All language subtitles for Mengele.Unveiled.S01E01.1080p.WEB.h264-BAWD[EZTVx.to]

A man is about
to live his final day.

He will die of a stroke
while swimming.

But this was no ordinary man.

Once an SS Captain...

a doctor...

..a fugitive.

He spent over 30 years on the run,

evading justice as one of the
most wanted Nazi war criminals.

- Every stupid person can do evil,

and there is nothing good
after that.

Only more evil comes.

- Without any moral,

ethical boundaries will lead you,

and it leads you down a very,
very dark path.

- Uh... No, I...
I couldn't possibly forgive.

- There were no breaks
to his... to his ambition.

But who was this man really?

How did a young,
ambitious medical student...

become one of the most
reviled figures in modern history?

How did he rise to embody

Nazi pseudoscience and brutality?

- His main aim is to get ahead,

to be the first, to be the best.

NARRATOR: He conducted
horrific experiments

in one of history's
most infamous prison camps.

His work remains
a chilling testament

to how ideology can corrupt science,

leaving a dark and lasting legacy.

And after the war,
how could he escape justice

and remain hidden for so long?

With the support
of his powerful family,

he lived comfortably
in South America

under false identities.

How did the world allow a man

responsible for such atrocities
to live in freedom,

eluding capture for decades?

This is the story of a man...

..of a criminal.

This is the story
of Josef Mengele.

In the collective imagination,

Josef Mengele, known as
the "Angel of Death" of Auschwitz,

embodies Nazi cruelty.

His name is synonymous

with barbaric experiments
on prisoners,

particularly children.

Mengele has become

one of the most repugnant figures
of the 20th century.

But was he truly
the dark figure depicted

in numerous documentaries
and countless books?

Or had he become a scapegoat

for the atrocities committed
by the Nazis?

- Mengele is born in 1911

in a little town called Gunzburg

in Bavaria in southern Germany.

Mengele writes in his memoirs about

how he was born on
a very stormy night.

- And, you know,
he gives the impression

that maybe when he's born,
it's a very momentous event.

So, I think, you know,
we begin to see how big his ego is.

- Early in my career,
I was assigned

to the investigation
of Josef Mengele when I worked

as a Chief of Investigative Research

for the US Department of Justice's
Office of Special Investigations.

So I spent more than one year
really trying to find Mengele.

- Mengele grew up
in a quite prosperous home.

He was the oldest of three sons

born to Karl Mengele,

who was the owner of a company
that made farm equipment

that really had some success
in the First world War,

making wagons for the...
for the German army.

- His family business,
his parents' family business,

was THE major employer in the town.

And even today,
if you go to Bavaria,

you'll still see some tractors
with the name Mengele on the side.

- He grew up in a rather
conservative Catholic home.

- But it's not a major influence
in Mengele's life.

And, certainly,
some Nazi war criminals

who come from very strongly
Catholic backgrounds,

someone like Klaus Barbie,
for example,

the "Butcher of Lyon"
who wanted to be a Catholic priest.

Mengele was certainly not
the type of man

who wanted to be a Catholic priest.

- He had a relatively
uneventful childhood.

I mean, there was nothing
in his childhood that would lead you

to believe
that he would later become

the infamous physician at Auschwitz.

There's nothing to suggest

in the not very voluminous evidence
about his childhood

that he exhibited any kinds
of unusual personal conduct.

People imagine that he would torture

pet animals in the backyard,

and there's no evidence of that.

- What you have here is
a kind of normal boy

who's a bit sick.

He's of average intelligence,

and there is no sign
of any kind of evil to him.

He did have one thing that
had a large impact on his youth,

and that was an illness that he had

when he was a young person
in his early teenage years.

Maybe he was climbing
an apple tree -

or something like that - fell...

- ..had a crushing trauma
to his leg,

which then resulted
in osteomyelitis,

which is an infection of the bone

and also sepsis
and, uh... nephritis.

Bacteria entered the body and then
settled in the... in his bones,

causing, you know,
a great deal of pain.

And he had to miss school
for a long period of time.

That's registered
in his school records.

So he went to an academic school,
a Gymnasium.

So, he was slated
to have a university experience.

His marks were kind of
maybe high average,

not some kind of brilliant genius.

- There's not one grade
that I've seen

in any of Mengle's reports
that make you to go,

"Wow, this guy is some genius!"

He's... a perfectly average student.

He has no particular aptitude
for science.

He has no particular aptitude
for languages.

His illnesses meant that his mother,

who was very much a...
a firm matriarch of the family,

had actually, basically,

discussed with his father and said,

"I don't think Josef is right
to take over the family business.

We'll leave that to a brother."

- When he went to the university
in Munich in the summer semester,

which means April of 1930,
I believe,

he didn't really know
what he wanted to do.

He thought perhaps
he'd want to be a dentist.

There was no dentist, apparently,
in his hometown.

He thought this would be
a good experience.

There is no apparent

psychological anomaly
in his background.

Yet, the atrocities he committed
in Auschwitz are chilling.

What drove this transformation?

- What did you inject
into our bodies?

And why did you do it?
What was the scope?

What was the idea
behind these experiments?

My name is Eva Mozes Kor.

But I prefer to use the short one,
Eva Kor.

Miriam and I were twins.

And Miriam was the older
among the two.

- It was maybe
the first week of school.

We were just still very excited
about going to the school.

But there was one of those days

that the kids started
calling us names,

Miriam and me.

"Dirty Jews."

I was very shocked
to hear that from them

cos these were kids
I played with in the village.

And we could not do anything.

Then, finally,
they began taunting us

and beating us over the face.

That was the first time
I went to the teacher

and told the teacher...

..that the kids were beating us up
and harassing us,

and the teacher did nothing.

She took a handful of corn kernels

and threw it...

..in that corner of the room...

and made us kneel there...

on the corn kernels
for an hour

while the rest
of the kids were permitted

to come and make fun of us.

- When he arrives in Munich,

Mengele is... is initially down
to read dentistry.

Um... He thinks
he can make a good living

being a...
a dentist back in Gunzburg.

- And then,
as he recounts in his autobiography,

he, um... meets a student

who had been
to his Gymnasium in Gunzburg

a year or two before,

and who was now studying this.

And this guy said,
"You don't want to be a dentist."

"You should be a physician." That...

That's... That's important.

This was a kind of "aha" moment
where he thought about it

and then decided,
"Well, that's what I'm gonna do."

And from that moment on,
he devoted himself to this study.

- And that begins
the career of Josef Mengele.

His father even bought him a car.

He lived a really happy life
because of his wealth.

He was really privileged
compared with other students.

And he was really dedicated
to his studies.

He was very interested
in Anthropology,

which, at the time,

was a different kind
of Anthropology from today.

It was focussed
on physical appearance

and racial differences

and NOT on culture and traditions.

There was also
this idea of racial hygiene,

that races should be pure.

There should be
no what was called miscellany.

No intermarrying between
black people and white people,

between Chinese, Asiatic people
and white people.

There is absurd idea...

of purity and racial separation.

- We don't really see a...

a political awakening in Mengele

until when he's at university.

As a teenager, Mengele had
joined nationalist youth groups,

a common occurrence
among millions of other adolescents

in Germany
during the same period.

However, he was not
particularly drawn to politics.

- The Mengele family were
very important part

of Gunzburg society.

It's difficult to say
whether they were Nazis.

I don't think so.

They were certainly traditional.

Politics was not
what they were most interested in.

They were interested
in growing their property,

in making money,
but not in politics.

When Hitler comes to Gunzburg,
for example,

Mengele's father, Karl, was there.

He even spoke to Hitler.

But he wasn't
a real National Socialist.

- Now, you might think
that the first thing

that Mengele does is
join the Nazi party.

He doesn't.
He actually joins the Stahlhelm,

the Steel Helmets,
which is a much more

kind of paramilitary organisation
than the Nazi party.

So, it's important to remember

that Mengele does not
become a Nazi,

you know, in 1933.

He wasn't one of...
of the original Nazis.

- He entered university

right before this big election
in September 1930,

when the support for the
Nazi Party surprised everyone.

So his university experience

and his experience
with the science of anthropology

and the science of medicine

at a time when these were
being elevated to a new status,

it all came together for him

so that his entire university career

was stamped
by the political environment,

which had an impact
on the scientific environment,

which had an impact on him.

- And then,
what is also interesting,

Mengele had a diary.

And he wrote in his diary every day,

so we can reconstruct
his early life.

- Mengele was a very
self-confident young man.

And one of his school friends
remember him saying, you know,

"One day, you're going
to see me," you know,

"read about me in an encyclopaedia."

Mengele was indeed correct...

but not for the reasons
he believed.

He is infamous for his experiments
on children at Auschwitz...

..treating them as nothing more
than mere guinea pigs.

- I recall one case,

one occasion
when he came to the barracks.

I don't know why.

There must have been a reason
why he came,

but, at some point, he decided...
..to show his prowess.

I don't know how to call it,

the power of his memory,
if you like.

I recall a case, uh...

an instance,
when he lined us all up

and basically telling Spiegel,
our leader,

"Now, I'm going to point out
all the ones

that I personally selected
at the ramp."

And he pointed all the pairs,
including our... us,

to show his power
of recollection, his memory.

I don't know why he did that.

I mean, uh...

what... what did he try
to prove to us,

you know, subhumans?

It is
during his university years

that we begin to see
a shift in Mengele's personality,

a gradual dehumanisation.

This transformation is likely tied
to his deep immersion

in theories of racial hygiene

and the ideology
of racial supremacy,

which became central
to his academic focus

and, ultimately, his worldview.

- He experienced really, you know,
world-class university instruction

from people who had already won
the Nobel Prize.

There were people who would
eventually win the Nobel Prize.

The centre is occupied

by Eugen Fischer
and Theodor Mollison...

..and Otmar von Verschuer
and other great luminaries.

Mengele is still on the fringe,
but it's...

it's the group
he wants to be part of.

- What's extraordinary

when you look at Mengele's
academic record at university -

and he went to quite
a few universities -

is that he went in
to do a medical degree.

And while he was doing
his medical degree,

he did a doctorate,
a PhD in Anthropology,

at the same time.

- So we know that he was

an ambitious
and talented young scientist.

Many professors noticed
his abilities,

and Mengele used the opportunity

to start building
his academic career.

- And Mengele,
after he had finished his PhD

in anthropology
under Theodor Mollison,

he goes to Frankfurt
to study with von Verschuer.

NARRATOR: Von Verschuer was aligned
with a prevailing belief

in German medical circles
and beyond,

which categorised races
into different hierarchies,

placing Aryans at the top.

- We'll call him a geneticist
or racial hygiene expert

who became the founding director

of the Institute
for Racial Hygiene of Frankfurt.

In Germany, you know,

your supervisor
for your doctoral work,

they call them "Dr Vater,"
Dr Father.

This gives you some suggestion
of the important of that supervisor

in not only your academic life,
but in your... your whole life.

- He is absolutely sort of...

very influential
on Mengele's thinking.

He's helping him realise
and teaching him

that there are
all these racial differences.

- So, Mengele did his dissertation
which was accepted quite favourably

and was published
in a very good journal.

The dissertation was
about the defects

in the palate, the upper palate.

So, he looked carefully
at the cases of...

..maybe close
to 120 different people.

So, he did what was considered to be
a very careful job of research.

The cleft palate was considered

to be something
that was racially suspect.

So Mengele's research allowed them

to determine genetically
whether someone was more apt to...

to have a cleft palate or not.

And people who had this condition
then, in some cases,

were not allowed to marry or...
or had to submit to sterilisation

so they couldn't pass on
this characteristic.

- What Mengele is doing
is helping to provide

the medical backbone

to what the Nazis want
to do politically.

- What's most important
to note is

that Mengele was
a child of his times,

a reflection of that period.

Mengele's thesis in the 1930s

was not only politically correct,

but also represented the knowledge
and mentality of the time.

- Mengele's mentor,
Otmar von Verschuer,

was very well respected
and famous in his field.

Verschuer was interested in twins.

He did numerous studies
and experiments in this field

and asked Mengele
to become his assistant.

- Mengele became an assistant
of... of Verschuer and became...

I don't know
if you call him his prize student,

but that's... that's probably not
too much of an exaggeration

that he was one
of his good students.

This bond
between von Verschuer

and Mengele would never falter...

..not even
as Mengele awaited his victims

on the ramp at Birkenau.

And they loaded us
onto freight cars.

They counted how many of us
we were in the wagons.

And then, with chalk, they marked:

seventy-four, seventy-five.

They unloaded us
on the street first

on the second day...

TRANSLATOR:
..to dump out the rubbish,

the barrels with faeces and so.

And someone saw a chalk writing
on the wagon.

Auschwitz.

They took me to the camp,

and I ended up in front of Mengele.

I didn't know anything
about him - Mengele -

before that day.

I hadn't even heard of him.

I have accumulated 91 years.

Throughout this long time,

I have introduced myself
as Oleg Mandic...

..the last child of Auschwitz.

Every time I come back here,

in a way, I feel good.

I don't know.
I have this feeling. It's my home.

I was born here, in this house.

In 1944...

..on the 15th of May...

..they took me away from here.

And they took away my childhood.

It never came back.

How did Nazi
racial thinking come about?

Who was Hitler inspired by?

Where did the madness
of Auschwitz originate?

All these questions can be
answered with one term...

..Eugenics.

- Eugenics was born in England.

The term was coined
by Francis Galton,

outstanding British,
uh... scientist.

And also, he worked out

the theory about, uh... eugenics.

So about improving of human race.

It was very attractive at the time.

It was the second part
of the 19th century,

when the Darwinism also was
very attractive theory

Because they strongly believe

that the science makes
people better.

And the science is like
a promise for the better world.

World without sufferings,

world without people
with a different,

uh... biological defectiveness,

disabled people, uh... ill people.

- It's this idea that there are
inferior human beings,

uh... racially,

and that there are inferior human
beings in terms of their health.

- Eugenics can be seen

as something first
before the genetics.

It is the beginning of the genetics.

Yes, most doctors maintained

that almost all diseases are...

hereditarily, you know, passed.

And, as we know,

eugenicists put the proposal

to segregate people

and to deprive some groups

of people from their own rights

and to kerb their fertility...

..and to sterilise those

who are physically or,
uh... psychiatric unfit.

If we start sterilise ill people,

we achieve better model of society.

- Now, you might apply that

if you are breeding pigs or cows.

Are you really going
to apply that morally

if you're going
to breed human beings?

- Eugenics was
so important in interwar years

because of the new phenomenon
of welfare state.

I mean, the state
which provide free medical care,

eight-hour work day,

and who take care
about developing of hospitals,

etcetera, etcetera.

But because of that,

state has also...

right to decide

about the offsprings,

about decision

which previous belongs
only to the individuals.

In the annals
of human ambition,

the quest
for genetic improvement extends

far beyond
the dark spectre of Naziism.

The aspiration to breed

for the betterment of the race
predates Naziism

and spread rapidly
throughout the developed nations,

particularly in England, France,

and especially the United States.

- Let's not think that what's
going on in Germany is unique.

And let's not think
that the thinking

that Mengele is exposed to
is exceptional for the time.

It's really important to recognise

that medical thinking in the 1920s,

1930s in Germany, uh...

Britain, the United States,
all over the world,

was informed
by this idea of eugenics.

- Eugenics is a question concerning

the most advanced
industrialised country.

Like in England,
United States of America,

also France, uh... also Belgium,

and many, many other countries.

- Some of the research
in Germany was funded

by the Rockefeller foundation.

- Some American
eugenicists cooperate

very strongly
with the German eugenicists.

They expressed terrible opinion
about the unfit,

about people who were perceived

as heavy for modern societies.

But, in spite of that,

they never made such
a move like Nazi Germany

because they didn't build
a gas chamber.

They didn't kill people
because of that.

All eugenics movement was
based on the theory,

which was very dangerous
for human rights.

But only one type of eugenics lead

to concentration camp
and gas chamber.

It was the German eugenics.

- In Germany,

there's a much stronger sense of...
of the health of the nation,

and that you should cut out anybody

who is not going to contribute
to the health of the nation.

- For instance,
under Nazi criminal law,

it was a criminal offence
for a German

to have sexual relations with a Jew.

This was criminal.

You could be thrown in jail
for having done that.

Why? Because they believed
that this would have

an impact on your racial quality.

These racial concepts did
not end with the end of Naziism.

In the United States,

it was only in the late 1960s

that it was possible
to have interracial marriage.

And the Apartheid regime
in South Africa only ended in 1991.

And still today,
how many cases of racism are there?

- The father of race and...

..Nazi eugenics was Eugen Fischer.

So he described the offsprings

of so called mixed races.

They are less intelligent,

often in a conflict with the law.

They don't want to learn.

And they are less adult.

And generally, the conclusion is

that the mixing of race cause

very serious physical
and mental defects.

- Medicine in Germany in the '20s

has basically influenced Nazism

to think of people
as being different,

and inferior, and superior.

The ideas of racial hygiene,
eugenics,

a healthy nation getting rid
of its diseased people,

these are ideas
that predate the Nazis.

And then,
when the Nazis come to power,

they feed that back
to the world of medicine,

and the world of medicine
acts upon it.

- Mengele's pursuit of medicine
and anthropology,

which was an allied science,
in a way,

came exactly at the time
that this field was elevated

by the political atmosphere
and environment in Germany...

..by the
personal ideology of Adolf Hitler,

which became the ideology
of the Nazi movement

and then of the Nazi state.

- Mengele is the medical embodiment
of Nazi thinking,

and it's that Nazi thinking
about human beings

that's come
from the world of medicine.

So, you have this full circle.

- And Mengele accepted this.

This became part of the way
he looked at the world.

There's no question about that.
And his whole career, from...

from the moment
that he began the study,

his career followed
this kind of... red thread.

- So everything is connected

because they perceived the society

and the nation in biological terms.

How to sterilise people.

How to kill people effectively,

economically, quickly,

and to obtain
the desired, uh... aim.

- It's under the Nazis
that you start seeing

people being killed

and sterilised
for being "defective."

- The T4 project was

the State-sponsored
euthanasia project, which...

..where the medical profession
was enlisted

in identifying those individuals

who, by their own definitions,

had congenital diseases
or some kind of...

..racial problem.

- It was program against patients

of psychiatric hospitals

and people with a physical defect,

which was led in Germany
against their own citizens.

And hundreds, thousands
of people were just gassed.

- This is the most horrific
expression of medicine

that has ever taken place.

So, for the good of humanity,

for the good of the nation...

you kill them; it's very simple.

And Mengele,

whether he had direct knowledge
of the euthanasia program -

and it's likely he did -
but would have seen this

as a perfectly acceptable way of...

of doing good for humanity.

Officially, the T4 Program
was closed down in September 1941.

However,
the Nazis secretly continued

to eliminate
"Lives Unworthy of Living."

According to
Nuremberg Trial sources,

there were at least 200,000 victims

of the T4 Program.

- They initiated Holocaust
as a system

of murdering people.

- The euthanasia program
became the training ground

for the staffs
at the concentration camps.

The procedures used,

the way that they fooled people
into thinking

that they would be having a shower

rather than going
to the gas chambers.

The Nazis' atrocities
began long before the outbreak

of the Second World War.

Many perpetrators,
like Josef Mengele,

sought to evade responsibility.

Serge and Beate Klarsfeld,

a passionate couple
advocating for justice,

dedicated their lives
to capturing these criminals...

..and popularised
the legendary term 'Nazi hunter'.

- So you see here...

..five boxes with, uh...

our main target Brunner...

who died in Syria...

..where we went four times.

Mengele, Walter Rauff in Chile,

Klaus Barbie in Bolivia.

- I was born in Germany, and, uh...

our apartment was bombed

when the war ended.

My father was in the army.
He was working in a Buro,

in an office for the party,
for the... for the Wehrmacht.

And when he was arrested,
he was arrested by the British.

And, uh... he, uh...
was then released really quite fast,

and he came to find us.
- So...

my father as a French soldier

and the father of Beate...
- In the Wehrmacht.

- ..as a German soldier.

Hunting Nazis...

it's a period of our life, you know,

until the end of the 20th century.

But, also, it was in order
to reconciliate

German and... and French people.

We started to be interested

in the case of Mengele in 1973

because Beate was already twice

in South America.

I was also in South America

in 1972...

to try to kidnap Klaus Barbie

and bring him to... to France.

- We were offering money, you know,
in the newspapers in South America

to obtain the possibilities
from people

to know where Mengele is,
you know, at the time.

In the pursuit of hunting Nazis,

one embarks on a profound
exploration into their psyches,

endeavouring to grasp

the intricate layers
of their personalities.

What propelled Josef Mengele

to commit such appalling
crimes against humanity?

- I think we should talk
about Mengele's personality here.

He's an ambitious man,

probably
with a narcissistic personality.

His main aim is to get ahead,

to be the first.

To be the best was really
important to him.

This is why
he decided to join the SS.

It was not out
of a militaristic spirit,

but because it was an elite core

that placed him
in a privileged position.

- It's a bit of a surprise, um...

because he doesn't look
like the classic SS man.

He's an average height.
He's very dark.

He's got a slight abnormality

with this big gap
between his two front teeth.

So, he's not like
the classic, physical specimen

that you would expect, you know,
in the master race of the SS.

- If you wanted to be successful,
if you wanted to be recognised,

if you wanted to have advantages,
if you wanted to get the best job,

and... then, you were drawn
to these elite formations.

You embraced the ideology,

and you tried to exploit it
for your own benefit as well.

- By enlisting, Mengele knew that
he could make a career for himself

because the SS was
looking for educated people

and especially doctors.

- It's really important
to realise that,

of all the professions
in the Third Reich,

medicine had the highest percentage
take-up of SS membership.

7% of physicians and those

with kind of medical and...

and biology degrees joined the SS.

You know, it...
it was astonishingly high.

This link between Nazism
and medicine is,

for him and many other medics,
a very virtuous loop.

So joining the SS is
a natural result of that.

On September the 1st, 1939,

the Second World War commenced.

Yet, initially, this event held
no immediate implications

for Josef Mengele's life.

- Mengele was exempted
from the draft

because of his important
position with Verschuer.

But in, I believe,
later that spring,

early summer of 1940,
he joins the... the Army.

He doesn't like the experience.

He decides that he will
join the Waffen SS.

- Mengele joins
an SS engineering battalion.

He's a junior officer.

And he's also the medic
with his unit.

He was part
of the Fifth SS Viking Division.

- In June of 1941,

the German Army decides
to invade the Soviet Union.

Mengele's unit is at the very...

south of the southern sector.

So they're in the south of Ukraine,

and he moves
with his unit to the front.

- Now, he has not got
a lot of experience of surgery.

He even writes back asking
for someone to send him

a kind of physician's,
surgeon's handbook.

- He writes to his wife and says,

"I have to treat
all of these soldiers here.

And, you know, I'm...
I'm a racial doctor.

I'm not a...
I'm not a general practitioner,

and it's a little too much for me.

And I could...
could use the... the help."

Because he... he treated
as a battalion physician,

he... he wasn't treating
necessarily wounded people,

except maybe first aid for wound.

But he treated them
for bunions on their feet

or for intestinal disorders
or normal problems

that people
of that age group would have.

And so, he was confronted
with a medical challenge

that he wasn't really
experienced at doing.

He was looking at people,
the shape of people's eyes

and not figuring out
what kind of malady they had.

So... So,
his wife sends him the book.

- Mengele started his war
campaign in Russia.

Germany against Russia
wasn't a typical war.

It was more like political war.

And the aim of both parties,

especially Nazi Germany,

was to destroy the enemy.

- He was involved in this unit...

throughout the first
18 months of the War.

Mengele saw constant
and unrelenting action,

um... as part of this,
uh... combat unit,

often in... in the very front
of the German advance.

We know from records
that he distinguished himself,

that he received
an Iron Cross second class,

and then, later on,
an Iron Cross first class.

- I believe he saw
all the atrocities of the War,

not only as a doctor,
but as a soldier.

We know about
the countless war crimes

committed on the Russian front
by the Einsatzgruppen,

the Wehrmacht, and the Waffen SS.

- We can certainly say

that the experience of the front
changed him profoundly.

- This is an SS division going
around slaughtering Jews.

This is going around
hanging partisan.

This is performing
some of the most savage

and bestial acts you can imagine.

What we don't know is specifically

whether Mengele took part
in any of these actions himself.

I think that's unlikely.

But there's no doubt that,
as it does to a lot of people,

the experience of war
really brutalised Josef Mengele.

- He has learned about violence.

He's not just heard about it,
but he has seen it,

perhaps even participated in it.

And then, he gets used to it.

He gets brutalised, hardened to it,

and then, it's easy to replicate it.

- You look at some
of the witness testimony

about Mengele's behaviour
at Auschwitz,

there are instances
of almost spontaneous violence

without any proximate cause,
you know?

Kind of just, uh...

..walking up to someone
and shooting them, or...

or extreme cruelty,

even not behind the...
the curtain of science,

but just... just sadism.

Then, you must also,
I think, believe

that there was something
that happened to him

because his earlier life didn't

exhibit any
of these characteristics.

- We've seen that he's been
influenced by the ideas of medicine,

such as eugenics, racial hygiene.

That's enough to send you
on a pretty murderous path.

But then, you send someone
with that... now that philosophy

into one of the most violent fronts

that's ever been in any war,

and you put them
into all that violence and atrocity,

you're brutalising them.

In mid-January 1943,

Mengele was deemed unfit
for service...

..likely due to injury,
though the specifics remain unclear.

Consequently, he was transferred
from the front lines

and returned to Berlin.

Wasting no time,
he promptly contacted his mentor,

Otmar von Verschuer,

who had taken over the leadership

of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
for Anthropology in Berlin.

- The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute was

one of the leading, uh...
genetic research institutes.

Verschuer writes to Fischer,
who is his mentor, in a way.

And he says, "I've heard
from my former assistant Mengele,

who has just been air evacuated

from around the Stalingrad debacle."

Mengele then finds a kind
of collegial home at the Institute.

He's not a formal member
of the Institute,

but he spends a lot of time there.

NARRATOR: And von Verschuer's
greatest influence

on Mengele came in 1943

when he instructed him
to go to Auschwitz.

For Verschuer,
Auschwitz was an endless source

of subjects for his experiments,

particularly those conducted
on twins.

- Generally, the SS doctors
or the Nazi doctors,

they perceived concentration camps

as, uh... opportunity

to use more human materials
for their own research.

- Mengele certainly sees Auschwitz
as a new career prospect.

Here, he could continue
his own research...

and send all the samples
von Verschuer needed

to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.

- And what Verschuer did, both in
Frankfurt and then later in Berlin,

was he created a registry of twins.

He had contacts
in all of the hospitals, and so,

if a twin was born,
they would register it in a card.

- This environment is going to offer

huge opportunities
to study humanity,

but to study humanity

without any moral breaks at all,

with no moral limits.

You can do what you want.

- If we can kill...

..animals for food, for a meat,

why we can't kill people
for a goodness of science?

I got to Auschwitz

sometime in the middle
of October 1942 from Sachsenhausen.

They loaded us into a wagon.

The train then stood in Katowice,

and some railwaymen appeared beside.

So I asked them, "Where are we?"

And they said, "In Katowice.

Auschwitz. Wrong, wrong.

Gas, gas, gas."

- On the 30th of May, 1943,

SS Captain Josef Mengele walks

through the gates of Auschwitz.

The story
of Josef Mengele continues.

In the next episode, we will witness
how this man transforms

into the "Angel of Death,"

one of the most chilling symbols
of the Holocaust.

- This is the very heart
of the Mengele story right here.

It... It's the ultimate inversion

of... of what medicine
should be about.

- As I looked around,
I realised that my father

and my two older sisters
were not with us.

They disappeared in the crowd.

Never, ever did I see them again.

- "You, the left. You to the right.

How old are you?"
"I'm... I'm...

I'm 72."

"You in good shape?

Well, over there."

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