Gerald L. Posner - Mengele - The Complete Story

Praise for Mengele

A fascinating account of Mengeles life on the run and the fruitless efforts to apprehend him.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

This is indeed the complete story, superior to other books on Mengele.

Boston Jewish Times

Well-written, clearly documented, and frequently exciting, this is the book to have.

Library Journal

[A] graphic and detailed history, [filled with] interesting revelations.... The authors present a vivid portrait of Mengele.

The Washington Times

Posner is recognized as a leading authority on Mengele.... Posner offers a nonstop cloak-and-dagger account of the attempts to locate Mengele in Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, and of his frantic attempts to stay one step ahead of his would-be captors. A sound, respectable work [that] takes the title of definitive over several other Mengele books.

Kirkus Reviews

[A] thorough, well-researched study.... The authors have provided the most complete portrait of Mengele that we are ever likely to have.

The Baltimore Sun

The story of Mengele has now been excellently told.... This book is a considerable success.

The London Times

Mengeles trail through Germany, Southern Europe, and South America is recounted with detail and insight in this comprehensive biography of an elusive and devious war criminal.

The San Diego Tribune

With its graphic descriptions of Mengeles brutal Auschwitz experiments, this book is not for the squeamish.... [A] fascinating portrait of a man without a conscience.

Newsday

The reader who enjoys the permutations and complications of the chase will be fascinated by the details of Mengeles life on the run.... The authors have done a meticulous piece of work in tracing his life, dispelling myths and substantiating facts.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Formidably and exhaustively researched, the book has the ring of authenticity.

Detroit Free Press

Posner and Ware have superlatively recorded the details of Mengeles fantastic career.... [A] book that makes the blood boil.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer

[The authors] do a creditable job tracing the varied attempts to locate the notorious Angel of Death.... The book effectively paints a picture of a lonely, embittered, remorseless Nazi. It knocks down decades of myths.

The Houston Post

Excellent and thorough.... [Mengele] both fascinates and repels us.

Philadelphia Daily News

The definitive life story... a nightmarish account.

The Toronto Star

Chilling.... Mengeles bones rattle... and pound against the sensibilities of justice seekers one more time.

The Columbus Dispatch

The Complete Story

Gerald L. Posner and John Ware

New introduction by Michael Berenbaum

First Cooper Square Press edition 2000

This Cooper Square Press paperback edition of Mengele is an unabridged republication of the edition first published in New York in 1986, with the addition of two textual emendations and a new introduction by Michael Berenbaum. It is reprinted by arrangement with the authors.

Copyright 1986 by Gerald L. Posner and John Ware
New introduction copyright 2000 by Michael Berenbaum

All photographs courtesy of the authors.

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

Published by Cooper Square Press
An Imprint of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group
150 Fifth Avenue, Suite 911
New York, New York 10011

Distributed by National Book Network

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Posner, Gerald L.

Mengele : the complete story / Gerald L. Posner and John Ware. 1st Cooper Square Press ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: 978-0-8154-1006-5

1. Mengele, Josef, 1911 2. Auschwitz (Concentration camp) 3. War criminals Germany Biography. 4. World War, 19331945 Atrocities. 5. Human experimentation in medicine. I. Ware, John. II. Title.

DD247.M46 P67 2000

940.54'05'092 dc21

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.481992.
Manufactured in the United States of America.

This book is dedicated to all of Josef Mengeles victims

Michael Berenbaum

Auschwitz:
May 1943January 1945

Argentina:
Lull before the Storm

When word reached the American press in 1985 that Dr. Joseph Mengele, the angel of death at Auschwitz, had died of drowning in San Paulo, Brazil, in 1978 there was a strong sense of disquiet. Those who just months before had claimed Mengele sightings in Paraguay and Argentina seemed to have been chasing only shadows. Those who had hoped for another Eichmann trial or another Nuremberg Nazi Doctors trial felt that a chance to bring the guilty to justice had escaped them. An opportunity to understand the crime of the physicians, the medical facilitators of mass murder, had been lost. Many ordinary people had a sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs that justice had been denied. Mengele lived to the end of his days, eluding his would-be captors. I remember feeling that for Mengele to die outside of captivity, it should have been from cancerlong, painful, and slow. Where was God? Why such a quick death, why so painless?

Gerald L. Posner and John Wares Mengele: The Complete Story is a welcome addition to the study of the Holocaust. It presents in great detail the biography of Josef Mengele from birth to death and juxtaposes Mengele the myth with Mengele the man. Its return to print in this new edition offers us insight into one of the infamous perpetrators of the Holocaust, a figure of endless fascination to Nazi hunters and the general public alike.

Of course Mengele could not have been everywhere and done everything attributed to him. Mengele has become the embodiment of the medical officer who presided over selektions, who decided who shall live and who shall die with a wave of the hand, with a flick of the baton. Rudolf Vrba, one of the very few inmates to successfully escape Auschwitz, described those initial selektions at Birkenau. His testimony reads like poetry, brutal poetry. Speaking to Claude Lanzmann, he said:

There was a place called the ramp

where the trains with Jews were coming in.

These were coming in day and night, and

Sometimes one per day and sometimes five per day

from all sorts of places in the world.

I worked there from August 18, 1942 to June 7, 1943.

I saw those transports rolling one after another,

and I have seen at least two hundred of them in this position.

I have seen it so many times that it became routine.

Constantly people from the heart of Europe were disappearing,

And they were arriving at the same place with the same ignorance of the previous transport.