sent back to Germany to recover and was awarded an Iron Cross First Degree, Iron Cross Second Degree and the standard decoration for service against the Red armies (28). It was after he recovered that Mengele volunteered as camp doctor at an installation in the southwest of Poland known as Auschwitz (29).Dr. Mengele took his new position with the stated mission to perform research on human genetics. His mentor, Verschuer, had secured a grant through the German Research Council to fund Mengele’s work (Lynott screen 2). Dr. Mengele wanted to create a Germanic super-race by unlocking genetic engineering secrets and devising methods for eradicating inferior gene strands from the human population (screen 2). His most passionate interest soon became twins. Twins were the perfect specimens because one twin could act as the control while the other was endlessly experimented on. This passion is what drove Mengele to the arrival ramps at Auschwitz. In just over a year that Mengele was at the camp he is known to be present for at least 74 arrivals (Gilbert 582), but with 70 to 90 percent of new arrivals being sent immediately to the gas chamber after stepping off the train (Lynott screen 1) who knows how many other arrivals Mengele was at that no one has survived to recall.Mengele’s selection process was very systematic. Young men and women aged eighteen to thirty-five that looked strong were sent to the left – to slave labor. The rest, consisting of the old, the very young children and their mothers, the sick, and the weak were sent to the right – to the gas chamber (Astor 55). Mothers with very young children and mothers with children who had died in transport, as many did, were sent to the gas chamber because, as Mengele himself said, “mothers won’t work well if they know their children are dead,” (60). Mengele selected certain people from the new arrivals for his own personal group. Anyone...
