JOSEF MENGELE

            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