How science ended the search for Josef Mengele

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2019

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An international panel of experts gathered in Brazil in 1985 to identify the remains of a man thought to have been the infamous doctor from Auschwitz. 'To see that this man was finally in his grave was important' says Eric Stover, part of the team of American and German experts who examined the body from a cemetery near São Paulo. Mengele's family in Germany claimed that it was his. Thomas Pappon has spoken to Eric Stover about the efforts to prove that one of the most wanted war criminals of the 20th century was dead. Image: Josef Mengele with his skull superimposed on top. Used by German forensic scientist Richard Helmer. (Credit: Brazilian Institute Medico-Legal)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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1:07.0	Hello you are listening to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service with me Thomas Papon.
1:18.0	Today we go back to 1985 when top forensic scientists from around the world went to Brazil to try to
1:27.2	establish whether bones from a graveyard outside San Paolo were actually the remains of one of the most wanted Nazi war criminals of World War II, Dr Joseph Mangle.
1:40.0	He was known as Auschwitz as the Angel of Death.
1:43.7	He experimented on twins.
1:46.9	He was part of the German eugenics program.
1:50.2	And he wanted to look at how Germany could better select and breed a better race.
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