Talk:Josef Mengele

Helpful person with JSTOR access?
Could anyone get the full text of http://www.jstor.org/pss/986198, which appears to have a good deal on Otto von Verscheur, Mengele's mentor and technical supervisor?
 * I don't have at the moment, sorry :-( Martin Baldwin-Edwards 01:56, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Got it. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:28, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

war criminal
How can he have been a war criminal if he was never prosecuted? This is legally incorrect, and any quotation that describes him as a war criminal is stating an opinion and not a legal fact. This is a problem. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 01:56, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * There was no quote containing the words "war criminal". I did clarify, in two places, that he was listed as a suspect.  Please give specific references to things you believe need to be corrected.


 * If there had been such a quote, it would have been an opinion; that is why it would be a cited quote.


 * Also, the entire war crimes process was not strictly founded in law. Nevertheless, there was at least some legal basis, for acts against civilians. in the Hague Conventions. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:28, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I have altered them. Could you also please be sure to reference specific accusations against him? I know we don't always do so on CZ, but for this I think we need to. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 02:35, 13 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I didn't see the alterations when I wrote the talk page note, but I have restored Lifton's comment about him as a war criminal, phrasing it as an opinion. Lifton is generally believed to be the best source on Nazi atrocities.


 * I am not willing to banish the phrase war criminal, but I am willing to make it opinion. Neither the International Military Tribunal nor the Nuremberg Military Tribunal worked by strict rules of evidence. The preponderance of evidence here, and the fact of his flight, means that things need to be addressed in the context of the law of the time.


 * Are you saying there was not sworn testimony about crimes? I see no reason, then, to take it out and suggest something as vague as "some think." This article is quite contextualized and gives other factors, such as the influence of von Verschuer, but objectivity does not require phrasing everything with a presumption of evidence.  Or should we suggest Hitler himself merely had crimes "alleged"?


 * I also restored two paragraphs about his experimentation, directly quoted both from people who worked with him and generally accepted experts. These were over 50 words; please do not delete so much without discussion. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:50, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Howard, that is not neutral. I am repeating my alterations. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 02:53, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I did not delete any paragraphs. Check the history. I have reverted because I do not accept that you can use the word criminal without legal process. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 02:56, 13 November 2010 (UTC)


 * First, we are no longer required to be "neutral". We are required to be "objective". Objectivity, in my opinion, is based on a preponderance of expert opinion. Is there serious opinion that says Hitler or Goering cannot be called a criminal because they were never tried?


 * I'd welcome another History or Military editor helping make the determination of what is acceptable. I do not accept that "criminal" cannot represent expert opinion when it was impossible to try an individual, and it is not even clear who had authority to try the accused. Howard C. Berkowitz 03:17, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Deletion
You deleted, Different observers questioned the quality of his experimentation. Lengyel said "His experiments were carried out in abnormal fashon. When he made blood transfusions her purposely used incorrect blood types. He did whatever pleased him and conducted his experiments like a rank amateur. He would inject substances and then ignore the results. He was not a savant. His was the mania of a collector." Nyiszli also called his work "pseudoscience". Lifton also called him a "collector". He quotes a prisoner anthropologist, Teresa W., said the measurements were taken in an accepted manner. Mengele himself, however, wrote, in his 1935 dissertation, "It is not useful to take as many measurements as possible; one must restrict oneself to the most significant ones."

I restored it, with the additional information that Teresa W. was subsequently identified as Dr. Martina Puzyna. Howard C. Berkowitz 03:17, 13 November 2010 (UTC)


 * This alleged deletion does NOT appear in the page history. I certainly had no intention of deleting paragraphs, and there is no record that I did so. As with the article, you need to be more careful in your handling of evidence and allegations.
 * I have modified another quoted case of "war criminal". Although you will find the majority of the world sharing your bias, that does not make it correct. There is no need to call someone a war criminal when the article details atrocities; there is a need to show due legal process that someone is convicted of crimes. Without this safeguard, anyone can be accused of crimes and called a criminal: we would revert to pre-democratic versions of "criminality" that were unrelated to actual formal trials and legal argument supported by evidence.
 * By writing or quoting these "commonsense" claims, you devalue CZ as a scientific repository. We are not here to blandly repeat mainstream views, regardless of our personal opinions (which are doubtless near-identical on this particular matter). Martin Baldwin-Edwards 12:00, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Article policy
This is getting into a definition of what the post-charter objectivity party means, as opposed to what the old neutrality party said, and is properly an issue for discussion in the Editorial Council. I think we have to be very careful in using the term international law, or asserting that any particular position is held by the world in general, without sourcing. Let me make some specific suggestions that could collaboratively improve the article. Martin, you are not an Editor in any of the listed groups, so your making direct contributions would not interfere with Approval.

Historiographers use a rather awkward word, presentism, which, despite its inelegance, is useful. I believe it was coined in regard to Thomas Jefferson's relation to slaves, which needed, in the anti-presentism review, to be regarded within the ethos of his time. In this case, the 1944-1948 period, roughly, needs to be considered -- the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg) and the Nuremberg Military Tribunals were principally ex post facto law. I would suggest, that you present information from sources, which certainly don't need to be Holocaust denialists, who make a reasoned case that Hitler, Goebbels and Mengele should not be considered war criminals.

It is not helpful, for developing the article, simply to keep deleting and changing to different views of the current Articles 18 and 19 of the Charter. It would be useful to find sourced material that supports your position. In a great deal of U.S. "political" and "bias": legal issues before trial, it's quite easy to find legal analysis and certainly journalism that attacks the very allegation. In a perhaps relevant case, there's a huge amount of reasoned analysis, on both sides, as to whether the George W. Bush Administration violated the Convention against Torture (as ratified by the Senate) and associated U.S. law.

In the case of Mengele, a number of multinational and national bodies agreed, variously, that he was indictable or extraditable. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:41, 13 November 2010 (UTC)


 * The deletion took place, Martin. It looks like the (unnotices) effect of an edit conflict. Compare
 * Howard, 02:49
 * Martin, 02:54
 * --Peter Schmitt 19:35, 13 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Also, please do not engage in a revert war over the sourced quote from Lifton in the lede, which I had revised to state that it was his (highly informed) opinion. I don't want to invoke the Constabulary to enforce repeated reversions.  I would prefer that it come from another History or Military Editor, but, Martin, you do not have the unilateral authority to ban the phrase "war criminal." 19:45, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

the definition is *way* too long!
Is it just an expansion of a stub or lemma? Hayford Peirce 16:32, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I won't object to the changes, but may I point out that the earlier version was 61 words, the new one is 21, and the limit is 100? Howard C. Berkowitz 19:51, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Is the limit now 100 words or 100 *characters*? In any case, this had two sentences and there's definitely only supposed to be a single sentence -- didn't you write that yourself? Hayford Peirce 20:03, 13 November 2010 (UTC)