A diary and a revealing letter written by notorious Auschwitz death camp Dr. Josef Mengele were put on auction in the United States last month. Mengele was the SS officer who supervised the selection of prisoner transports arriving at Auschwitz and performed bizarre medical experiments on camp inmates.
Alexander Autographs, one of the largest auction houses for rare historical documents and manuscripts, offered the rare diary and letter for a starting price of $60,000 on January 20 and 21. So far, nobody has shown an interest in the chilling documents, which are still on sale.
The Stamford, Connecticut based auctioneer is offering the rare, unpublished diary of the man known as "the angel of death." Mengele, who sent thousands to their death at Auschwitz, wrote the diary in the 1960s in South America, where he fled after WWII.
The auction house says it received the documents from a person who bought them from Mengele's son.
Asked if he had any qualms about selling such documents, Bill Panagopulos, Alexander Autographs' president, said: "Make no mistake about it - I have no sympathy for these monsters. My father's home town was wiped out by the Nazis in a reprisal action. But it is of vital importance that such documents remain available as tangible evidence of the evil deeds of the past, as well as to provide further pieces of history's puzzle."
The 180-page journal was written in German in a children's notebook titled Illustrated Zoology, decorated with animal drawings. Mengele penned his impressions and thoughts on subjects such as art, culture, religion, history and biology, as well as ideas based on the Nazi natural selection doctrine.
The diary begins in June 1960, in Argentina, 19 years before the world's most hunted Nazi war criminal drowned - or possibly suffered a stroke - while swimming off the shore of Bertioga, Brazil.
"I see how right my plans have been all along and I understand now that following people's advice mostly results in irreparable nonsense. But I refuse to pass guilt onto others: I was solely responsible for my decisions," writes Mengele, who was 49 when he started the journal.
Unless the world adopted breeding programs like those he pursued in Auschwitz, "mankind is doomed, even without war," he writes.
Referring to morality, aesthetics and genetics, Mengele writes: "The real problem is to define when human life is worth living and when it has to be eradicated."
"There's only one truth and one true beauty ... There's no 'good' or 'bad' in nature. There's only 'appropriate' or 'inappropriate' ... Both sides receive equal chances. Nevertheless, nature provides a strainer. Things that are 'inappropriate' fall through since they lose in the struggle for survival."
Discussing the Indian caste system, Mengele notes, "Brahmans are built nicely; some of them even have blue eyes. They have small, straight noses and they're in general high quality human beings. And this is because the Brahmans used the highest caste to preserve their noble blood. They are the descendants of Nordic peoples who once conquered and ruled India."
Mengele discusses how to create an upper class: "It can only be done by selecting the best."
"Everything will end in catastrophe if natural selection is altered to the point that gifted people are overwhelmed by billions of morons," he warns, predicting that 90 percent of humans will starve due to stupidity and the remaining 10 percent will survive "like reptiles survived. The rest will die, just like the dinosaurs did ... we have to prevent the rise of the idiot masses," he writes.
"The feeble-minded person ('village idiot') was separated from farmers because of his social status and low income," he writes.
"This separation is no longer the case in the age of technology. He is now on the same level with the farmer's son who went to the city.
"We know that selection rules all nature by choosing and exterminating ... Those who were unfit had to accept the rule of more accomplished human beings, or they were pushed out or exterminated. Weaker humans were excluded from reproducing. This is the only way for human beings to exist and to maintain themselves."
He says "inferior morons" should be exterminated, adding, "We have to make sure that nature's suspended eradication will continue through human arrangements ... birth control can be done by sterilizing those with deficient genes."
Mengele goes on to advise Germany to abandon feminist ideology and control childbirth. "Biology doesn't support equal rights. Women shouldn't be working in higher positions. Women's work must depend on filling a biological quota. Birth control can be done by sterilizing those with deficient genes. Those with good genes will be sterilized after the fifth child."
Also included in the sale is a letter Mengele wrote to his wife during his Auschwitz tenure, expressing his love and plans for "our imaginary reunion." He writes that he hopes to be transferred to a "combat unit."
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