Mengele was taken to a cell and ordered to turn out his pockets. ”Forty- five dollars are the most interesting part of the contents to the Italian police,” Mengele observed. Then he was ”locked in an iron-barred cage in the hallway.”
After spending three weeks in jail, Mengele lost all hope of escaping. The immigration department knew that his papers were false. 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 seal his fate. Sleepless, Mengele ”sank into a state of depressed lethargy.” The game, it seemed, was up. Then, as was to happen so often over the next 30 years, Mengele`s fortunes changed dramatically. Kurt`s corrupt immigration official returned from holiday and straightened matters out. Finally Mengele was freed and granted his exit permit. And to his great relief, the North King was still at the dock.
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. The trauma of fugitive life in a strange city 6,000 miles from home must have been severe. Since his arrival in South America, he had begun to keep a daily diary, reflecting in his writings the many crises he faced.
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. By the end of the 1940s Argentina had become the technological leader of South America, boasting more than half of the continent`s telephones, televisions and railway lines.
Mengele also discovered a parochial and elitist attitude amongst Argentinians that was reminiscent of that held by the most fervent German Nazis. Argentinians, who held the ”primitives” of Paraguay and Peru in contempt, often said they were ”traveling to South America” when visiting Brazil or Chile.
But despite its progress, Argentina in 1949 was also a country stricken with serious problems. Just beyond the Parisian-style facades could be seen the villas miserias–the shantytowns, crammed with half a million people enduring the most squalid and degrading conditions. The gulf between rich and poor was vast. Economic conditions were deteriorating. The budget deficit was enormous, unemployment substantial, government salaries in arrears and tax collections haphazardly enforced. 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. (This situation exists to the present day, Stroessner having declared himself president for life.) Von Eckstein and the 44-year-old dictator were close friends, both being of German descent and having fought side by side in the 1930s in the Chaco war against the Bolivians.
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. ”The president didn`t know who he was, and all they did was shake hands,” said von Eckstein. ”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, his estranged wife, Irene, was preparing to marry another man, Alfons Hackenjos, who owned a shoe-store business in Freiburg. Karl Sr. informed his son, by letter, that Irene wanted a divorce, and Mengele did not stand in her way. He signed and notarized a power of attorney so that a local attorney in Gunzburg could represent him and process the divorce by proxy. On March 25, 1954, their petition was approved by a court in Dusseldorf. 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. The man, now in his 70s, ran a prosperous textile business in Buenos Aires, where he had come before the war to escape Hitler`s persecution of the Jews. In the early 1950s he met a German girl who had been a wartime nurse. Like so many German youngsters, she had been a member of the Hitler Youth Movement. The businessman nonetheless was greatly attracted to the girl. 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 girl introduced them to each other. Neither the girl nor the businessman had any idea of Mengele`s true identity. The two men soon found they were competing for the girl`s charms, a contest that Mengele, known to them as ”Gregor,” eventually won. However, the girl was not the only interest that ”Gregor” shared with the Jewish businessman: ”Gregor” wanted to go into partnership with him. They had several discussions about the possibility of a joint venture, but nothing came of it.
Karl Sr. wanted to see Josef married again. 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. Martha was a handsome woman, ”actually, ravishingly beautiful,” as Rolf described his aunt. She had fallen in love with Karl Jr. while still married to a businessman named William Ensmann. In 1944 she gave birth to a son, Karl Heinz, whose paternity was disputed in the local courts after Martha divorced Ensmann in 1948. After considering all the evidence in intimate detail, the regional court in Memmingen ruled that the boy was in fact Karl Jr.`s son.
According to Rolf, Karl Sr. arranged a meeting between Martha and Josef in the Swiss Alps, having deliberately sabotaged an affair that she was having with another Gunzburg man. Rolf, then age 11, was to be brought along as well to meet his long-lost ”Uncle Fritz.” Behind Karl Sr.`s matchmaking lay a calculated plan to keep control of the Gunzburg firm totally in the hands of the Mengele family. Karl Sr. feared that if Martha remarried someone outside the family, her voting rights, inherited from Karl Jr., could be influenced by that outsider. But if she married Josef, all key decisions would be made securely within the family.
The travel plans for Mengele`s reunion with Martha were laid months in advance. In April, 1955, he applied to the Argentine federal police for a special passport for non-Argentine citizens. But first he had to satisfy the police that he had been a resident of ”good conduct.” On Sept. 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. There to meet him at the Geneva airport was the ever-faithful Hans Sedlmeier, who drove him to Engelberg, where he checked into the Hotel Engel, the best in town. Waiting for him at the hotel were Martha; her son, Karl Heinz; 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. Rolf was impressed with his dashing ”uncle,” who dressed formally for dinner, had such exciting tales to tell and gave him pocket money.
Rolf also noticed how physically attentive ”Uncle Fritz” was to his Auntie Martha, although he thought at the time that it was merely ordinary family affection. 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, his first open visit to Gunzburg since he had come on leave from Auschwitz in November, 1944.
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. Besides, living under a false name had made everyday life too complicated for him, and he had plans to take out a mortgage on a house so that he and Martha could enjoy a proper family life.
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. He gave them his correct name, date of birth, date of his divorce from Irene and his addresses in Buenos Aires and Gunzburg. On Sept. 11, 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. After 13 years on the run, he felt the worst was over. Yet the worst was yet to come. Somehow he had attracted the attention of the Buenos Aires police on the suspicion that he might have been practicing as a doctor without a license. Exactly what triggered their interest is not known. 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. He moved into the southeast, in a region close to the Parana River, which borders Argentina.
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. They were introduced to each other by Hans Rudel. 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. Despite 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 ”Jose Mengele.” Paraguayan citizenship would afford him additional protection should the West Germans seek his extradition; no formal extradition agreement existed between the two countries.
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 Nov. 27.
On the other side of the world, 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. The former Iron Cross hero was now stricken with panic as his worst 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 kidnaped in Buenos Aires in May, 1960, the notorious Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer responsible for the deaths of nearly 6 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 Insfran, 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. And though Krug was a muscular man, his armory consisted of precisely one pistol.
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. Frondizi told a press conference that his country had ”no intention of sheltering criminals from the justice they deserve.” But, he said, the West Germans would have to provide proof of Mengele`s crimes before he was sent back for trial. Smarting from the Eichmann kidnaping of just two months before, the president said, ”Some form of reparations would be sought from the Israeli government (for the Eichmann abduction).”
But on the west coast of the U.S. one former friend of Mengele`s was stunned. Opening his morning newspaper, the Jewish textile executive from Buenos Aires saw a picture of the man with whom he had nearly gone into partnership several years before. ”I simply did not believe it,” he said.
”I immediately telephoned the girl who had introduced us and I said to her, `To think he`d been our friend.` She said they had just got the newspapers, too, and all they had done was look at the picture in disbelief.” 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. Not knowing that he was a wanted Nazi, she asked why the embassy had no record of a German doctor of that name living in the area. This led the charge d`affaires, Peter Bensch, to go to southern Paraguay to investigate: ”I made some inquiries, and it was clear to me that Mengele had been there under his own name. He was not practicing as a doctor full time but on an occasional basis, I thought, because he depended on the good will of the local people. There was no secret about his name. But I personally never found him. I met Alban Krug. 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. Despite Bensch`s breakthrough in Paraguay, his colleagues in the Buenos Aires embassy less than a thousand miles away were pressing sedately on with their extradition request to the Argentinians. 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. News of the haphazard searches was brought to him by Martha and Karl Heinz, who still managed an occasional visit to his Paraguayan hideout on Krug`s farm. But it was not the Argentinians or the West Germans that Mengele feared; it was the Israelis.
In September, 1960, Mengele decided that capture by the Israelis was inevitable as long as he stayed at the Krug farm. He resolved to get out of Paraguay and begin a new life elsewhere. The choice was Brazil. ”The strong change in my surroundings will definitely be mirrored in my writings,” he wrote. For a month there were no diary entries. ”So much happened in this time,” Mengele later wrote. ”For a certain reason that I cannot explain, I cannot write about it.” By Oct. 24, Mengele had left Krug`s farm. The ”new surroundings” that he now referred to were certainly a populous place, most likely Sao Paulo.
The reason Mengele hurriedly departed from Paraguay within months of the Eichmann kidnaping 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. He had arrived in Brazil in 1948, leaving Europe because he could no longer tolerate ”the oppressive Allied occupation,” even though he disliked Brazil because it was filled with ”half-monkeys, people of a sick and secondary race.” The link betwen 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. First, he and Martha agreed to separate, Martha having decided that being a fugitive`s wife was no life for herself or her 16-year-old son.
Next, Rolf, then also 16, was struggling hard to come to terms with who his real father was. His mother, Irene, had recently allowed his stepfather, Alfons Hackenjos, to tell him the identity of the man he had called ”Uncle Fritz” during that skiing holiday in the Swiss Alps in 1956. Rolf remembers the event and how it affected him at the time: ”I was always told that my father had been missing in Russia. My father had always been Dr. Mengele, who spoke Greek and Latin and who had been so brave. It was about 1960 when Hacki (Hackenjos) told me that Uncle Fritz was the same man as my father. Now that I was told the truth, I would have preferred another father.”
In 1959 Gerhard had met Geza Stammer and his wife, Gitta, at a special evening for Austrian-Hungarian expatriates. ”You could say that we were firm anti-Communists,” said Gitta, ”but we weren`t Nazis.” Even so, the Stammers shared with Gerhard some unpalatable revisionist views. ”I think some things about the Holocaust may have been invented,” Gitta said. ”It`s hard for people to believe all these things are really true.”
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. It produced coffee, rice, fruit and dairy cattle in a remote German community near Nova Europa, 200 miles northwest of Sao Paulo.
