The Third Reich at War, 1939-1945

by Richard J. Evans

Dr Josef Mengele, whose selections on the ramp at Auschwitz had sent so many to their deaths, left the camp before its dissolution, and worked briefly at Gross-Rosen, before joining an army unit headed by a former colleague. He was captured by the Americans but gave a false name and was released in July 1945, when he began working as a farmhand near Rosenheim in Bavaria. Fearing discovery, he obtained help from another former colleague to flee via Switzerland and northern Italy to Argentina, where he re-established himself, buying a half-share in a pharmaceutical company in 1955. In 1959 he moved to a German colony in Paraguay, but left for Brazil the following year. In the meantime he had divorced and remarried, both legal acts that drew attention for the first time to the fact that he was still alive. His flight and concealment owed a great deal to the help of clandestine networks of former Nazis. He continued to elude capture, and died in 1979 after suffering a heart attack while swimming. It was only in 1985 that his grave was located, and the body exhumed and identified from dental records.