Monarch to the Kingdom of the Dead

Perhaps, the most haunting and sinister event of the 20th century, the Holocaust is remembered as a dark period of time wherein more than 10 million Jews perished in the name of "ethnic cleansing". Unprecedented ways of killing and human torture were applied systematically and so surreptitiously that the world only had a faint idea about it at that time and was mostly unaware and unsure about what was happening in the Nazi-controlled territories. Auschwitz, the center of the Holocaust became synonymous with pain. Although a large number of the members of the Nazi party and its affiliates were dedicated to this horrible task, one evil doctor who stood apart from all of them was Josef Mengele. 

The "Angel of Death" became infamous for his spine-chilling methods of experimenting on living human beings and often times on the dead bodies too. Methods like abacination in which a hot iron rod was placed on a person's eyes were employed by him. Your fate was decided just by a flick of his finger; those destined to live labored in the factories, the ones fated to die were experimented upon. The victims, who were mostly Jews, were herded like cattle inside a concentration camp. Noxious, toxic water sprayed down from the showers and these concentration camps were converted into extermination camps. The haunting gas chambers of Auschwitz were widely used by him. 

Mengele, who was a Major in the Nazi party and a rather talented doctor too, usually probed on twins and dwarfs. At times, fluids like petroleum were infused into the patient's blood to learn about the chemical reaction that might happen. Gullible children were deliberately infected with diseases such as cholera. Anesthesia, an artificial procedure induced on the patients which precludes pain during medical operations, was disdained by him while performing surgeries and the patients shrieked in pain and agony.

After the end of the Second World War, Mengele fled Germany and entered South America. He became a registered citizen of Paraguay. He eventually died of a stroke in Brazil at the age of 67. It is obvious that he took up an alias there and only much later after his death was it actually confirmed by the forensics team. 

Josef Mengele's monstrosity proves that the devil lives amongst us. The Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy but one of mankind. With several international governing bodies and increased surveillance, it is hard to imagine that such an egregious act could traumatize humanity today. But China's inhumane treatment of the Muslim Uighur minority serves as an example that the evil still persists. It is bad to suffer; it is worse to perpetrate, but the worst is to be a bystander. If you don't speak for others, who will speak when 'they' come for you? 

Written by Vaibhav Jain 

Meme by Veertej Singh

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