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July 18, 2011

Mengele’s writings to be auctioned

JTA

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The writings of Auschwitz’s “Angel of Death,” Dr. Josef Mengele, are for sale by auction.

Alexander Historic Auctions of Stamford, Conn., announced that it will sell off all of the war criminal’s writings in an auction on July 21.

The writings include Mengele’s autobiography describing his escape from Germany and life in South America, diaries, philosophical tracts, racial and political commentary, poetry, short stories and travelogues. The archive is composed of more than 3,300 pages of handwritten text, some illustrated, written while Mengele was in hiding in Paraguay and Brazil between 1960 and 1975.

Mengele joined Heinrich Himmler’s SS in 1938 and was transferred to Auschwitz in 1943. He was one of the doctors that selected which prisoners would live or die upon arrival in the camp. Later he became more famous for his torturous experiments on children and twins.

At war’s end Mengele fled to South America, where he resided living in wealth, then poverty, until his accidental death by drowning in Brazil in 1979.

“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,” Bill Panagopoulos, president of the auction house, said in a statement.

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