(1911–79?), Nazi doctor, born in Günzburg, Germany; medical degree from University of Frankfurt am Main; enlisted in Nazi stormtroopers 1933; joined Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene 1934; Gestapo medical officer during World War II; appointed chief physician at Birkenau and Auschwitz concentration camps 1943, where he supervised operation of gas chambers; called the Angel of Death for his cruel and painful pseudoscientific experiments on inmates of camps; escaped after war to Bavaria, then to South America by 1949; settled in Brazil 1961; held citizenship in Paraguay until it was revoked 1979; body found in 1979 determined to be Mengele's, though reports claimed that evidence was inconclusive as late as 1991.