Josef Mengele was born on March 16th 1911, in Gunzburg Bavaria, to Karl and Walburga Mengele. He had two brothers, Karl and Alois. Josef lived in Gunzburg, a small town that was very resemblant to a fifteenth century town. He was mainly brought up by his mother, in a wealthy Catholic home. His father, Karl was an engineer, who had become the owner of a manufacturing company that made farm equipment, and gained a considerable amount of wealth. However, when war broke out in 1914, Karl was sent off, leaving Walburga in charge of the buisness. By the 1920s, the company became the third largest threshing production company in Germany, and Karl Mengele had come back from the war.

     For the most part, Josef's childhood was quite ordinary. As a child, he possesed much ambition. Josef often competed with his siblings. He was considerably smarter than his brothers, and always near the top of his class. He deveoped a large interest in sciences from a high-school teacher, Uri. His favorate subject was, anthropology, the study of natural sciences and humanity. Josef passed his high-school exams in April 1930, and left Gunzburg, in October of the same year, and headed to Munich, Bavaria, and enrolled in the studies of philosophy and medicine. At this time, Nazism was the second largest party in Germany. In 1931 he joined Stahlhelm, a paramilitary organization, who had not yet made ties with the nazi party.

     Karl Mengele, Josef's father, had considered joining the Nazi party in 1931, thinking it would be a profitable idea. Shortly after Hitler's come to power Karl had played host to Hitler when he gave a speech about farming at the Mengele factor., the next year Karl paid Georg Deisenhofer for a place in the Gunzburg town council. This act was to prove very profitable in the future, when his company would have a profit value of 1 million reichmarks, with 350 people working for him.

     Meanwhile, Josef started to show more interest in cultural origins and human development than treating people. In 1935, Josef Mengele earned his doctorate in Anthropology in 1935 for his thesis "Racial Morphological Research on the Lower Jaw Section of Four Racial Groups", a report concluding it was possible to detect different racial backgrounds by studying the jaw. In the next summer, 1936, Mengele took and passed his state medical examination, and got his first paaid job working in Leipzig at the university's medical clinic.

     He worked for four months at the clinic, enough to satisfy he period of hospital work required for his complete medical practitioner's degree. These four months were uneventful aside from the fact that he met a university professor's daughter, Irene Schoenbein, who became his first wife in 1939.

     On January 1st, 1937, he got a recommendation from Professer Mollinson, and was appointed as a research assistant to the Third Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology and Racial Purity, at Frankfurt University. This event would prove to change Mengele's life. He was joined the team of one of Europe's best geneticists, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, who at that time was researching twins.

     Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer was a feverant supporter of Hitler, and refered to him as "being the first statesman to recognize hereditary biological and race hygiene." Mengele quickly became Verschuer's favorite student. Verschuer had pulled the strings to get Mengele to Auschwitz, and later, got the funding for Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz.

     Mengele at this time also applied for membership in the Nazi party, considering he was already working for them, this was somewhat of a formality. In May of 1937 he submitted his application and was ssued membership with the number of 5574974. He was sure to rise quickly in the Nazi ranks, due to asteemed connections.

     In 1938, Mengele was admitted into the SS, or Schutzstaffel and he joined the Arztebund, or physicians' association. However, he did not get his blood group tattooed on his skin, as all new SS recruits were usually obliged to do. He even went on to later join the Waffen SS, which could be considered the elite among the SS.

     In July of 1938, Mengele earned his medical degree from Frankfurt University. Making him now, a licensed physician The next year, he married Irene Schonbein.

    In 1940 he was placed in the reserve medical corps. After that, in 1942 he served the 5th SS Panzergrenadier Division Wiking. This same year, he was wounded in the Russian front, and proclaimed medically unfit for combat. 

     In 1943, he was sent to the Auschwitz nazi extermination camp to replace a doctor who had fallen ill. The same year, on May 24, he became the medical officer of the Auschwitz gypsy camp. In August 1944 the camp was liquidated; all of its inmates gassed. Subsequently Mengele became the chief medical officer of the main infirmary camp at Auschwitz. There was only one man superiour to him, Eduard Wirths.

     In Auschwitz, Josef Mengele earned his infamous title, "Angel of Death" for the cruelty of which he treated the prisoners. Mengele took turns with the other SS doctors of Auschwitz meeting the incoming prisoners apon the entry ramp, and determining who would be experimented on, and who would be immediately sent to the gas chambers.

     On one occasion, Mengele drew a line on a wall of the children's block, about five feet from the floor; those who did were not at least as tall as the line, were sent to the gas chamber. Another case, when it was reported that one block was infected with lice, Mengele had all of the 750 prisoners assigned to that block gassed. He was only 32 years old at this time.

     During Mengele's stay at Auschwitz, he continued his research on heredity, using inmates for human experimentation. He had a peaking interest in identical twins, and they were to be placed unharmed in the special barracks. However, Mengele was usually interested in all sorts of physical and hereditary abnormalities.

     After the war, Mengele evaded law officals for nearly 34 years, before dying while suffering a stroke during a swim in the ocean.