Mengele's nickname was Beppo; he was called Todesengel (Angel of Death) by camp inmates.
In 1932, at the age of 21, Mengele joined the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten (Steel Helmet, League of Front Soldiers); this organization was incorporated into the SA in 1933, but Mengele resigned shortly thereafter, alluding to health problems. He applied for Nazi party membership in 1937 and in 1938 he joined the SS. In 1939, Mengele married his first wife, Irene Schoenbein. From 1938 to 1939 he served for six months with a specially trained Gebirgsjäger regiment. In 1940 he was placed in the reserve medical corps, following which he served with a Waffen-SS unit, the multi-national SS-Division (mot.) Wiking. In 1942 he was wounded at the Russian front and was pronounced medically unfit for combat, and promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain).
Mengele also received an Iron Cross first class, and an Iron Cross second class, for bravery in combat. His Iron Cross first class, (roughly equivalent to the U.S. Silver Star decoration), was awarded after then SS-Ostuf. Mengele, under enemy fire, pulled two panzer crewmen out of a burning tank. His other awards include the Wound Badge, and the Medal for the Care of the German People.
It was during his 21-month stay at Auschwitz that Mengele achieved infamy, and it is for this period that he was later referred to as the "Angel of Death". Mengele was usually part of the medical delegation which met incoming prisoners, determining which would be retained for work and experimentation, and which would be sent immediately to the gas chambers.
Mengele had a morbid fascination with twins; beginning in 1943, twins were selected and placed in special barracks. Most of the children selected for these experiments came from the Roma being held at Auschwitz. Almost all of Mengele's experiments were of dubious scientific value, ignoring the lack of ethics involved, including attempts to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, various amputations and other brutal surgeries, and in at least one case attempting to create an artificial conjoined twin by sewing the veins in two twins together; this operation was not successful and only caused the hands of the children to become badly infected. Another dubious experiment that he purportedly tried involved submerging subjects into boiling cauldrons of water so as to see how much heat the human body could take before death. Subjects of Mengele's experiments were almost always murdered afterward for dissection, if they survived the experiment itself.
Mengele also had found interest in dwarfs, finding the Lilliput Troupe, seven of whose ten members were dwarfs. He often called them "his dwarf family" and experimented on them often. He was fascinated at their structure, why they had smaller limbs yet a normal-sized trunk. They seemed vital to his research and he had them treated specially - they were allowed to keep their clothes, scarves and accessories they had from their home. Mengele had even given them make-up to wear on more than one occasion.
His family at home backed him financially and he prospered in the 1950s, first operating a toy-workshop and later as an associate in a small pharmaceutical enterprise. After this short period, however, Mengele lived rather poorly. In 1959 he fled to Altos, Paraguay when his address was discovered by Nazi-hunters. Martha never managed to adjust to her new life and left him. Mengele later moved south to Hohenau and then from late 1960 he lived in the São Paulo region of Brazil until his death in 1979, when he suffered a Stroke while swimming at a beach near Embu, Brazil and drowned.
Despite international efforts to track him down, he was never apprehended and lived for 35 years hiding under various aliases. Adolf Eichmann's capture and trial by Israel prompted Mengele's fears and frequent movements, and Mossad tracked him for a time, but Israel's efforts were directed towards normalizing relations with Paraguay and fighting enemies closer to home. He was not tracked down by Nazi hunters until June 6, 1985, when his body was found and identified after a combined effort of American, West German and South American authorities. In 1992, DNA tests confirmed his identity.
Mengele has also been used as a fictionalized literary and movie character, featured prominently in The Boys from Brazil (portrayed by Gregory Peck) and as part of an amalgam of Nazi doctors in Marathon Man. He was the subject matter of the song "Angel of Death", the opening track on Slayer's 1986 album, Reign in Blood. He was also the subject of a song by Al Stewart called, Running Man, from his 1980 album, 24 Carrots The character of Diana in the 1983 NBC science-fiction Miniseries V is also attributed to him. He also featured in the BBC series, Kessler, which was a spin-off of the popular BBC series, The Secret Army; many of his acts of torture are recounted in Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS. He was one of the lead characters in the movie Out Of The Ashes, starring Bruce Davison and Christine Lahti.
Mengele has a daughter born to an Australian woman of German lineage after a liaison between the two when the woman, aged 23, visited the German Colony Colonia Independencia in Paraguay in mid-1960 along with her mother and brother. In September, 1960, Mengele decided that capture by the Israelis was inevitable as long as he stayed in Paraguay. He resolved to begin a new life elsewhere. The choice was Brazil. "The strong change in my surroundings will definitely be mirrored in my writings," he wrote in a diary. For a month there were no diary entries. "So much happened in this time," Later this was determined to mean the discovery that he was to be the father of a second child, who he knew he would never see. Mengele wrote. "For a certain reason that I cannot explain, I cannot write about it." His child, was born four weeks premature, in Melbourne, Australia on March 10, 1961. Her name was recorded as "Marion" on her birth certificate, but was changed when she was adopted privately in August of that year.
Eighty-five previously unreleased letters and diaries written by Mengele were discovered in late 2004. They had been seized in a 1985 raid on the home of Wolfram and Liselotte Bossert, who had harbored the fugitive Mengele until his death.