The Hunt That Never Happened: How the “Angel of Death” Hid in Plain Sight
Newly unsealed intelligence papers from Argentina expose a disturbing truth: SS Commander Josef Mengele, the notorious Auschwitz butcher known as the “Angel of Death,” lived openly in South America for years even though officials were fully aware of who he was. According to the documents, first highlighted by the New York Post, authorities tracked his steps yet never managed—nor decisively attempted—to bring him to justice.
Mengele had slipped out of Germany in 1949, vanishing just as the revelations of the Nuremberg trials made clear the full scale of his atrocities. His sadistic medical “research,” which included handpicking victims for the gas chambers and carrying out gruesome experiments, earned him his infamous title long before he disappeared overseas.
The intelligence reports, released by Argentinian President Javier Milei, reveal that South American authorities regularly exchanged information about his whereabouts. Still, bungled timing, bureaucratic delays, and even media leaks repeatedly gave him the chance to slip away. Each misstep widened the gap between his crimes and the justice he never faced.
Using an Italian passport under the alias Helmut Gregor, Mengele entered Argentina in 1949. By the middle of the next decade, the records show that officials already knew that the “Angel of Death” was living among them. Yet he continued building a life there without interference.
One document contains a harrowing newspaper interview with Auschwitz survivor José Furmanski, who said: “He gathered twins of all ages in the camp and subjected them to experiments that always ended in death. Between the children, the elderly, and women… what horrors.”
Incredibly, by 1956 Mengele felt confident enough to contact the West German Embassy in Buenos Aires to request his original birth certificate. He even began using his real name again. A 1957 memo recounts how he “explained” why he had entered Argentina under an alias: “He (Mengele) demonstrated being nervous, having stated that during the war he acted as a physician in the German S.S., in Czechoslovakia, where the Red Cross labeled him a ‘war criminal.’”
The files further detail that Argentine authorities knew exactly where he lived—Carapachy, near Buenos Aires. They were aware that he had married his brother’s widow and that his father visited him, possibly to support his medical ventures.
When West Germany finally issued an arrest warrant in 1959, the request for extradition was swiftly rejected by a local judge who claimed it amounted to “political persecution.” International calls for action escalated, but Mengele slipped away once more, this time into Paraguay, where he obtained citizenship and resumed life under government protection. Police raided his Buenos Aires laboratory, only to find an empty workspace.
Later investigations depended almost entirely on foreign press reports. By 1960, Mengele had settled in Brazil with the help of sympathetic German farmers. There he lived out the rest of his days, dying from a stroke while swimming near Bertioga. Buried under a fabricated name, his remains were finally unearthed in 1985—decades too late for the justice denied to his countless victims.
{Matzav.com}
