Josef Mengele

About Josef Mengele

Josef Mengele, an SS officer and physician at Auschwitz, is infamous for conducting cruel and pseudoscientific human experiments on camp inmates, particularly twins and those with eye or physical anomalies. His actions during the Holocaust, which caused untold suffering and death, are the primary reason he is ranked highly by the Pantheon project, placing him at #488 in historical importance worldwide.

Despite this profound historical impact, Mengele commands significant contemporary internet attention. In 2025, his German Wikipedia page accrued an annualized 2.1 million views. This level of modern attention is disproportionate; he is overrepresented by a factor of 6x compared to his historical importance ranking. For context, his 2.1 million views are comparable to, though less than, the 4.3 million views received by former U.S. President George H. W. Bush (#788 importance), suggesting a high degree of modern cultural resonance for a figure whose significance lies almost entirely in atrocity.

Interestingly, his interest shows slight decline in the latter half of 2025, with a -7% drop in engagement from Q1 to Q3, even as his overall year-over-year view count increased by 8.8%.