A handsome man in a neatly pressed SS uniform paced on the offloading ramp as the oncoming train screeched to a halt. His shiny, black riding boots came to a stop as he eyed the cargo unloading. He smiled at the frightened livestock that stood before him. Whistling an opera tune while indicating his riding crop links oder rechts [left or right], he separated the prisoners into two groups. This charming officer with the “innocuous demeanor” was “engaging in his favorite activity at Auschwitz” which was to decide the fate of each man, woman, and child that first arrived at the gates of death (Lynott). If an inmate was sent to the right, they were relocated to the brutal labor camps. On the contrary, gas chambers awaited those sent to the …show more content…
After joining the SS, Mengele became obsessed with the Nazis’ goal of purifying and improving the Germanic race. His experiments at Auschwitz centered upon decoding the genetics of the Aryan race for duplication purposes. He wanted to find the secrets behind creating the ideal child that was one with blond hair and blue eyes. Ironically, Mengele himself had dark hair and skin and looked more like a Gypsy than an Aryan (Grabowski 59). At Auschwitz, Mengele had an unlimited amount of the perfect test subjects: children with brown hair and brown eyes. Mengele applied different blond dyes to multiple children’s scalps to see if color could be controlled. In addition, he injected methylene blue dye directly into subjects’ eyeballs to see if he could permanently change eye color. Severe pain and inflammation resulted; many patients became blind. Overall, Hitler’s views for an Aryan super race inspired some of Mengele’s most sadistic …show more content…
In essence, Professor von Verscher played vital roles in Mengele’s life as a mentor and father figure. He created Mengele’s obsession with twins and showed him their value as research subjects. Equally, Mengele’s time as a field physician impacted the way he made his “selections” as well as the way he went about his experiments. Because of his former occupation, he had a cool efficiency when it came to making life and death decisions on the ramp at Auschwitz. In the lab, he tried to recreate the conditions he had once experienced on the front by not using anesthetics on his victims during gruesome surgeries. Moreover, Hitler’s views for an Aryan master race influenced many of Mengele’s experiments at Auschwitz; where he was trying to unlock the secrets of the genetics behind the “blond hair and blue eyes”. Ultimately, Mengele was a mad man who was responsible for the deaths of some four hundred thousand helpless people. In the end, it will never be understood how a well-educated doctor from a wealthy family transformed into a monster capable of committing the most awful atrocities imaginable against fellow human
In “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,” the author Tadeusz Borowski describes the systematic dehumanization of the camps and attempts to convey the horror of that places. Borowski uses lively and imaginal language, such as “multicoloured wave of people” and “pours from the train,” to depict how these people get off the train when they arrive the camp. Borowski successfully illustrates dehumanization not of new arrivals but of those who have been the camp. He depictures the ugliness of human in the concentration camp during World War II. Therefore, it seems that for those labor gang working in the camp were apathetic to this situation, and they just upload these Jews from the cattle cars and send them to their death in the gas chamber.
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault onHumanity. Trans. Stuart Woolf. New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1987.
Murders inflicted upon the Jewish population during the Holocaust are often considered the largest mass murders of innocent people, that some have yet to accept as true. The mentality of the Jewish prisoners as well as the officers during the early 1940’s transformed from an ordinary way of thinking to an abnormal twisted headache. In the books Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and Ordinary men by Christopher R. Browning we will examine the alterations that the Jewish prisoners as well as the police officers behaviors and qualities changed.
The T4 program was not the beginning of Germany’s effort to reach a super race. Leading up to the war Hitler enacted the “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases” in the year of 1933. The law called for the sterilization of anyone that had any hereditary illnesses. The list of hereditary illnesses included: “schizophrenia, epilepsy, senile disorders, therapy resistant paralysis and syphilitic diseases, retardation, encephalitis, Huntington’s chorea and other neurological conditions.” (History Place) This law was enforced by opening 200 genetic health courts that would analyze the medical records of individuals and decide if they were to be sterilized or not. The sterilization of people usually involved the use of drugs, x-rays, or uterine irritants. Dr. Horst Schumann did a lot of these experiments with sterilization at Auschwitz, where he would take a group of men/women and would expose them to x-rays. Most of his experiments with x-rays were disappointing but he kept using this method. After he subjected his subjects to x...
Epstein shows the process that the majority of Jews were being put through, such as the medical examinations, medical experimentations, gas chambers and crematoriums. Medical examinations were used to determine if the Jews were healthy enough to work. Dr. Mengele used the Jews as “lab rats” and performed many experiments such as a myriad of drug testing and different surgeries. The gas chamber was a room where Jews were poisoned to death with a preparation of prussic acid, called Cyclo...
Primo Levi, in his novel Survival in Auschwitz (2008), illustrates the atrocities inflicted upon the prisoners of the concentration camp by the Schutzstaffel, through dehumanization. Levi describes “the denial of humanness” constantly forced upon the prisoners through similes, metaphors, and imagery of animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization (“Dehumanization”). He makes his readers aware of the cruel reality in the concentration camp in order to help them examine the psychological effects dehumanization has not only on those dehumanized, but also on those who dehumanize. He establishes an earnest and reflective tone with his audience yearning to grasp the reality of genocide.
A crucial concept developed throughout Survival in Auschwitz and The Drowned and the Saved is the process of “the demolition of a man” through useless acts of violence. In order for the Nazis to control and murder without regard or guilt, they had to diminish men into subhumans. Those who entered the camps were stripped of their dignity and humanity, devoid of any personal identity. Men and women were reduced to numbers in a system that required absolute submission, which placed them in an environment where they had to struggle to survive and were pitted against their fellow prisoners. The purpose of the camps were not merely a place for physical extermination, but a mental one as well. Primo Levi exposes these small and large acts of deprivation and destruction within his two texts in order for readers to become aware of the affects such a system has on human beings, as well as the danger unleashed by a totalitarian system.
Nyiszli, Dr. Miklos Auschwitz: An Eyewitness Account of Mengle's Infamous Death Camp. New York: Seaver Books, 1960.
In Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, to say that Auschwitz is an interesting read would be a gross understatement. Auschwitz is a historical document, a memoir but, most importantly an insider’s tale of the horrors that the captives of one of the most dreadful concentration camps in the history of mankind. Auschwitz, is about a Jewish doctors, Dr. Nyiszli, experience as an assistant for a Nazi, Dr. Mengele. Dr. Nyiszli arrived at Auschwitz concentration camp with his family unsure if he would survive the horrific camp. This memoir chronicles the Auschwitz experience, and the German retreat, ending a year later in Melk, Austria when the Germans surrendered their position there and Nyiszli obtained his freedom. The author describes in
In WW2 German physicians often conducted painful and deadly experiments on Thousands of jews. Dr. Josef Mengele, nicknamed the angel of death and the other Nazi doctors at the death camps tortured men, women and children and did medical
"Science as Salvation: Weimar Eugenics, 1919–1933." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. 27 May 2014.
Enrique Mueller was a close friend of Mengele after the Holocaust. Women: “what was he like as a person?” Mueller: “Just like you and I. All he did then was his duty. Just like what the Americans do today, the same bloody experiments which carried out then. Everybody knows Mengele here.” Women: “Do you really think he did what people accused him of?”
Dr. Josef Mengele was one of the scariest research scientists during the Holocaust because of his work he has done on twins and others at Auschwitz. Most of the people Dr. Josef Mengele would do his experiments on were usually twins. The twins, Dr.Josef Mengele would do research on would
If This Is a Man or Survival in Auschwitz), stops to exist; the meanings and applications of words such as “good,” “evil,” “just,” and “unjust” begin to merge and the differences between these opposites turn vague. Continued existence in Auschwitz demanded abolition of one’s self-respect and human dignity. Vulnerability to unending dehumanization certainly directs one to be dehumanized, thrusting one to resort to mental, physical, and social adaptation to be able to preserve one’s life and personality. It is in this adaptation that the line distinguishing right and wrong starts to deform. Primo Levi, a survivor, gives account of his incarceration in the Monowitz- Buna concentration camp.
Dr. Josef Mengle is one of the most infamous Nazis ever. His war crimes and brutality are almost unparalleled. In our class book “Night”, author Elie Wiesel mentions Mengele as a horrible person who takes pleasure in what he does. Mengele is the kind of human who only comes around every once in a long time. He is the kind of man whose hatred is remembered forever. The kind of man we should educate our selves about if we truly want to understand the holocaust and its legacies. Josef Mengele did terrible things and only if we study them and understand them will we learn how to get past them.