I have been reading about Mengele and also unit371 and often the articles give details about bone transplants and vivisections etc where the doctors would not use anesthesia... was there a legitimate medical research reason for this?
Surely on an operating table a sedated person or one who has been given a local anesthestic would be easier to operate on without the victim screeaming and squirming in place.
"I have never accepted the fact that Mengele himself believed he was doing serious work — not from the slipshod way he went about it. He was only exercising his power. Mengele ran a butcher shop — major surgeries were performed without anesthesia. Once, I witnessed a stomach operation — Mengele was removing pieces from the stomach, but without any anesthetic. Another time, it was a heart that was removed, again, without anesthesia. It was horrifying. Mengele was a doctor who became mad because of the power he was given. Nobody ever questioned him — why did this one die? Why did that one perish? The patients did not count. He professed to do what he did in the name of science, but it was a madness on his part."
Alex Dekel, (a camp survivor )quoted in Weimar and Nazi Germany (1996) by Fiona Reynoldson, Stephen J. Lee, David Taylor and Rosemary Rees
Mengele sent his 'findings' blood samples etc. to Dr Verschuer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, it's not known if Mengele made research notes himself and Verchuer destroyed what he had.
We can't know the motivations for sure, but the evidence points to a child torturing sadist who just really enjoyed inflicting pain. He did have an academic scientific background and would have realised the possibility of using anaesthesia and that it would make his 'experiments' easier.