Switzerland’s intelligence agency will finally open secret files on notorious Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele – amid claims the Angel of Death evaded capture there.
With a flick of his gloved hands, Mengele acted as the supreme arbiter of life and death at the Auschwitz extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
More than 1.1 million people – including one million Jews – were sent to their deaths inside the complex’s gas chambers.
It was Mengele who largely decided the fate of the camp’s inmates, with those surviving death still at risk of being selected for his sickening medical experiments to create the Aryan master race.
After the war, Mengele found himself on the Allied commanders’ most-wanted list, prompting him to assume a false identity.
He used his new name to secure Red Cross travel permits – intended for thousands of people who had been displaced – from the Swiss consulate in Genoa, northern Italy.
Mengele fled to South America in 1949 and was never found, despite the best efforts of private investigators and the Israeli secret service, Mossad.
DNA tests in 1992 proved beyond doubt that a man who had died in 1979 after suffering a stroke while swimming in Brazil was indeed Mengele.
But in the years since his death it has emerged the wanted Nazi travelled to Switzerland, possibly on more than one occasion.
Dr Josef Mengele (centre) pictured alongside Auschwitz commandants, Richard Baer (left) and Rudolf Hoess (right), is thought to have evaded capture in Switzerland
Mengele carried out sickening medical experiments on inmates to create a master race
Mengele pictured in the 1970s in Brazil with friend and Austrian ex-pat Lieselotte Bossert, and her children. Bossert is said to have sheltered the infamous Nazi doctor
Historians previously discovered he had enjoyed a skiing holiday in the Swiss Alps with his son Rolf in 1956, three years before an international arrest warrant was issued.
Swiss historian Regula Bochsler recently found that in June 1961, the Austrian intelligence service warned Mengele might be back on Swiss soil travelling under a fake identity.
Other evidence suggesting this could be true includes documents showing Mengele’s wife applied for permanent residency – and rented an apartment in Zurich, close to the airport.
Police files from 1961 show the flat was even put under surveillance, with Mrs Mengele seen driving her VW car alongside an unknown man.
The historian has questioned whether Mengele, feeling the heat of an international warrant, fled back to Europe and sought refuge in Switzerland.
In 2019, she applied to the Swiss Federal Archive to unseal the federal police files it holds on Mengele – but was refused on national security grounds and to protect the Nazi criminal’s extended family.
Last year, fellow historian Gerard Wettstein was similarly turned down, with officials telling him the files would remain shut until 2071.
But after taking the Swiss authorities to court – thanks to a crowdfund-backed challenge – the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service (SFIS) said the files will finally be released.
However they have not said exactly when that might happen.
In a statement earlier this month, the SFIS said: ‘The appellant will be granted access to the file, subject to conditions and requirements yet to be defined.’
Bochsler is concerned when the files are finally made public, they could be heavily redacted.
She told BBC News: ‘I don’t trust [the authorities] at all. I fear it will look like the Epstein files. Why have these Mengele files been closed for so long?’
Wettstein also fears what the files may contain – or not, as the case may be.
‘Maybe we will never get to the real truth…but maybe we can have at least a clearer idea’, he added.
