Mengele's handwritten manuscripts to be sold
Archive of Nazi doctor's writings, journals, poetry and autobiography set to be auctioned off in US; should serve as 'learning tool for future generations,' says auctioneer
"The Auschwitz Angel of Death" left 31 handwritten manuscripts signed by his own hand including his autobiography describing his escape from Germany and life in South America, diaries, philosophical tracts, racial and political commentary, poetry, short stories, and travelogues, Reuters reported.
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The archive is composed of over 3,300 pages of handwritten text, some illustrated, largely in bound journals, written while Mengele was in hiding in Paraguay and Brazil between 1960 and 1975. They are valued at over $400,000.
Archive includes hand-written autobiography
Bill Panagopoulos, president of Alexander Historic Auctions, has a strong opinion on the sale of the archive: "Scholarly institutions or historic collections should obtain these writings not as a 'remembrance' of a horrific period of world history, but more as a learning tool for future generations to recognize the psychopathic mentality that incited the Holocaust so that similar genocides are never repeated.
The auction will take place in Stamford Connecticut on Thursday, the seller remains anonymous.
Notorious 'doctor'
Panagopulos said that one of the "highlights" of the writings is the description of the Nazi doctor's escape from Germany and his flight from Nazi hunters.
In one of the journals Mengele writes about the Nuremburg Trials while justifying the Nazi concentration camp system. He also refuted the existence of cruel and despicable conditions in the camps.
Mengele denied camp's cruel conditions (Photo: EPA)
At the war's end, Mengele fled to South America where he lived in wealth, then poverty, until his accidental death by drowning in Brazil in 1979.
The public announcement of his death and the discovery of these journals would take another six years, as Mengele had sympathetic friends in Germany and Brazil who continued to protect his anonymity.
After Mengele's death was finally made public, the journals were seized by Brazilian police – it was only then that the secrets of the "Angel of Death's" 34-year life on the run were finally exposed.
Between 1943 and 1945 Mengele served as head physician at the Birkenau death camp which was adjacent to Auschwitz. He initially gained notoriety for being one of the physicians who supervised the "selection" of arriving transports of prisoners, determining who would be gassed and who would live simply with the wave of a finger.
However, he became far more infamous for performing grisly human experiments on camp inmates, including children and twins, for which he earned the frightening nickname "Angel of Death." In time, Mengele himself came to represent the Nazi concentration camp system with all of its cruelties.
Reuters contributed to this report
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