful."

New York Jewish Week - Jonathan Mark

"[David] Marwell comprehensively recounts this case of justice denied, and how—helped by his wealthy family, loyal friends and Nazi sympathizers—Mengele succeeded in evading his would-be captors."

The New York Times Book Review - Steven Aschheim

11/25/2019

Historian Marwell, who contributed to the U.S. Justice Department’s joint efforts with Israel and Germany to find Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele after WWII, delivers a richly detailed yet ponderous biography of the infamous doctor. Noting that Mengele’s role in deciding the fates of new arrivals at the Auschwitz death camp, sadistic experiments on prisoners, and postwar odyssey through Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil have made him an “often-invoked symbol of evil,” Marwell details the physician’s medical training in Munich, Bonn, and Frankfurt; his early involvement in national socialism; his combat experience as a member of the Waffen-SS Viking Division; and his assignment to Auschwitz as camp doctor. After the war, he escaped to South America through a “ratline” and lived, according to Marwell, as a well-heeled, unrepentant fugitive supported by family money. The author’s legalistic prose occasionally obscures the drama of his subject’s crimes and exile, but Israeli attempts to flush Mengele out of hiding in the 1960s and 1970s are grippingly related. Meanwhile, accounts of bureaucratic infighting between Brazilian authorities, U.S. investigators, Israeli intelligence agents, and West German police are alternately fascinating and dreary. Despite the anticlimactic ending (Mengele died in 1979, before he could be captured), this harrowing, revelatory account answers nearly every question history buffs will have about WWII’s “Angel of Death.” (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"A fresh perspective on the notorious Auschwitz doctor, from his infamous experiments to the decades-long postwar search for him. Never losing sight of Mengele’s monstrous activities, Marwell tackles common myths (Why was Mengele really interested in twins? And why his fascination with eye color?) and, chillingly, traces the underlying links between his ‘research’ and respected scientific institutions. Further: as an Office of Special Investigations historian committed to tracking down this elusive mass murderer, Marwell brings special insight and a wealth of detail to his riveting discovery tale."

Debórah Dwork

"This is a book that only David Marwell could write after half a lifetime of studying and pursuing Josef Mengele. Marwell does more than portray the man, he details his multiple escapes, identities, and careers, the thirty-four-year search for his capture, the political intrigues and rivalries between countries, Nazi hunters, and intelligence agencies that led to Mengele’s grave. A fascinating story of great importance."

Michael Berenbaum

"Marwell’s lucid and legend-busting account of Josef Mengele’s life and deeds—and of the intricate and elaborate detective work required to find and conclusively identify him—is both absorbing and authoritative."

Peter Hayes

"David Marwell’s Mengele is a fascinating historical work. How did Dr. Mengele come to epitomize the many medical atrocities committed by trained doctors at Auschwitz? How did he escape? How was he (almost) found? But it is far more than just exceptionally solid scholarship. It is also a thriller and a first-rate detective story written by someone who was part of the team that had to unravel this mystery."

Deborah E. Lipstadt

"Sharply written. Part-biography, part-memoir, Mengele is an outstanding achievement that conveys a sense of the man behind the myths and the difficulties of bringing closure for his victims."

Richard Breitman

"In Mengele, David Marwell has written the final and fascinating history of the ‘Angel of Death.’ His prodigious research results in many new insights into one of the most notorious Nazis. Marwell is convincing in unlocking the long-standing mystery of what motivated Mengele to undertake his gruesome medical experiments on twin children. He also manages to fill in important gaps in Mengele’s postwar life on the run and conclusively settles any lingering questions about whether the bones unearthed in 1985 in another man’s grave in Brazil were those of the fugitive war criminal. Marwell, who played a personal role in some of the events he recounts, displays not only the refined eye of a historian but emerges as a talented storyteller. The often infuriating tale he sets forth moves along effortlessly. At long last, in this important book, Mengele has been captured."

Gerald Posner

"Compelling....At once a compact biography of the notorious war criminal, a detailed account of Mengele’s flight to South America, and an absorbing narrative of the quest to bring him to justice."

Science - Patricia Heberer Rice

"Gripping....sober and meticulous."

Wall Street Journal - David Margolick

"Authoritative....Marwell’s account is an adventure in pathology and criminology."

Moment - Robert Siegel

12/01/2019

Marwell, former director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, worked on the Mengele case at the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations in the 1980s. Here, Marwell provides a multilayered study of the notorious physician's career prior to and during his tenure at Auschwitz. Later chapters document his postwar life—often hiding in plain sight in South America—and, finally, investigations into Mengele's death. It is largely assumed that "The Angel of Death's" medical work at Auschwitz lacked any basis in empirical methods. Yet, as Marwell demonstrates, Mengele's scholarship was disturbingly close to mainstream, and what made his activities so frightening was the lack of institutional restraint on human subjects. Although the postscript provides an example of how post-1945 research discredits almost all of Mengele's scientific assumptions, the analysis would have benefitted from additional comparisons to science outside Germany. VERDICT With a distinctive blend of history and political intrigue, Marwell creates a thorough account of one of the most well-known war criminals in history and the efforts to bring him to justice. A worthy addition to Holocaust scholarship.—Frederic Krome, Univ. of Cincinnati Clermont Coll.

Library Journal

2019-10-23
A chilling biography of the terrifying doctor who led a charmed life through the Nazi ranks—and eluded justice for decades.

"In 1985," writes Marwell, "while working in the Office of Special Investigations at the U.S. Department of Justice, I was assigned to the international investigation to locate Mengele and bring him before a court of law." Though the author, the former director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, explores Mengele's life and experiments at Auschwitz, he concentrates on his postwar flight and his ability to resist detection as a war criminal and reinvent himself in South America—a journey largely funded by his family's manufacturing firm back in Germany. Trained in Germany's finest schools, Mengele became a medical doctor with an intense interest in anthropology and racial science, and he was influenced by the prominent anthropologist Theodor Mollison, who focused on "racial science." At the infamous Frankfurt Institute in the late 1930s, Mengele's dissertation on the heritability of oral clefts "served to underpin" the Nazi legislation enforcing sterilization to prevent "diseased offspring," resulting in 375,000 forced sterilizations. As World War II intensified, Mengele transitioned from scientist to soldier and became a combat physician. After experiencing "extreme brutality" with the SS Viking Division, he was transferred to Auschwitz in May 1943. There, he conducted scientific experiments with "unprecedented resources," which allowed him to "surmount the barriers that traditional medical ethics and basic humanity placed in his way." His heinous experiments are well documented, as are his movements in the final days of the war and afterward. How did it take so long to find such a highly ranked Nazi war criminal who had reestablished his name in 1956 in Argentina and resumed practicing medicine? Marwell engrossingly describes the capture process as highly political, involving American, Israeli, and German government groups. He ends with an account of the unsettling visit (revealed in letters) by Mengele's son to see his unrepentant father in 1977.

An eerily engaging life's work by a dogged researcher that adds materially to the Holocaust documentation.

Kirkus Reviews