JOSEF MENGELE
Josef Mengele (16 March 1911 – 7 February 1979) was a
German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and physician in Auschwitz
concentration camp during World War II. He was notorious for the
selection of victims to be killed in the gas chambers and for performing unscientific and often
deadly human
experiments on prisoners. After the war, he fled to South
America, where he evaded capture for the rest of his life.
Assisted by a network of former SS members, Mengele sailed to Argentina
in July 1949. He initially lived in and around Buenos Aires, then fled to Paraguay in 1959 and Brazil in
1960 while being sought by West Germany, Israel, and Nazi hunters such as Simon Wiesenthal so that
he could be brought to trial. In spite of extradition requests by the West
German government and clandestine operations by Mossad (the Israeli intelligence
agency),
Mengele eluded capture. He drowned while swimming off the Brazilian coast in
1979 and was buried under a false name. His remains were disinterred and
positively identified by forensic examination in 1985.
Mengele
and the Stammers bought a house on a farm in Caieiras in 1969, with Mengele as half owner. When Wolfgang Gerhard returned to
Germany in 1971 to seek medical treatment for his seriously ill wife and son,
he gave his identity card to Mengele. The
Stammers had a falling out with Mengele in late 1974 and bought a house in São
Paulo; Mengele was not invited. The
Stammers bought a bungalow in Eldorado,
São Paulo, which they rented out to Mengele. Rolf, who had not seen his father
since the ski holiday in 1956, visited him there in 1977 and found an
unrepentant Nazi who claimed he had never personally harmed anyone and had only
done his duty.
Mengele's health had been steadily
deteriorating since 1972, and he had a stroke in
1976. He had high blood pressure
and an ear infection that had an impact on his balance. While visiting his
friends Wolfram and Liselotte Bossert in the coastal resort of Bertioga on 7 February 1979, he suffered another stroke while
swimming and drowned. Mengele was
buried in Embu das Artes under the name "Wolfgang Gerhard", whose
identification card he had been using since 1971.
Other pseudonyms used by Mengele included Dr. Fausto Rindón and S. Josi
Alvers Aspiazu. He married twice. His first wife was Irene Schonbein and his
second wife was Martha Mengele (widow of his brother Karl).
T E X
T C O M P R E H E N S I O N
01-Choose the correct sentence according
to the text:
a)Simon Wiesenthal was a friend of Josef
Mengele
b)Rolf was Wolfgang Gerhard’s son
c)Josef Mengele was born in South
America
d)Josef Megele married his sister-in-law
e)Josef Mengele was notorious for
performing scientific human experiments on prisoners
02-Josef Mengele passed away in
__________________>
a)Embu das
Artes b)Eldorado c)Bertioga d)Auschwitz e)Buenos Aires
03-When Josef Mengele died, he was sixty
____________ years old.
a)four b)five c)six d)seven e)eight
04-Who said he had never done any harm?
a)Josef Mengele b)the Stammers c)Rolf d)Simon Wiesenthal e)Irene
05-The sentence
“Mengele’s health had been steadily
deteriorating since 1972” is in the _____________tense.
a)simple present b)simple past c)past continuous d)past perfect continuous
e)past
perfect
06-Josef
Megele drowned because
a)he was
drunk b)he couldn’t swim c)of a stroke d)he wanted to commit suicide
e)somebody
induced his drowning
