e sick. Mengele would often examine the hospital facilities and infirmaries at Auschwitz. For prisoners, illness involved great risk – if weak and ill they served no labor purpose to the Nazi’s. During Mengele’s examinations he would require the inhabitants to rise for roll call. Anyone to weak to stand for this was sent to the gas chamber. His treatment for any disease that might cause an epidemic was simple. If even only one prisoner showed symptoms of a contagious disease every inmate in that barrack would be gassed and the barrack disinfected (Astor 75). He was known to do this on over thirty occasions.Especially disturbing to Mengele was typhus. It seemed Mengele had an almost phobic reaction to symptoms that even hinted at typhus (Astor 75). It is said that during the summer of 1943 Mengele himself came down with either typhoid or typhus and spent a month recuperating (75). Upon his return, Mengele was determined to eradicate all sources of infection. This led to more mass gassing. Mengele sent these groups to death because they scared him, but there is one group of people Mengele actually is said to have enjoyed sending to the gas chambers.Pregnant women of Auschwitz had the most to fear of Dr. Mengele. Women became aware of Mengele’s attitude and started to hide their pregnancies (Astor 80). Pregnancy at Auschwitz meant certain death to both mother and child, if the child were even given a chance to be born. Mengele tried to boast his “humanitarianism” in having these women killed. He would say how Auschwitz had no facilities for newborns (Dekel 80). A child was allowed to be born in the case of one girl who eluded Mengele with her pregnancy for seven months. To punish the mother for tricking him, Mengele bound her breasts so she could not nurse the child. The mother laid in torment listening to her child’s cries of hunger for days until a prisoner on the hospital staf...
