What Is The Difference Between Mengele And The Twin Experiments?

Science is a powerful tool in our society, used to answer the most complex of questions. In some cases, though, science is abused and used as a façade for someone’s own personal gain. This was the case for Josef Mengele and the twin experiments he was in charge of at Auschwitz from 1943-1945. The experiments that were performed were abuses of power that Doctor Mengele held over the prisoners at Auschwitz. Mengele earned a Ph.D. in physical anthropology from the University of Munich and acted as an assistant to Dr. Otmar von Verschuer. Otmar von Verschuer was known for his interest in experiments on twins, providing Mengele with ideas to take with him when he arrived at Auschwitz. Mengele did not act alone in his experiments; he enlisted many
A common experiment that Mengele performed on the twins was to inject one twin with a disease, and keep the other twin heathy to act as a control. This injection would make the diseased twin very sick, and no treatment would be given to the twin to help with the painful symptoms that followed. In a lot of the cases, the diseased twin would die. Mengele, wanting the twins’ bodies to be studied at the same time, would order for the remaining twin to have a chloroform injection to the heart, ending their life. This was the common practice if any of the twins died from Mengele’s other experiments: if one twin died, the other would be
Eva and Miriam Mozes were one set of twins who lived to tell the story of what Mengele did to them at Auschwitz. Eva and Miriam arrived at Auschwitz in May of 1944 after having spent the past month in a run-down ghetto. When they first arrived at Auschwitz with matching burgundy dresses, an SS officer spotted them immediately and snatched them from their mother. Eva and Mozes stayed in Auschwitz until its liberation, and were under the jurisdiction of Mengele. Eva and Miriam were one of the many sets of twins injected with deadly diseases by Mengele, but with one stark difference: they survived. Eva suffered for five weeks at Auschwitz’s infirmary while she fought for her life against the disease Mengele injected her with (to this day Eva does not know for sure what disease it had been). While Eva was in the hospital, Miriam was sent to solitary confinement for two weeks before Mengele injected her with a disease that would stunt the growth of her kidneys, and he sent her back to the barracks. Eva was determined to be reunited with her sister. She writes in her book, Surviving the Angel of Death, “I said to myself, ‘I am not dead. I refuse to die. I am going to outsmarts those doctors and get out of here alive.’ Above all, I knew I had to get back to Miriam”. Through astounding bravery, Eva managed to