The bones of Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who conducted horrific experiments on thousands of Jews at Auschwitz, are being used in forensic medical courses at the Sao Paulo Medical Institute.

Mengele's bones lay unclaimed for more than 30 years inside a blue plastic bag at the medical institute.

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Dr Daniel Romero Munoz, who was in charge of the team that identified Mengele's remains in 1985, saw an opportunity to put them to use. And a few months ago, the head of the department of legal medicine at the University of Sao Paulo's Medical School got authorization to use them in his forensic medical courses.

His students now learn their trade studying Mengele's bones and connecting them to the German doctor who was nicknamed the 'angel of death'.

"The bones will be helpful to teach how to examine the remains of an individual and then match that information with data in documents related to that person," Munoz said.

Mengele died nearly 40 years ago after drowning off the coast of Sao Paulo. He had been on the run for years, hiding from governments that were pursuing him for the hideous experiments he performed on inmates before sending them to the gas chambers during World War II.

According to Munoz, Mengele's persona and the mystery surrounding his whereabouts are what make his bones a useful study tool.

Holocaust survivor Cyrla Gewertz  is not sure of her feelings on the issue. "I already have too many memories of him and what he did to me and others at Auschwitz," the 92-year-old survivor said, adding that she cannot erase those memories from her brain.

Gewertz said that she once saw Mengele kill a newborn baby girl by throwing her off a roof. "He was an evil, perverse man. He was a torturer," Gewertz said.

TagsScience, josef mengele, holocaust, Gas Chamber