Josef Mengele

He got married to Irene Schönbein in 1939 and they separated in 1954.

He later got married to Martha Mengele (widow of his brother Karl) in 1958.

Josef Mengele died of a stroke while swimming on February 7, 1979.

Josef Mengele was born on March 16, 1911 in Gunzburg, near Ulm in Germany. His father, Karl Mengele, was a farming equipment manufacturer and his mother was Walburga Hupfauer.

He was the eldest among Karl’s three sons. The other two were Karl and Alois.

He finished high school in April 1930 and went to study medicine at the Goethe University in Frankfurt.

He also studied philosophy at the University of Munich.

He earned his PhD in physical anthropology from the University of Munich in 1935

Josef Mengele joined the ‘Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene’, Frankfurt, in January 1937 as an assistant to Dr. Otmar von Verschuer who was famous for his research on twins.

In 1937 he joined the Nazi Party. In 1938 he got his medical degree and joined the SS the same year.

He was drafted into the army in 1940 and volunteered to join the medical service of the Waffen-SS. During the summer of 1940 he became the medical expert for the RHSA or ‘Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt’ at their ‘Central Immigration Office’ situated in North East Posen.

Later he saw action on the Eastern Front while being a medical officer with the ‘Wiking’ Division of the SS Pioneer Battalion V.

He was wounded in battle and returned to Germany in January 1943 to join the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthrpology, Human Genetics and Eugenics’.