Mengele’s human experiments at Auschwitz-Birkenau 

Dr Josef Mengele was appointed camp doctor at section B II e, the so-called ‘gypsy camp’, at the end of May 1943. He was particularly interested in conducting medical experiments on identical twin children, experiments that entailed unimaginable tortures for his victims. Prisoners were murdered specifically for the purpose of dissecting their bodies.

Mengele also arranged to have human body parts sent to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology in Berlin-Dahlem for examination. The Institute’s director, Otmar von Verschuer, had been Mengele’s teacher.

01 | The SS physician Dr Mengele Archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
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03.1 | Portraits of Sinti and Roma prisoners from the ‘gypsy camp’ at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were made by Dinah Gottliebova at Dr Mengele’s instructions for his ‘racial research’. Dinah Gottliebova had been forced to abandon her studies at the School of Arts and Crafts in Brno because of her Jewish origins. Aged 19, she was […]
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03.2 | Portraits of Sinti and Roma prisoners from the ‘gypsy camp’ at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were made by Dinah Gottliebova at Dr Mengele’s instructions for his ‘racial research’. Dinah Gottliebova had been forced to abandon her studies at the School of Arts and Crafts in Brno because of her Jewish origins. Aged 19, she was […]
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03.3 | Portraits of Sinti and Roma prisoners from the ‘gypsy camp’ at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were made by Dinah Gottliebova at Dr Mengele’s instructions for his ‘racial research’. Dinah Gottliebova had been forced to abandon her studies at the School of Arts and Crafts in Brno because of her Jewish origins. Aged 19, she was […]
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03.4 | Portraits of Sinti and Roma prisoners from the ‘gypsy camp’ at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were made by Dinah Gottliebova at Dr Mengele’s instructions for his ‘racial research’. Dinah Gottliebova had been forced to abandon her studies at the School of Arts and Crafts in Brno because of her Jewish origins. Aged 19, she was […]
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04 | Interview with Hermann Langbein (1912–1995) Hermann Langbein was a political prisoner at Dachau, Auschwitz and Neuengamme. Born in Vienna, he was a co-founder of the International Auschwitz Committee in 1954. He played an instrumental role in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials and published important books on Nazi-crimes.
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05 | Letter to the Hygiene-Bacteriological Institute of the Waffen-SS South-East dated 29 June 1944 ‘Please find enclosed: material: head of a corpse (12-year-old child) (…) Prisoners’ infirmary of the gypsy camp at Auschwitz II, B II e. Signed. Mengele“ Archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
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06 | Letter from the senior dental surgeon at the Auschwitz concentration camp dated 16 April 1943 relating to the examination of twins from the ‘gypsy camp’ ‘As ordered, examinations were carried out on the following gypsy prisoners on 15.4.1943; models of their teeth were also made.’ Archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
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