Argentine security forces also received testimony from a Polish-born Argentine citizen, José Furmanski, one of Mengele’s victims in the camps.
“I met Mengele. I knew him well. I saw him many times in the Auschwitz camp, with his SS colonel’s uniform and, on top of it, the white doctor’s coat,” said Furmanski in press clippings saved by local intelligence.
“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. I saw him separate a mother from her daughter and send one to certain death.”
Perhaps most strikingly of all, a Buenos Aires court rejected an extradition request from West Germany in 1959 on the basis that the Nazi war criminal could face “political persecution” if he returned to his home country.
Then, in 1960, he would escape to Paraguay, but a secret memo dated July 12 that year shows officials were still searching for Mengele after he had already fled.
The files also outline Mengele’s move to Brazil later in 1960, where Nazi-sympathizing German Brazilian farmers provided safehouses. He lived for years under aliases, including Peter Hochbichler, José Mengele and Wolfgang Gerhardt, before dying of a stroke while swimming in 1979.
His remains were identified by Brazilian authorities in 1985 and confirmed by DNA tests seven years later, but he never faced trial for his well-documented crimes.
The declassified materials are housed in Argentina’s General Archive of the Nation and will be made available for public and academic research.
