Product Details

• Format: Black & White, Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: A & E Home Video
• VHS Release Date: February 7, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000006QGO
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #337,450 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE PERSONIFICATION OF EVIL, November 14, 2000

By 

Bonita L. Davis - See all my reviews

This review is from: Biography - Josef Mengele [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Calling him a mad man would be a compliment thus absolving him from all of his crimes. After all if one is mad, one can't be held responsible. Josef Mengele makes Adolph Hitler look like a saint. He of all people is the devil incarnate of the extermination of six million Jews.

A&E's Biography of this man forces us to look at evil at its worse in a man who was an accomplished musician, loved art and held a Phd and MD. This same man tortured and conducted cruel and unusual experiments on the men, women and children that were housed in Auschwitz in the name of research. His goal was to engineer a "master" race and what better way to do it when you have helpless human beings at your disposal.

What you will see in this video will sicken and anger you. You will go on a journey through the monster's life, his work in the death camps and his escape out of Germany to South America. You will follow his trail and ask the question of why. How could someone like this so well cultured become so evil?

In looking at Mengele's life and deeds we're confronted with man's inhumanity to man. Although we can condemn him we must look at him and this movie because an element of evil lies within us. We are forced to look at this evil and declare "Never, Ever, Never, Again." This is an excellent chronicle of showing what can happen when all moral restraint is set aside.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating look at history's most infamous doctor, June 24, 2004

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Biography - Josef Mengele [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Josef Mengele is one of the most fascinating and infamous of the Nazi war criminals; I think there are a number of reasons for this, but it all comes down to a deep sense of mystery. First off, Nazi hunters never caught him; the evidence suggests he died a mercifully quick death - in this life, justice was not served. Just as important, in my opinion, is the question of what he did. There can be no doubt that he performed some of the most fiendish and unethical medical experiments in the history of the world (and basically consigned some 400,000 prisoners to their deaths), but even as impressive a documentary as this A&E Biography look at the mad doctor of Auschwitz does not delve too deeply into details. I assume the details of Mengele's many crimes against man and God are just too graphic and sickening to be talked about publicly. This is not to say this Biography video does not mention several damning charges - such as killing people in order to autopsy them, performing vivisections of live human beings, injecting assorted substances such as gasoline into patients' blood, and supposedly keeping a collection of eyeballs. We also know he was fervent researcher into twins and had access to 250 sets of twins during his time in the death camp. But why? Just saying he was trying to find the secret of life or searching for a way to eugenically produce perfect specimens of "the master race" just doesn't seem like enough of a reason to me. I guess I am trying too hard to get inside Mengele's head; it's really impossible to understand a monster such as Josef Mengele.

This is an excellent video despite the lack of sickeningly intimate details. It is weakest early on, using a certain element of psychobabble to try and explain how Mengele could betray his medical profession and his fellow man to become the Angel of Death. I was surprised to learn that Mengele was a highly decorated combat veteran of WWII and only took a post away from the front lines after being seriously wounded. A good half of the video is devoted to Mengele's escape to South America. Twice he was held in POW camps, but the Allied forces did not know his true identity and thus did not hold him (for some mysterious reason, he did not bear an SS blood type tattoo). In South America, he first went to Argentina (aided by the same Odessa pipeline that helped many other outlaw SS members take refuge in the area). In the early 1950s, he actually began using his real name in open fashion, thinking the search for war criminals had finally ended. He went back underground in 1959 when the German government asked Brazil about extraditing former Nazis, fleeing to Paraguay. The next year, when Eichmann was kidnapped, tried, and executed by the Israelis, Mengele moved to Brazil where he apparently lived out the final 19 years of his life. In 1985, remains found in a Brazilian grave were confirmed to be the remains of the most wanted Nazi war criminal of them all, and Mengele's story came to an end.

This is a most impressive treatment of the life and crimes of Josef Mengele, but I still don't think it penetrates deeply enough into the utter depravity of the man. Rare insight into his personal life is offered here to some degree, though, and I was actually rather stunned when I suddenly began listening to an actual tape of Mengele playing the piano and singing. The video is not horribly graphic, although there are a number of shots of dead and barely living survivors of the death camp where Mengele made an ignominious name for himself. If you are as fascinated with Nazi history as I am, this would make an excellent addition to your video collection.