Halioua, Bruno Josef Mengele

Médecin et Bourreau

This book traces in detail the extraordinary life of Josef Mengele, a particularly cruel Nazi doctor. How could this man break the Hippocratic oath in such a monstrous way? The author recounts Mengele's childhood in Günzburg, his promising future as a doctor, his encounter with his future wife and his wedding. A first phase of life that was shaped by his upbringing. A soldier in Hitler's service from 1940, he began his sinister career as an executioner in 1943. First in Auschwitz, then in the gypsy camp and finally in Birkenau, where he carried out cruel and often deadly experiments on prisoners. The deeply anti-Semitic German torturer showed no regard for the lives and human dignity of the deportees; for the doctor of anthropology, the Jews had to be exterminated in the name of science. After the end of the war, Mengele began a long escape that took him from hiding place to hiding place, from Munich to Argentina and Paraguay to Brazil. During his many years on the run, he regularly declared that he was still alive, and witnesses claimed to have seen him in all corners of the world. The man known to his victims as the Angel of Death died on 7 February 1979 after evading justice. It was not until 1985 that the world learned of the fugitive's death.