Nazi Mystery: Twins from Brazil

[20score]

Joseph Mengele, the escaped Nazi war criminal and SS physician, known as the Angel of Death, spent years doing bizarre medical experiments on twins at Auschwitz working to determine if twins held the key to building a blond-haired, blue-eyed master race for Adolf Hitler. Now a historian says he has evidence that Mengele's attempts may not have ended at Auschwitz, and that his obsession to engineer an Aryan master race continued, and that succeeded while he was on the run in South America. Deep in the Brazilian outback in a tiny town among the 80 households in a one-square-mile area are reportedly some 38 pairs of twins. Blond, blue-eyed twins. Bizarre and inexplicable, could they be the product of Mengele's machinations? Now, with exclusive access, EXPLORER goes inside the investigation; From the secret agents who trailed him, to the scientists now uncovering the facts behind the fantastical phenomenon, no stone is left unturned.

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/explorer/4087/Overview?source=link_tw_02#tab-Overview

[Libertas1776]

1. Creepy. n/t

[Scairp]

3. But guess what?

They figure out in the last four minutes of the program that it was not possible for Mengele to have been in that remote area of Brazil, and that you cannot propagate generations of twins with a one time experiment on women 50 years ago. In other words, this was a theory, and was disproved to my satisfaction. I imagine Mengele was too busy trying not to end up in Israel on trial for his life to be running around the Brazilian outback conducting minor experiments that actually worked for generations to come. In the end, this didn't even come close to passing the smell test.

[Sinti]

2. The Boys From Brazil????

Is this a work of fiction?

[Scairp]

5. As it turned out, yes

[stray cat]

8. Actually NO

[struggle4progress]

4. ... The town's baptismal records date back to 1927, long before Mengele's supposed arrival — and so

does the exceptional rate of twinning ... Furthermore, the records show no "surge" in twinning in the 1960s, when Mengele is said to have experimented on the local populace ... Also, the high rate of twin births continues today, which rules out a role for Mengele ...

"Nazi Twins" a Myth ...
Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News
November 25, 2009
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/091125-nazi-twins-brazil-mengele.html

[formercia]

6. Mengele may have gone there to study the phenomenon

and was probably fascinated by it.

[struggle4progress]

9. Absent substantial evidence for that, what's the point of speculating? I can't imagine

what useful thing one might learn from it. But if it interests you, his diary is available:

... A diary and letters written by Josef Mengele .. recently surfaced in police archives in Sao Paulo, Brazil ... http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,330311,00.html

[formercia]

11. I have absolutely no curiosity in reading that material

but I am offended that you would imply that I might.

[struggle4progress]

12. Since you were speculating on a topic, which could probably only be resolved by

something like a diary entry, I pointed out that the diary exists and has been partially published

Beyond that, I will simply state clearly that I have no grounds for, and did not intend, any further implication

[stray cat]

7. Spoiler alert - read if you want to know what the show proves

The end of the program shows Mengele was never there and the twin phenonmenon had nothing to do with him but that they all had a common ancestor showing a genetic propensity for twins.

People are posting on something the show actually disproves but everyone is sure falling for the way they publisice it!

[MinM]

10. Re: Spoiler alert - read if you want to know what the show proves

Right. The Mossad Agent who captured Adolf Eichmann basically discounts any possibility that this was the work of Mengele.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele

[hedgehog]

13. I hate it when a lurid fiction is presented as serious science or history.

[3waygeek]

14. Is it just me, or did anyone else think of

Jenna & Barbara Bush when reading the title of this thread? :evilgrin: