1943- to death
1943 - In May SS head Heinrich Himmler appoints Mengele as a doctor at Birkenau, the supplementary extermination camp at Auschwitz in southern Poland, 60 km west of Krakow.
Mengele selects incoming Jews for labour or extermination in the gas chambers and conducts pseudoscientific medical experiments on inmates, principally infants, young twins, dwarfs and those with genetic abnormalities. He is given his own laboratory block, independent financing and a medical staff.
He is also supported by the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics at Dahlem in Berlin and sends specimens to the institute director, Dr Otmar von Verschuer, his former supervisor at the University of Frankfurt and an expert on the genetics of twins.
Mengele investigates ways to increase human fertility. He tries to find a genetic cause for the disease 'noma' (a rare gangrenous condition of the face and mouth), studies physical abnormalities and contagious diseases, conducts experiments with wounds, and attempts to change the colour of inmate's eyes to blue with injections of chemicals directly into the eyeball. His chief interest is twins.
About 1,500 sets of twins are collected at Birkenau for "research" designed to develop a theory of heredity and the relation "between disease, racial types, and miscegenation" (racial interbreeding). Mengele hopes to discover the genetic key to creating an Aryan "master race." Twins are subjected to clinical examinations, blood tests, X-rays, anthropological measurements and post-mortem dissection following lethal injections of chloroform into their hearts. One twin serves as a control while the other endures the experiments.
Mengele's experiments represent only a few of the approximate 180 procedures conducted on humans in more than 30 "laboratories" scattered about the Third Reich.
The war turns against Germany in the winter of 1942-43 when the Sixth Army is defeated at Stalingrad. By the end of 1943, the Soviets have broken through the German siege of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and recaptured much of the Ukrainian Republic.
The Western Allies take Africa in 1943, land in Sicily and Italy, and prepare for the 'D-Day' landings on the Normandy beaches in France on 6 June 1944 and the invasion of Germany six months later. Soviet troops, meanwhile, advance from the east.
1945 - Auschwitz is evacuated on 18 January and liberated by the Soviet Army on the 27 January. Of the 3,000 children involved in Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz only about 200 remain alive.
According to the television documentary Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State, 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz during the four and a half years of its existence. Of these, at least 1.1 million died. The documentary says that as well as the one million Jews killed, at least 200,000 of them children, "hundreds of Jehovah's witnesses, homosexuals, and other minorities were murdered. 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 21,000 Gipsies, 70,000 Polish political prisoners."
The majority of the dead have been killed in gas chambers.
Following the evacuation of Auschwitz, Mengele is transferred to Gross Rosen concentration camp in Silesia, Poland, to the west of Auschwitz. He flees further west on 18 February, eight days before Gross Rosen is liberated.
By March, as the Western forces reach the Rhine River, Soviet armies have overrun most of Eastern Europe and are converging on Berlin. The Soviets march under the slogan, "There will be no pity. They have sown the wind and now they are harvesting the whirlwind."
By April an Allied victory in Europe is certain. Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker on 30 April as Soviet troops storm the capital. On 7 May Germany surrenders unconditionally.
Mengele is named as a principal war criminal and added to the first central registry of war criminals and security suspects compiled by the Allied high command.
He is captured by Allied troops in June and held in a detention camp near Munich. However, by using the papers of another doctor, he is able to conceal his identity and is released in August. He goes underground, posing as a stableman on a farm near Rosenheim in Bavaria.
Beginning in November, 22 surviving Nazi leaders considered responsible for the crimes committed by Germany during the war are tried before an international military tribunal sitting in Nuremberg. Among those brought before the tribunal are Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Rudolf Hess, and Albert Speer. Twelve of the accused are sentenced to death, seven receive prison sentences, and three are acquitted.
Following the high-profile Nuremberg trials, lower-ranking Nazi war criminals are also brought to justice. Mengele, however, will avoid arrest and prosecution.
1949 - With the aid of his family and former SS contacts, Mengele escapes to Buenos Aires in Argentina, obtaining a West German passport and identity card under his own name in 1958.
1959 - West Germany issues a warrant for his arrest and in 1960 the West German Foreign Ministry seeks his extradition from Argentina. Mengele flees to Brazil then Paraguay, where he gains citizenship.
1961 - Fearing he may be kidnapped by Israeli agents, he moves to Brazil, where he becomes friendly with ex-Nazi Wolfgang Gerhard, who allows Mengele to assume his identity.
Later, Rafi Eitan, an Israeli agent who participated in the kidnapping of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann from Argentina in May 1960, reveals just how closely Mengele came to being captured.
According to Eitan, Mengele had been identified and his Buenos Aires residence located by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, but an operation to apprehend him was passed over for fear that it might jeopardise the seizure of Eichmann.
By the time the Eichmann operation had been successfully completed, Mengele had disappeared.
1965 - The West German Government extends its extradition request from Argentina to Brazil. Mossad also believes that Mengele is living in Brazil but is diverted by the outbreak of the Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours in 1967.
1979 - Mengele dies from a stroke while swimming on 7 February at Enseada da Bertioga, near Sao Paulo, Brazil, but is buried under Gerhard's name. News of his death does not reach the world until 1985.
Postscript
1985 - Mengele is tried in absentia at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in February. Survivors of his experiments at Auschwitz provide testimony.
In May, West German police raid a house in Mengele's home town of Günzburg and discover documents that led to his grave. On 6 June, police in Brazil exhume the body.
A team of leading forensic scientists from around the world is assembled to investigate the bones. The team concludes that the skeleton is that of Josef Mengele.
2005 - On 10 May a national memorial to the Holocaust is opened in Berlin. The 'Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe' is located near the Brandenburg Gate in the centre of the city. It includes a museum with exhibits on the Nazi's campaign to wipe out European Jews.
Mengele selects incoming Jews for labour or extermination in the gas chambers and conducts pseudoscientific medical experiments on inmates, principally infants, young twins, dwarfs and those with genetic abnormalities. He is given his own laboratory block, independent financing and a medical staff.
He is also supported by the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics at Dahlem in Berlin and sends specimens to the institute director, Dr Otmar von Verschuer, his former supervisor at the University of Frankfurt and an expert on the genetics of twins.
Mengele investigates ways to increase human fertility. He tries to find a genetic cause for the disease 'noma' (a rare gangrenous condition of the face and mouth), studies physical abnormalities and contagious diseases, conducts experiments with wounds, and attempts to change the colour of inmate's eyes to blue with injections of chemicals directly into the eyeball. His chief interest is twins.
About 1,500 sets of twins are collected at Birkenau for "research" designed to develop a theory of heredity and the relation "between disease, racial types, and miscegenation" (racial interbreeding). Mengele hopes to discover the genetic key to creating an Aryan "master race." Twins are subjected to clinical examinations, blood tests, X-rays, anthropological measurements and post-mortem dissection following lethal injections of chloroform into their hearts. One twin serves as a control while the other endures the experiments.
Mengele's experiments represent only a few of the approximate 180 procedures conducted on humans in more than 30 "laboratories" scattered about the Third Reich.
The war turns against Germany in the winter of 1942-43 when the Sixth Army is defeated at Stalingrad. By the end of 1943, the Soviets have broken through the German siege of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and recaptured much of the Ukrainian Republic.
The Western Allies take Africa in 1943, land in Sicily and Italy, and prepare for the 'D-Day' landings on the Normandy beaches in France on 6 June 1944 and the invasion of Germany six months later. Soviet troops, meanwhile, advance from the east.
1945 - Auschwitz is evacuated on 18 January and liberated by the Soviet Army on the 27 January. Of the 3,000 children involved in Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz only about 200 remain alive.
According to the television documentary Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State, 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz during the four and a half years of its existence. Of these, at least 1.1 million died. The documentary says that as well as the one million Jews killed, at least 200,000 of them children, "hundreds of Jehovah's witnesses, homosexuals, and other minorities were murdered. 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 21,000 Gipsies, 70,000 Polish political prisoners."
The majority of the dead have been killed in gas chambers.
Following the evacuation of Auschwitz, Mengele is transferred to Gross Rosen concentration camp in Silesia, Poland, to the west of Auschwitz. He flees further west on 18 February, eight days before Gross Rosen is liberated.
By March, as the Western forces reach the Rhine River, Soviet armies have overrun most of Eastern Europe and are converging on Berlin. The Soviets march under the slogan, "There will be no pity. They have sown the wind and now they are harvesting the whirlwind."
By April an Allied victory in Europe is certain. Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker on 30 April as Soviet troops storm the capital. On 7 May Germany surrenders unconditionally.
Mengele is named as a principal war criminal and added to the first central registry of war criminals and security suspects compiled by the Allied high command.
He is captured by Allied troops in June and held in a detention camp near Munich. However, by using the papers of another doctor, he is able to conceal his identity and is released in August. He goes underground, posing as a stableman on a farm near Rosenheim in Bavaria.
Beginning in November, 22 surviving Nazi leaders considered responsible for the crimes committed by Germany during the war are tried before an international military tribunal sitting in Nuremberg. Among those brought before the tribunal are Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Rudolf Hess, and Albert Speer. Twelve of the accused are sentenced to death, seven receive prison sentences, and three are acquitted.
Following the high-profile Nuremberg trials, lower-ranking Nazi war criminals are also brought to justice. Mengele, however, will avoid arrest and prosecution.
1949 - With the aid of his family and former SS contacts, Mengele escapes to Buenos Aires in Argentina, obtaining a West German passport and identity card under his own name in 1958.
1959 - West Germany issues a warrant for his arrest and in 1960 the West German Foreign Ministry seeks his extradition from Argentina. Mengele flees to Brazil then Paraguay, where he gains citizenship.
1961 - Fearing he may be kidnapped by Israeli agents, he moves to Brazil, where he becomes friendly with ex-Nazi Wolfgang Gerhard, who allows Mengele to assume his identity.
Later, Rafi Eitan, an Israeli agent who participated in the kidnapping of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann from Argentina in May 1960, reveals just how closely Mengele came to being captured.
According to Eitan, Mengele had been identified and his Buenos Aires residence located by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, but an operation to apprehend him was passed over for fear that it might jeopardise the seizure of Eichmann.
By the time the Eichmann operation had been successfully completed, Mengele had disappeared.
1965 - The West German Government extends its extradition request from Argentina to Brazil. Mossad also believes that Mengele is living in Brazil but is diverted by the outbreak of the Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours in 1967.
1979 - Mengele dies from a stroke while swimming on 7 February at Enseada da Bertioga, near Sao Paulo, Brazil, but is buried under Gerhard's name. News of his death does not reach the world until 1985.
Postscript
1985 - Mengele is tried in absentia at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in February. Survivors of his experiments at Auschwitz provide testimony.
In May, West German police raid a house in Mengele's home town of Günzburg and discover documents that led to his grave. On 6 June, police in Brazil exhume the body.
A team of leading forensic scientists from around the world is assembled to investigate the bones. The team concludes that the skeleton is that of Josef Mengele.
2005 - On 10 May a national memorial to the Holocaust is opened in Berlin. The 'Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe' is located near the Brandenburg Gate in the centre of the city. It includes a museum with exhibits on the Nazi's campaign to wipe out European Jews.