Physician, born in Günzburg, S Germany. He studied philosophy in Munich, where he encountered the racial ideology of Alfred Rosenberg. He later studied medicine at the University of Frankfurt, after which he joined the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene (1934). An ardent Nazi, he served as medical officer with the Waffen SS during World War 2, and was appointed chief doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp where Jews were selected for labour, extermination, or medical experimentation. He became known as the Angel of Death. After the war he escaped, reportedly surfacing in South America (1949); it is believed that he befriended another Nazi, Wolfgang Gerhard, in Brazil (1961). A team of forensic experts determined that Mengele assumed Gerhard's identity when he died and was buried under that name.
Dr. Josef Mengele (March 16, 1911 – February 7, 1979) was a Nazi German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. He gained notoriety chiefly for being one of the SS physicians who supervised the selection of arriving transports of prisoners, determining who was to be killed and who was to become a forced labourer, and for performing brutal human experiments of dubious scientific value on camp inmates (among them, Mengele was known as the Angel of Death).
After the war he first hid out in Germany under an assumed name, then escaped and lived in various countries in South America until an eventual accidental death by drowning in Brazil, which was later confirmed using DNA testing on his remains.
Early life, career, and education
Mengele was born in Gunzburg, Bavaria, eldest of three sons of Karl Mengele (1881–1959), a well-to-do industrialist, and his wife Walburga Hupfauer (d.
In 1930 Mengele graduated from the Günzburg gymnasium, or high school.
In 1931, at the age of 20, Mengele joined the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten (Steel Helmet, League of Front Soldiers), which was incorporated into the SA in 1933. In 1939, Mengele married his first wife, Irene Schönbein, with whom he had one child, a son named Rolf.
In 1940 he was placed in the reserve medical corps, following which he served with a Waffen-SS unit. During his service on the Eastern Front during 1941-1942, Mengele received an Iron Cross first class and an Iron Cross second class.
Auschwitz
In 1943 Mengele's application for an assignment to the German Nazi extermination camp Birkenau was accepted; Subsequently Mengele became Chief Medical Officer of the main infirmary camp at Birkenau.
It was during his 21-month stay at Auschwitz that Mengele achieved infamy, and it is for this period that he was later referred to as the "Angel of Death". Mengele took turns with the other SS physicians at Auschwitz in meeting incoming prisoners at the ramp, determining who would be retained for work and who would be sent to the gas chambers immediately.
Human experimentation
Mengele used Auschwitz as an opportunity to continue his research on heredity, using inmates for human experimentation. Mengele tried to prove that Noma was caused by "racial inferiority".
Mengele took an interest in physical abnormalities discovered among the arrivals at the concentration camp.
Mengele's experiments were of dubious scientific value, including attempts to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, various amputations of limbs and other brutal surgeries, and in at least one case, attempts to create artificially conjoined twins by sewing two young children together back-to-back, also joining the veins at their wrists.
Rena Gelissen's account of her time in Auschwitz details certain experiments performed on female prisoners around October 1943. During roll calls Mengele would show up to perform a "special work detail" selection, which fooled some into thinking that this would be a relief from the otherwise hard labour they were performing. In actuality Mengele would experiment on the chosen girls, performing sterilization and shock treatments.
A Hungarian Jewish prisoner doctor, Miklos Nyiszli, who was an experienced pathologist and had studied in Germany, was chosen to work as Mengele's assistant and wrote about his experiences. The subjects of Mengele's research were better fed and housed than ordinary prisoners and were for the time being safe from the gas chambers. To Mengele they were nevertheless not fellow human beings, but rather material to conduct his experiments on.
Josef Mengele's escape and Hiding
Josef Mengele had a 10-day head start on the Red Army when he joined the growing exodus of German soldiers heading west. By the time the first Russian scouts entered the gates of Auschwitz and Birkenau at 3 p.m. on January 27, 1945--and discovered corpses of the 650 prisoners killed by looting SS men - Mengele had arrived at another concentration camp 200 miles to the northwest. Even during the final spasms of the war, the SS attempted to keep its killing machines operating and fully staffed.] But Mengele's stay was short-lived.
As Mengele fled Gross Rosen, the man who had. Professor Otmar Freiherr von Verscheur, the geneticist who became both mentor and friend when Mengele joined his staff in 1937, shipped out two truckloads of documents from his research institute in Berlin, taking care to destroy all of his correspondence with Mengele.
Mengele fled westward, where he joined a retreating unit of Wehrmacht [regular army] soldiers. Mengele and his newfound unit remained in central Czechoslovakia, hoping that the tide might turn against the Russians.
While stationed with his new unit, Mengele struck up an intimate relationship with a young German nurse. Her name is not known, and Mengele does not provide it in his autobiography. He trusted her so completely that when the unit started to move west once again and Mengele feared capture by the Allies, he gave her custody of his precious research notes from Auschwitz.
After several days, the unit began to move farther northwest, by way of Carlsbad, to stay ahead of the advancing Russians. On the night of May 8, 1945, the date Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel signed Germany's unconditional surrender, Mengele crossed the frontier from Czechoslovakia into Saxony, in what is now East Germany.
Mengele and his unit had moved into the narrow strip in central Europe that the Americans and Russians both informally agreed not to enter. In the confusion of moving from Czechoslovakia into the no man's land, Mengele's motorized hospital unit split into several sections. When he finally settled in the surrounding forest, Mengele realized he was separated from his friend Dr. Kahler.
In this new section, without the support of Kahler, Mengele feared his SS identity would be discovered. Fritz Ulmann, suspected that Mengele was an SS man in disguise. Ulmann, who would later become a key to Mengele's postwar freedom, found his behavior in the no man's land to be almost comical. Ulmann recalls that every day at morning roll call Mengele gave a different name: "He evidently couldn't remember the name he had given the day before, so he must have used four or five additional names.
Somehow Mengele sustained the charade for six weeks while his unit was stuck in the forest. Mengele was not among 12 of them; Mengele remembered the breakout in his autobiography: "In the end there was less and leas food, and the rumors that the Russians would occupy this area became more numerous. American forces were all over the area, and within days, according to Mengele's own account, his unit was captured near Hof. When he was checked into the first American camp, Mengele was reunited with Kahler, who had been captured in the same area the same day. And just as he had hoped, Mengele's nurse friend, also captured by the Americans, was released within hours, his Auschwitz research notes safely in her custody. At this point Dr. Kahler and Dr. Ulmann have different recollections of what name Mengele used to register in the camp. Kahler claims he told Mengele it was dishonorable to use an alias. For whatever reason, Mengele subsequently told the American camp authorities his real name. What is indisputable is that for several days the Americans had Mengele in their custody, listed under his true name.
But though they knew his real name, they did not know he was an SS member. When Mengele joined the SS in 1938, he decided not to follow the usual practice of having his blood type tattooed on his chest. Without that telltale tattoo, the Americans had no ready means of knowing that Mengele was an SS member and no reason to pay him closer attention.
Mengele had no idea then of how lucky he was.
Not realizing how inept the American forces were, Mengele was convinced that it was only a matter of time before he was unmasked as the Auschwitz doctor. His friend Dr. Kahler asked Dr. Ulmann, a neurologist, to examine Mengele and to treat his depression. Ulmann not only kept Mengele's secret 'but helped obtain a second identification for him, sensing that the Auschwitz doctor would probably need an alias to survive in postwar Germany. This he did by obtaining a second set of release papers in his own name and giving it to Mengele.
No sooner had he been dropped off, courtesy of the U.S, Army, than Mengele decided to walk to the nearby town of Donauworth, in the hope of finding sanctuary at the home of a prewar school friend, veterinarian Albert Miller.
Miller's wife remembers the day Mengele knocked at the door. It's not true.'"
Mengele asked Dr. Miller to contact his family in Gunzburg and his wife in Autenreid to tell them he was safe. Even though he professed his innocence, Mengele told Dr. Miller he could not risk capture by Allied forces. But before he could do anything, Dr. Miller himself was arrested by American troops on the evening that Mengele arrived at his house early in September. As Miller was driven away for questioning about his wartime role in the Nazi Party, Mengele hid in a back room of the house.
Miller's arrest scared Mengele. The journey to Gera, now in East Germany, took Mengele more than three weeks. Meanwhile Mrs. Miller contacted Josef Mengele's brother, Karl Jr., in Gunzburg to tell him that the doctor was safe. Karl then told Mengele's wife, Irene, and the rest of the family.
Mengele was fortunate to have chosen the Millers as his first contact in the Gunzburg area. There was a widespread readiness to believe that the allegations against Mengele were false.
While the Americans were floundering in their search for Mengele, he was returning from the Russian zone, having retrieved his treasured Auschwitz specimens and research notes. During the next several weeks, as Mengele recuperated in the safety of a Munich friend's home, the opportunity. for safe haven appeared through Dr. Fritz Ulmann's brother-in-law, whom Mengele code-named "Vieland" in his autobiography. "Vieland" proposed that he accompany Mengele to one such area, south of the city of Rosenheim, and help him find a job as a farmhand on an isolated farm with a quiet and simple family.
As a further precaution, Mengele made a copy of his release papers as Fritz Ulmann and carefully altered the name to "Fritz Hollmann," changing the "U" to an "H," and squeezing an "o" between it and the "l" and another "l" between the original "l" and the "m." Mengele knew that once he moved into a new area, he would have to register his American release card with the local German authorities, and he did not want to register under the name "Ulmann" in case American authorities ever started to check the names of prisoners who had been held with him in detention. The authorities, he thought, would never tie "Hollmann" to Mengele.
The first two farms Mengele approached did not need helpers, but the third, owned by Georg and Maria Fischer, needed another worker. Mengele slept in a spartan room, 10 by 15 feet, furnished with only a cupboard and a bed.
Mengele probably worked harder during his l0 years with the Fischers than at any other time in his life.
The Fischers may have been simple country.
The Great Selector of Auschwitz had been reduced to selecting potatoes. Although degrading for the high-minded Mengele, this low profile helped him to stay free. Throughout this time, Mengele's morale was sustained by visits to his doctor friend, "Vieland," who lived in nearby Riedering. And Mengele's family, convinced of his innocence, made trips to Rosenheim to bolster his morale.
Irene Mengele realized that the trips to Rosenheim were fraught with danger--since her husband was a wanted fugitive, she might be tailed--but she weighed the risks in favor of the visits.
By the end of 1946 Mengele was convinced the Americans had forgotten him, and he became so brazen that he made two one-week trips to Autenreid to visit Irene and his 2-year-old son, Rolf. "Vieland" was furious with Mengele for using the "Fritz Ulmann" identity. "Vieland" thought it was too great a gamble and reprimanded Mengele, "You are being very risky with my brother-in-law's identification." Mengele exploded into a rage. I do not need them," yelled Mengele. But that outburst cost Mengele dearly.
Although Mengele attempted to justify the imprisonment of Jews and the conditions in the camps, other members of the Mengele family were realists, and they knew that his capture would mean certain execution. Faced with the prospect of Josef joining his Auschwitz colleagues on the gallows, his father and his wife, among others, tried to dupe the American authorities into believing that Josef Mengele was dead. Their efforts, combined with a lack of initiative and a general inefficiency on the part of the American occupation forces, ensured Mengele's freedom in postwar Germany.
During his years on the Fischer farm, the closest authorities came to finding Mengele was not the result of American efforts but rather a chance inspection by two German policemen in 1946. In his autobiography, [in which he always referred to himself in the third person with the code name "Andreas"], Mengele recalled the moment he had his first face-to-face confrontation with authorities since his release from the American detention camp: "Two German police came to the farm on a motor-bike and a sidecar and asked to talk to the released prisoner of war.
By the fall of 1948, Mengele had made up his mind to leave Germany and build a life elsewhere.
According to Rolf Mengele, his father returned to the Gunzburg area toward the end of 1948 and stayed in the nearby forests until the spring of 1949. Mengele told Irene that he expected her and Rolf to follow once he had established himself in Buenos Aires. Mengele's flight was arranged and paid for by his family through former SS contacts in the Gunzburg area.
The journey began by train to Innsbruck. Mengele was questioned on the way by Austrian customs officers, who asked him where he was from. There he spent the night, 400 yards from the Italian border, and met the first of five mystery men who helped him at various stages of his journey and whom Mengele identifies in his diary only by code names.
The following morning Mengele rose in the early hours to be led by a guide across the Brenner Pass. The crossing took Mengele only an hour. Once on the Italian side, he went to the railway station, waited in the only restaurant and caught the first workers' train to Vipiteno at 5:45 a.m.
The network providing the escape service had booked Mengele at the Golden Cross Inn under the name listed on his forged set of American release papers, "Fritz Hollmann." There he was approached by an Italian called "Nino," who said the code word "rosemary" and handed him a German identity card after Mengele had given him a passport-sized photograph. At the Golden Cross Mengele met a second man whom he called "Erwin" and whom his son, Rolf, now assumes was Hans Sedlmeier, a school friend of his father and the family firm's sales manager since 1944. "Erwin" brought Mengele greetings from his father and cash in dollars for the long journey ahead.
Mengele had a month at the Golden Cross to memorize the travel plan that "Erwin" had given him. There he met "Kurt," who was in charge of the final phase of getting Mengele out of Europe. "Kurt" told Mengele that passage to Buenos Aires had been booked for him on the North King, which was scheduled to leave Genoa in two weeks. [The International Red Cross file on Josef Mengele was shrouded in secrecy for 40 years after the war. Based upon a written request from Secretary of State George Shultz, the Red Cross finally made the Mengele file public, and the information it contained helped to fill in some of the details of Mengele's final efforts to escape Europe.] "We can get that done today," he said.
Mengele met no resistance at the Swiss consulate, where his application was processed by a woman he described as being "of riper years." The following day, using the alias "Gregor," Mengele went to the Argentine consulate, where he made his application. Mengele needed an Italian exit visa, and the corrupt official in the immigration department who usually helped "Kurt" was on holiday. Kurt" told Mengele, advising him to try to bribe the official in charge with a 20,000 lira note [1949 value: about $32] tucked between his papers.
The North King was due to sail in three days, on May 25. Mengele was getting desperate. At first Mengele thought the money was "just not enough of a bribe."
Mengele was taken to a cell and ordered to turn out his pockets. "Forty-five dollars are the most interesting pan of the contents to the Italian police," Mengele observed.
After spending three weeks in jail, Mengele lost all hope of escaping. They began to question him about "Kurt," who he was, where he could be found and how much Mengele had paid for his help. A 4-a.m. call to the Croatian doctor who had given Mengele his false vaccination certificate seemed to sea/ his fate. Sleepless, Mengele "sank into a state of depressed lethargy.." Then, as was to happen so often over the next 30 years, Mengele's fortunes changed dramatically. Finally Mengele was freed and granted his exit permit.
In mid-July, 1949, the North King finally sailed for Buenos Aires. Mengele's concern about his Auschwitz past becoming public knowledge was just one of the strains that weighed upon him during his early months in Buenos Aires.
In his early letters Mengele, although bothered by his fugitive existence, expressed surprise at the ease with which he was settling into Buenos Aires life. By selecting Argentina as his country of exile, Mengele had unwittingly chosen a nation advanced enough that any culture shock was greatly reduced.
Mengele also discovered a parochial and elitist attitude amongst Argentinians that was reminiscent of that held by the most fervent German Nazis.
But despite its progress, Argentina in 1949 was also a country stricken with serious problems. The black market was rampant, and for fugitives like Mengele, the scope for bribes was unlimited.
Somewhere along the line, a former Luftwaffe [German air force] colonel named Hans Rudel convinced Mengele that a lucrative market in farm machinery was waiting to be cornered in Paraguay.
During a trip to Paraguay in 1954 Mengele met another key contact, Alejandro von Eckstein. He was then a captain in the Paraguayan army, and he cosponsored Mengele's bid for Paraguayan citizenship in 1959.
Alfredo Stroessner had just taken over Paraguay, ruling with the absolute power derived from the 1940 constitution, which allowed him to declare a state of emergency and suspend habeas corpus.
According to von Eckstein, it was on one of Mengele's visits shortly after they met that he introduced him to President Stroessner at a function with several others present. "But I remember Rudel telling Mengele that Paraguay under Stroessner was as fine a friend to expatriate Germans as Argentina under [Juan] Peron."
Meanwhile, far away from Mengele's bachelor existence. informed his son, by letter, that Irene wanted a divorce, and Mengele did not stand in her way. Mengele was not especially heartbroken, nor was the Mengele family sorry to lose Irene.
At about this time, Mengele struck up an extraordinary relationship with a German Jewish refugee, who has asked to remain anonymous, fearing the relationship would be misunderstood. She had settled in Buenos Aires with her parents, who happened to know Mengele.
On one of the businessman's visits to the girl's house, he found Mengele there, and the gift introduced them to each other. Neither the girl nor the businessman had any idea of Mengele's true identity. a contest that Mengele, known to them as "Gregor."
Karl Sr. The woman he had in mind was Martha Mengele, widow of his youngest son, Karl Jr., who had died when he was only 37 years old, in December, 1949.
According to Rolf, Karl Sr. Behind Karl Sr.'s matchmaking lay a calculated plan to keep control of the Gunzburg firm totally in the hands of the Mengele family.
The travel plans for Mengele's reunion with Martha were laid months in advance. On September 1, the police granted Mengele a "good conduct" pass, which allowed him to apply to the courts for the passport. Unfortunately for Mengele, his arrangements were interrupted by a coup against President Juan Peron.
In the midst of governmental reshuffling the Argentine Court of First Instance finally issued Mengele a 120-day passport. In March, 1956, Mengele flew to Switzerland with a two-hour stopover in New York. and Mengele's own son, Rolf, then 12 years old.
Over the next 10 days "Uncle Fritz," as he was introduced to the two Mengele boys, regaled them with adventure stories about South American gauchos and his supposed experiences fighting partisans in the Second World War. At the end of the holiday, Mengele traveled to Gunzburg to tie up the legal arrangements that his father had prepared. Mengele visited his family for nearly a week.
Back in Argentina later in 1956, Mengele saw no sign yet of a warrant being issued for his arrest and so felt confident enough to publicly relaunch himself under his true identity.
Proving his real identity required a great deal of paperwork and the approval of the West German embassy, which the Argentine police required to certify that "Helmut Gregor" -- the name he was registered under--and Josef Mengele were one and the same man. Mengele therefore had to explain to the embassy that he had lived under an alias for the last seven years. I l, 1956, after checking with Bonn, the embassy issued Mengele a certificate stating that his real name was Josef Mengele and that he was from Gunzburg, and later a new identity card and a West German passport.
In October, 1956, Martha and her son moved to Argentina to join Mengele. For the next four years Mengele was effectively Karl Heinz's father, a tie that was to form the basis of a relationship that became closer than that with his own son, Rolf.
Mengele's life had now established itself into the comfortable and secure routine of a family man in a 9-to-5 job with good prospects. Police files confirm that Mengele was held for questioning and freed after three days. At the same time, back in Germany a determined effort to bring Mengele to trial had just begun.
Hermann Langbein, who had worked in the chief physician's office while a prisoner at Auschwitz, had made it a personal crusade to bring Mengele to justice. Through detective work, Langbein uncovered Mengele's divorce from Irene and through the divorce records, Mengele's presence, though not his exact address, in Buenos Aires. How much news, if any, of Langbein's efforts filtered through to Mengele is not known. But by March, 1959, Mengele had decided that he would be safer living in Paraguay.
In May, 1959, Mengele fled to Paraguay, still under his own name, to begin a new life. Mengele lodged at the home of one of the most diehard Nazis in Nueva Bavaria, Alban Krug, a farmer and the head of the local farmers' cooperative. For the next 15 months Krug's farmhouse in the hamlet of Hohenau, 40 miles north of the border town of Encarnacion, was Mengele's home.
About that time, a warrant was circulated to German police stations and passed to the foreign office in Bonn to begin proceedings to extradite Mengele from Argentina, where Langbein believed the fugitive was still living. spite Langbein's request that the proceedings be conducted in the utmost secrecy, an informant with the Gunzburg police, according to Rolf Mengele, tipped off the Mengele family that the warrant had been issued. But by the time the family was able to inform Mengele by correspondence of the gathering storm clouds back home, he had already made his initial application for Paraguayan citizenship, applying as "Josef Mengele."
By mid-November, 1959, both the Paraguayan interior ministry's naturalization section and the Paraguayan police knew that an extradition request was under way for Josef Mengele on charges of war crimes. But no one thought the circumstances warranted postponing Mengele's application for citizenship, and it was approved on November 27.
On the other side of the word, meanwhile, another government had been taking an interest in the case of Josef Mengele and causing him grave concern as he lay low in Alban Krug's farmhouse in
southern Paraguay. fears were confirmed by Premier David Ben-Gurion's announcement to the Israeli parliament of a hunt for Mengele.
Mengele's decision to make a permanent move to Paraguay clearly dismayed his wife, Martha, who argued that he would still be safe in Buenos Aires. But Mengele had no intention of returning there because Israeli agents had kidnapped in Buenos Aires in May, 1960, the notorious Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer responsible for the deaths of nearly six million people.
Contrary to popular belief, Mengele did not have a network of armed guards and the protection of President Stroessner. Indeed, the Paraguayan interior minister, Edgar lnsfran, was the only senior member of the government who had any idea about Mengele's wartime background. The truth was that the only protection Mengele could rely on was that of Alban Krug.
While Mengele was living in fear for his life in Paraguay, in Buenos Aires the bureaucratic hunt triggered by West Germany's extradition request was progressing at a slow pace. Since Martha was still living in Buenos Aires, the West Germans believed that Mengele would return there. But the arrest warrant took so long to process that by the time it had legal status in Argentina, Mengele was already hiding at Krug's farmhouse in Paraguay.
Finally, on June 30, 1960, one year and 23 days after extradition proceedings were begun, the case was assigned to Argentina's Judge Jorge Luque of District Court No 3. Only then could the police begin their search for Mengele. The question of extradition, if Mengele were caught, was to be decided by the court.
News of the West German extradition request broke in the last week of June, while Argentine President Arturo Frondizi was on a state visit to Bonn. But, he said, the West Germans would have to provide proof of Mengele's crimes before he was sent back for trial.
But on the west coast of the U.S, one former friend of Mengele's was stunned.
At about this time, a typist in the West German embassy in Asuncion, Paraguay, came face to face with Mengele when she dislocated her ankle while she was visiting the German colony of Colonia Independencia. On her return to Asuncion she told the embassy staff that a German doctor named Mengele had attended to her injury.. This led the charge d'affaires, Peter Bensch, to go to southern Paraguay to investigate: "l made some inquiries, and it was dear to me that Mengele had been there under his own name. He did not admit that he had helped Mengele, although it was clear that he had helped several Nazis coming over the border from Argentina."
The incident raises important questions about how coordinated and determined the West German effort was to find Mengele. There appears to have been no attempt by the foreign office in Bonn to resolve the conflicting clues to Mengele's exact location by sending out their own agents. The West Germans were hunting Mengele with pieces of paper, inquiries from embassies, hunches, but never with men actually in the field.
The actual search was left to the redoubtable Judge Jorge Luque, to whom the case had been entrusted by the Argentine foreign office. Although he set about his task with vigor, he did not know that Mengele had long since permanently fled Argentina Having drawn a blank in the province of Buenos Aires, Judge Luque asked the Argentine police to conduct a countrywide search.
To Mengele, however, the confusion surrounding the Argentine effort was not of much comfort. But it was not the Argentinians or the West Germans that Mengele feared;
In September, 1960, Mengele decided that capture by the Israelis was inevitable as long as he stayed at the Krug farm. "So much happened in this time," Mengele later wrote. By Oct. 24, Mengele had left Krug's farm.
The reason Mengele hurriedly departed from Paraguay within months of the Eichmann kidnapping was that he did not feel he could rely on the complete protection of the Paraguayan government.
The man who gave Mengele his lifeline to Brazil was a 36-year-old Nazi and former Hitler Youth chief in Austria, Wolfgang Gerhard. The link between Mengele and Gerhard was a fellow Nazi who knew both men--Hans Rudel. Rudel and Gerhard were friends, and both knew the family that Gerhard earmarked as a refuge for Mengele in Brazil.
From this point on, Mengele's life fundamentally changed.
Next, Rolf, then also 16, was struggling hard to come to terms with who his real father was. My father had always been Dr. Mengele, who spoke Greek and Latin and who had been so brave.
In 1959 Gerhard had met Geza Stammer and his wife, Gitta, at a special evening for Austrian-Hungarian expatriates.
According to the Stammers, Gerhard introduced Mengele to them--as "Peter Hochbichler," a Swiss--as a suitable manager for a 37-acre farm in which they were planning to invest.
Gerhard told the Stammers that not only was "Hochbichler" an experienced cattle breeder but had also recently inherited some money that he wanted to invest in Brazilian real estate.
Eventually agreement with the Stammers was reached, and "Peter" moved in with them to manage the farm at Nova Europa. According to Gitta Stammer, Mengele arrived at the farm looking thin and pale: "...
In their attempt to convince skeptics that they were just innocent dupes, the Stammers insist that at first there was nothing suspicious about "Peter Hochbichler" or his refusal to take-a salary. But the farmhands who suddenly found themselves in Mengele's charge realized something was amiss. "I didn't like him but I couldn't do anything about it," said Francisco de Souza, who was working for the Stammers when Mengele arrived.
Unbeknownst to the Stammers and the farmhands, the reason Mengele was ill at ease initially was that he did not like the farm or his work. In this first phase of his Brazilian exile, Mengele found it hard to come to terms with his new lowly status.
Mengele's fear of an Israeli strike was well grounded. Indeed, many members of the new Mengele task force had also been on Operation Eichmann.
The team was headed by Zvi Aharoni, the agent who had provided the crucial confirmation that Eichmann was living in Buenos Aires under the name Klement, pinpointed his house and interrogated him after his abduction.
The Mossad's starting point was Paraguay, and their strategy was to try to establish links with those who knew Mengele well in order to have ready access to reliable information on his location at any given time. Only when that was accomplished could the Israelis give serious thought to actually kidnapping Mengele.
Even to this day Mossad agents disagree about exactly how close they got to Mengele in Paraguay and about how much protection he received. Isser Harel, then head of Mossad, said his men became convinced in 1961 that Mengele was in Paraguay and was being sheltered by Alban Krug.
The conflicting statements about Mengele's movements in the early 1960s reflects the soul-searching that surfaced within Israel's intelligence community after Mengele's death was disclosed. The discovery in June, 1985, that Mengele had lived in Brazil for most of his fugitive life raised questions as to why the Israelis had never found him, much less apprehended him.
Meanwhile, the more sedentary West German hunt was now progressing on three fronts. The CIA reported that Mengele was "rumored to have gone to Matto Grosso, Brazil." In Asuncion Peter Bensch, the charge d'affaires at the West German embassy, also continued to make inquiries: "My own view was that Mengele was moving between Paraguay and Brazil at this time, but we had no precise information on him.
Amidst the confusion over exactly where Mengele was, only one country knew for certain, and that was Israel. According to a senior Mossad man, they had received reports that Mengele was in Brazil. There appeared to be no justification for funding a special task force to review the leads on Mengele developed by Harel's agents in the early 1960s. It would have been an ideal base from which to pursue the Mengele hunt clandestinely, but Benjamin Weiser Varon, the Israeli ambassador from 1968 to 1972, had a much more straightforward mission.
The decision to open an embassy in Asuncion was made soon after Jan. 1, 1968, when tiny Paraguay assumed disproportionate power on the world diplomatic stage by becoming one of two Latin American countries in the UN Security Council. Raising the subject of Mengele was not likely to assist that goal. On his appointment Varon was thus "not given any instructions by the foreign office on Mengele of any kind.
Nor was Varon told that the Mossad had had teams in Paraguay and Brazil from 1960 to 1962, or that Harel had considered a commando raid on a Brazilian farmhouse. Indeed, Varon heard of this only after he left office, when Britain's Granada television screened a special program on Mengele in November, 1978: "It was strange that 1 had to learn all this from the script of the program.
In the absence of a "Mengele policy," Varon developed a standard answer to the tips that came in to the embassy about the fugitive's latest hideout: the Israeli government was not searching for Mengele; "I must confess I was not so eager to find Mengele," Varon said.
Mengele bought a one-half interest in the Stammers' farm with the money he made from his business ventures, and over the 13 years they spent together, the Stammers prospered enough to sell the farm and buy a large new house in the state of Sao Paulo, but their relationship with the dictatorial Mengele disintegrated.
The "new," confident Mengele had also become a man of property. As he tried to develop some financial independence, a further boost to Mengele's confidence came in 1971 when he inherited a priceless Brazilian identity card.
With the help of Wolfram Bossert, a competent amateur photographer, Mengele accomplished a tolerable forgery. Bossert took dozens of passport-size photos of Mengele and then selected the one that best fit Gerhard's description. The laminated identity card was sliced open, a picture of the mustachioed Mengele, his hair neatly combed, was stuck over the photograph of his Nazi friend, and the card was relaminated. All the other details remained Gerhard's, including his thumb print and his date of birth, which transformed Mengele, then 60, into a very old4ooking 46-year-old, the age listed on the card.
In July, 1972, Mengele fell ill. A puzzled doctor treating Mengele told Bossert that his patient seemed physically very old for a 47-year-old man.
This early period of the 1970s, when Mengele was integrating himself into modem-day life, also marked the start of a period of prolific correspondence with his family, particularly his son, Rolf, and his childhood friend Hans Sedlmeier.
Mengele's private correspondence highlighted how much closer he was to Karl Heinz than to his own son, Rolf; Always there was the question from strangers: "Rolf Mengele? Not the son of Josef Mengele?"
When Mengele tried to open a dialogue with his grown-up son in the early 1970s, his barely repressed dislike for Rolf soon came to the surface. In almost every letter Mengele extended fatherly affection to his son in one sentence, only to take it back with hurtful chiding in the next.
The Stammers decided to make the final break with Mengele by selling their farm and moving to Sao Paulo and not taking Mengele with them. When they moved to their new home in December, Mengele stayed at their house in Caieiras, 25 miles outside Sao Paulo, until February, 1975.
Mengele grew anxious about where he would live next.
But before the end of January, 1975, Mengele's housing worries were solved.
Mengele's main companion for the first year of his new solitary life was a 16-year-old neighborhood gardener, Luis Rodrigues, who liked watching "The Wonderful World of Disney" and soap operas on TV. Mengele was so lonely that sometimes he asked him to stay the night. Rodrigues recalled how Mengele loved music and how he sometimes whirled clumsily around the room to a waltz.
Toward the end of that year Mengele bought a $150 24-inch Telefunken black-and-white television set.
But Mengele's television did little to relieve the pain of his loneliness. And Mengele reported home that although it was a "break in my monotonous life," he got no enjoyment from the set because "the channels hardly come through and the repeated interruptions by commercials really do disturb me."
Deep depression and anxiety had now set in. Mengele's spirits and health were sinking fast.
The beginning of the end came sooner than. When they dropped him off at the gate to his bungalow, Mengele felt quite dizzy and ill. In Mengele's own words, "fluttering visions, vertigo, tingling sensations in the left half of my face and my left arm [like ants running.], and difficulties with my speech and increasing pain m my head were the major symptoms.
As a doctor Mengele knew from the symptoms that he had suffered a stroke.
Just as Gerhard had not confided Mengele's secret to the Stammers when Mengele first went to live with them, so did he keep Glawe and his parents--his father, Ernesto Glawe, was an Argentinian industrialist of German descent--in the dark when he asked them to take care of the stricken old man, saying he had to return to Europe to care for his son Adolf, who was suffering from bone cancer. Gerhard's wife had died of cancer in 1975, but despite this family crisis, he had taken the trouble to visit Mengele for a very special red, son.
At Mengele's expense, Gerhard flew back to Sao Paulo to renew Mengele's forged Brazilian identity card, which was about to expire. The plastic card was opened up again, Mengele's picture was withdrawn to reveal Gerhard's picture underneath, and the card was then relaminated in a local shop so that Gerhard could present it for renewal. The new renewed card was then slit open and relaminated after Mengele's photograph was repositioned over Gerhard's. Mengele himself noted that the new card, or "dumbman," as he called it, was far from perfect.
After two weeks in the hospital, "Don Pedro" was released.
By now the Glawes had a strong suspicion of who this opinionated and self-righteous old man really was.
But like the Stammers, the Glawes did not act on their suspicions. In his diary Mengele gave the Glawes a code name, as he did for all the key conspirators who helped him.
After the disclosure of their relationship with Mengele, the Glawes tried to put some distance between themselves and Mengele.
But in his act of public contrition, Ernesto Glawe made one important omission. He failed to mention that the Glawes had received hush money from Mengele. By the summer of 1976 they knew precisely who Mengele was, clued by the false identity card, the "Mengele" catalogue, the conflicting war stories. Mengele then felt obliged, though with great reluctance, to pay the Glawes for their silence, a fact revealed in a letter from Sedlmeier to Mengele: "In connection with the Santiago affair, you mentioned that you were disgusted that one had to pay friends for their services.
Mengele's fees to "the tall man," which had risen since he acquired his identity card, were proving to be a considerable drain on his private funds. To raise extra cash, Mengele also had to sell the Sao Paulo apartment he had bought in the Stammers' name.
Mengele's instructions for his son's secret visit resembled a set of military orders. From the moment he first suggested the idea in 1973, Mengele insisted that Rolf travel on a false passport and lay a series of false trails.
Mengele need hardly have worried because the West Germans were not giving the slightest importance to following any members of his family. But since Mengele did not know that, his elaborate instructions to Rolf continued, with an echo from the past.
Rolf departed for Rio de Janeiro from Frankfurt with a $600 charter ticket on Varig Airlines. '
As his father had instructed, Rolf brought with him gifts for the Bosserts and, for Mengele himself, a Latin-English dictionary, an attachment for his electric razor and $5,000 in cash from Karl Heinz.
It had been 21 years since Rolf last saw his father, in the Swiss Alps.
Josef Mengele was trembling with excitement.
The bungalow his father was living in was small and simple.
"I told my father I was interested in hearing about his time in Auschwitz.
Night after night the inquisition went on. Mengele's answers were so full of philosophical and pseudo-scien-tific verbiage that Rolf began to fear "my mind would be overrun." When Mengele had finally exhausted his hand, Rolf launched his counteroffensive.
Why, Rolf asked him, if he felt so sure of his ground, had he not turned himself in?
How could his father explain that many crippled and deformed people still had brilliant minds?
What precisely was Mengele's evidence for asserting that some races were superior to others?
In the 14 days and nights that Rolf spent with his father, he learned a lot about the old man's moods, his suicidal tendencies, his depression, his temper. In a philosophical way Mengele tried to justify what he had done without saying exactly what it was.
In the end, said Rolf, it was impossible to discuss the concepts of evil or guilt because his father felt no guilt: "1 tried.
By Christmas, 1978, Mengele had lost the will to live. startled by the screech of brakes, saw a bus straddling the road and amid the swirling dust, Mengele, grazed and shuffling away as if oblivious to his brush with death.
It was in this distracted frame of mind that Mengele left his bungalow for the last time.
Alone, he took the two-hour bus ride to Bertioga, arriving there on Feb. 5, 1979. For most of the next two days, Mengele stayed inside the tiny two-bedroom beach house.
At 3 p.m. on February 7, Mengele finally came outdoors. Bossert recalls that Mengele was heartsick for Germany: "I am convinced that he was longing to return to Germany.
About 4:30 in the afternoon, to cool off from the burning sun, Mengele decided to chance the gentle Atlantic waves.
Young Andreas Bossert saw him first and shouted, "Uncle, come out, the current is too strong." He called out and asked Mengele if he was all right. Mengele had died of a second stroke.
Why did it take six years for the secret of Mengele's Brazilian exile and his death and burial to emerge?
On Aug. 5, 1979, Paraguayan Interior Minister Montonaro held a press conference and laid the groundwork for the revocation of Mengele's citizenship. He denied that Mengele was in the country and said that he had left Paraguay "a long time ago." On Aug. 8, Montonaro directed the Paraguayan attorney general to ask the supreme court to revoke Mengele's citizenship, which it did that same day. The court stated that it had reached its decision because Mengele had been "absent from the country since 1960."
When Mengele's citizenship was revoked, U.S. Ambassador Robert White assumed Mengele must have died. The ambassador was right, of course, about Mengele's death, though he did not know what had happened in Brazil.
It is inconceivable that Montonaro would have revoked Mengele's citizenship without the President's authority, since he regards Paraguayan citizenship to be sacrosanct. If he is right, it suggests that Stroessner was privy to Mengele's death in Brazil but nonetheless allowed the world to go on guessing for another six years.
There's no doubt this is the kind of game that Stroessner would have enjoyed, if only to avenge the false accusations that his country had harbored Mengele for 20 years. Yet it is almost certain he did not know of Mengele's death.
The president's close friend, Hans Rudel, was privy to the secret, although, according to Rolf, he did not know exactly where Mengele had been buried. And just as the Mengele family had reached a pact with the Bosserts never to disclose the death, Rudel, too, was bound by that oath of silence.
http://www.posner.com/articles/mengele.htm
Mengele Children & Letters
Mengele has a daughter born to an Australian woman of German lineage after a liaison between the two when the woman visited the German Colony in Paraguay in mid-1960.
Eighty-five previously unreleased letters and diaries written by Mengele were discovered in late 2004. They had been seized in a 1985 raid on the home of Wolfram and Liselotte Bossert, who had harbored the fugitive Mengele until his death.
As reported in a PBS documentary, Mengele denied his experiments to his son, Rolf Mengele, calling them "fabrications".
Death
Despite international efforts to track him down, he was never apprehended and lived for 35 years hiding under various aliases. In 1979, Mengele suffered a stroke while swimming at Bertioga, Brazil and drowned. Mengele figured in the 2001 movie The Grey Zone, an account of everyday life in Auschwitz and the hopeless revolt attempted by some of the prisoners. Mordecai Richler's St-Urbain's Horseman refers to Mengele several times throughout the book. Dr. Emmenberger, a Nazi doctor in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's book "Der Verdacht", probably represents a fictionalized and symbolic version of Mengele. Mengele has also been used as a fictionalized literary and movie character, featured prominently in The Boys from Brazil (portrayed by Gregory Peck) and as part of an amalgam of Nazi doctors in Marathon Man. The controversial 1999 film Nichts als die Wahrheit (Nothing But the Truth) depicts a fictional trial against an 80-year-old Mengele before a German criminal court Dr. Mengele is briefly encountered in Elie Wiesel's book Night.
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