One of the most diabolical death machines of the holocaust was embodied in the character of Dr. Josef Mengele, the ‘Angel of Death’ of the Auschwitz death camp.
He was the physician who determined who will be killed upon his arrival in the camp, and who will be temporarily kept alive and exploited for his skills.
Josef Mengele was born in 1911, studied medicine and joined the Nazi Party. He later moved to Auschwitz and was responsible for the gas chambers as well as the horrific medical experiments that he performed.
In January 1945, with the approach of the Russian army, the Nazis hastily evacuated the camp and went on a death march. About a week later, Mengele appeared at the Mauthausen concentration camp. From there, he fled to South America under a false identity and then disappeared.
Attempts to locate, capture or kill Mengele, occupied many intelligence officials, spies, Nazi-hunters, investigators and journalists all over the world. For 35 years Mengele lived under cover. After Adolf Eichmann was captured, Mengele was the most wanted Nazi war criminal, but somehow he managed to survive, undetected.
At one point, the Mossad came very close to arresting him, but since it was during the time of the Yossele Schumacher affair, Ben Gurion decided to focus on that issue instead.
It has been speculated that Mengele was hiding in Brazil under the name Wolfgang Gerhardt. On February 7, 1979 he died at the age of 68 from drowning while swimming in the sea. He was buried in the Brazilian city, Embu das Artes.
His death was not known, and was still sought after by Nazi- hunters. Only a few years after his death, in 1984, was his body discovered after a joint effort by American, German and South American authorities.
In 2001, it was decided that DNA tests would be conducted on his body. This was not an easy task since his family refused to give blood samples for DNA comparisons. But in the end, the tests were performed and concluded that it was indeed the body of Mengele.
However, there’s still an ongoing debate as to where this devil lived in his last days: Time magazine published an article two years ago in which it cited speculations that Mengele was hiding in the resort town of San Bernardino, Paraguay, whose inhabitants were of German descent and die-hard fans of Nazism. According to this hypothesis, Mengele died there and not in Brazil.