In the early 1990's, Argentine authorities opened its archives to reveal that several Nazi war criminals found safe haven in South America, including Dr. Josef Mengele, also known as Auschwitz’s Angel of Death. Mengele is infamous for his horrific experiments on inmates at the concentration camp. According to The New York Times in 1992, Mengele entered Argentina using a Red Cross-issued passport in 1949 and “practiced medicine in Buenos Aires for several years in the 1950s,” specializing in illegal abortions.

According to the report, a young woman died after a botched abortion at the hands of Mengele. For that crime he was detained “briefly” by a Buenos Aires judge and was released when he appeared in the courtroom with a “package presumably filled with a large amount of money.” Argentina strongly resisted extradition requests for many Nazi War criminals, Mengele included. In fact, he eluded capture for over 30 years and died after suffering a stroke while swimming off the coast of Brazil at 68 years old. His body was exhumed in 1985 and DNA evidence confirmed the remains to be those of Mengele.

There are many differences between the holocaust of the Jews by the Germans and the abortions of hundreds of millions of the unborn. Both have different reasons but underlying each is the dehumanization of its victims. One of the traits that seems to run through human history is that we have a remarkable capacity for doing harm unto others.

This is not about people acting out a crime of passion. This is planned and rationalized violence — a cultural brainwashing. The rationalization is always that the victims are not truly human, not worthy of the same protections of the law. It’s interesting that the Nazis are often linked to Christianity, especially the Catholic Church. But it is precisely the teachings of the Church that stand in the way of such dehumanization. This is something that Mengele himself knew, as he was raised in a Catholic family. In fact, in his post-WWII journal, Mengele specifically wrote, “We had to liberate Germanic history from Roman and Catholic influences.”

It is no mistake that Mengele opposed the Catholic Church in which he was raised. The Catholic Church holds that human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.

Today, proponents of abortion are often the most vocal opponents of the Church. Those who seek to dehumanize and deliver violence to them know exactly who stands against them. Catholics must continue to offer that clear teaching, no matter how countercultural it is.