Customer Reviews
Good, but lacking enough background - By: ChinaDoc, 31 May 2008 
I bought this book because I wanted to find out more about Mengele's wartime activities & the efforts to locate him after the war. This book succeeds perfectly in the latter but fails in the former. We are given a lightening fast summary of Mengele's wartime activies, with very little examples or witness statements or indeed much in the way of exploration of the man's psyche. Then we have a beautifully researched & well-written account of his every movement postwar. This book feels unbalanced. For this reason alone only 3 stars. Surely developing the character of Mengele the Auschwitz doctor would only have strengthened our interest in the hunt for Mengele the war criminal fugitive?
34 years in hell. - By: Peter H. Kistemaker, 26 Mar 2007 
First of alll: A damned good book! Bonechilling material!! Furthermore:
What kind of punishment do you give a man like Mengele?
Deathpenalty? Life in prison? The first one is over too quick & the second one is too easy. No, I think Mengele has got the best punishment he could have. He was 34 years on the run. Never had a moment of peace in his entire life after the ending of WW2. The stress it brought him, even gave him a shorter span of life. He developed a lot of stress related sickness. Always had to look over his shoulder. Did they recognize him? Was this his last day of "freedom"? If he had been sentenced for life in prison he could have reached, like Hess, a respectable age well over 80 years old. Now he died 68 years of age. Alone & forgotten in some Godforsaken place in Brazil. He sticked, untill his dead, to his beliefs about the Nazi's & the Jews. A rigid & untolereant character of a man.
He never got the chance to fullfill a job on his intelectuel level, always lowpaid workman's labour. Never could socialise with people of his intelect. That hurt him like hell. So, in fact, life in "freedom" was in fact life in hell. Never the hell he created for the people who died through his hands or command. But even we, as normal people, couldn't give him, if he had be captured, the torments he gave alll those other innocent people. For that, we are to civilised. No, I think it has been for the best that he stayed on the run. He punished himself with it. More then we ever could give to him. I feel sorry for his son Rolf. You only get one biological father in your life & he got this one.
An expert dissction of Mengele the man and his final years in South America. - By: M. Warburton, 04 Dec 2006 This expertly researched & well written book takes one through Menegle's life from birth in the town of Gunzburg to a well-to-do industrial family, through his years studying medicine, his years as a Nazi, his time in Auschwitz & also his years on the run in South America. No other book has followed both how Mengele escaped from Germany & managed to remain uncaptured despite numerous opportunities to capture 'The Angel Of Death' in such extraordinary detail. If you want to know the truth as to what happened to Mengele right up to the point of his undramatic death in Brazil, this is the book for you. Dispel with the myth & find out about the factual life of Mengele & then decide which is the more extraordinary. Highyl recommended.
A thorough account of the life of the Angel of Death - By: O. Doyle, 11 Feb 2006 The introduction describes Josef Mengele as the ‘personification of evil’ & after reading accounts of the atrocities he committed as a doctor in Auschwitz I couldn’t agree more. As the most famous doctor at Auschwitz, Mengele has been branded ‘The Angel of Death’ because of his power in deciding who lived & who died. Survivors of Auschwitz have commented how other doctors at Auschwitz used to turn up to selections at the railroads drunk to help them get through the trauma of deciding who would live & who would die. Mengele was never one who had to get drunk beforehand…..he seemed to enjoy the process. So much so that he used to bribe others to let him go to selections if he was off-duty! This is a truly sick individual.
I came away from this book angry that more wasn’t done to co-ordinate the capture of one of the most infamous men of the Holocaust. He died a lonely & angry man totallly devoid of guilt for what he had done & in his wake left a son who was relieved when he heard of his death.
The authors of this book have done extensive research into Josef Mengele & his life at Auschwitz & escape to South America where he lived until his death. I can’t imagine there could possibly exist a more comprehensive study of the life & death of Josef Mengele. This is a fascinating & at times deeply disturbing account of the life of one of the most evil men ever to have walked the earth & is a must for
Very well researched - By: Giles Hogben, 15 Nov 2005 The book is very well researched. Loads of quotes from original material. They spent 5 years researching it. It also has a good balance between his life after auschwitz & during auschwitz.
