The Twins from Brazil: Did Nazi doctor Mengele - the Angel of Death - cause twin surge in South American town?

Nazi doctor Josef Mengele is behind the high proportion of blond-haired, blue-eyed twins in a Brazilian town, according to a new book

A notorious Nazi doctor known as the 'Angel of Death' is behind an alarming number of twins born in a small Brazilian town, a historian has claimed.

Josef Mengele was an SS physician in Auschwitz concentration camp where in a bid to create a master race for Adolf Hitler he carried out genetic experiments to find the key to producing twins.



The aim was to artificially increase the Aryan birthrate.

In 1945 he fled the advancing Red Army and made his way to South America.

It is there that the medic, who is believed to have been responsible for up to 400,000 deaths in medical experiments at Auschwitz, may have succeeded in his mission.

Baffled scientists had been struggling to come up with a reason for the high proportion twins in the tiny Brazilian town of Candido Godoi - most of them blond-haired and blue-eyed.



A staggering one in five pregnancies there have resulted in the birth of twins - the usual rate is one in 80.

Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa has now come up with an astonishing theory.

In a new book, Mengele: The Angel Of Death In South America, he has pieced together the Nazi doctor's later years after his flight in the face of the Red Army advance.

The Russian forces liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945.

The town regularly celebrates its number of twins, this picture was taken in 2006

This picture listed on the town's website under 'twins' shows another gathering of the community's offspring

The residents of the Brazilian town claim Mengele made repeated visits there in the early 1960s.

He first claimed to be a vet but then offered medical treatment to the women, providing them with strange potions and tablets and asking for blood samples.

After spending time in Argentina and Paraguay, in 1963 Mengele started making regular trips to the predominantly German farming community in Brazil.

Mr Camarasa claims it was soon after that the birthrate of twins began to spiral.

The entrance to Candido Godoi, which declares Farming Community And Land Of The Twins

'I think Candido Godoi may have been Mengele's laboratory, where he finally managed to fulfil his dreams of creating a master race of blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans,' he said.

'There is testimony that he attended women, followed their pregnancies, treated them with new types of drugs and preparations, that he talked of artificial insemination in human beings, and that he continued working with animals, proclaiming that he was capable of getting cows to produce male twins.'



This picture of child survivors in Auschwitz was taken just after the camp's liberation by the Soviet army in January, 1945

Josef Mengele pictured in 1977. He drowned in a swimming accident two years later, having lived in freedom in Brazil for 18 years

The town's official crest shows two identical profiles and a road sign welcomes visitors to a 'Farming Community And Land Of The Twins'.



There is also a museum, the House Of The Twins.

In a bid to solve the mystery, former mayor and town doctor Anencia Flores da Silva spoke to hundreds of people.

There was one name that kept recurring in their stories - a medic calling himself Rudolph Weiss.

Dr da Silva said: 'He attended women who had varicose veins and gave them a potion which he carried in a bottle, or tablets which he brought with him.



'Sometimes he carried out dental work, and everyone remembers he used to take blood.'



Mengele lived in freedom in Brazil for 18 years. He drowned in a swimming accident there in 1979 when he was 68.

Genetic tests were carried out on the remains to prove Mengele died thereby bringing to an end decades of rumours that he was still alive with reported sighting from places as far apart as Portugal and the U.S.



The 1978 feature film The Boys From Brazil had as its plot Mengele hiding in South America with plans to begin a Fourth Reich with other Nazi sympathisers.



The plan of Mengele, played by Gregory Peck, is to recreate the childhood of Hitler for the 95 young boys he cloned from the Nazi leader.



























