The Swiss federal intelligence service has released a comprehensive 200-page dossier detailing the activities of the notorious Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, a German doctor infamously referred to as the “Angel of Death” due to his inhumane medical experiments conducted on prisoners at Auschwitz.
During World War II, Mengele served at the Auschwitz extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where an estimated 1.1 million people were killed, approximately 1 million of whom were Jews. He is particularly known for performing brutal medical experiments on inmates, including children, under the guise of scientific research.
After the war, Mengele obtained a Red Cross travel document under a false identity, which helped him escape from Europe. Like many former Nazi officials, he spent several years in hiding in Latin America, where he was pursued internationally for his crimes. He ultimately drowned in 1979 while swimming off the coast of Brazil.
Documents released by Swiss authorities include evidence that Mengele may have returned to Switzerland after initially fleeing Germany, or that he may have planned to enter the country under a false name, as reported by the German news agency dpa. Historians who aim to establish whether Mengele spent time in Switzerland while evading capture as a war criminal had long sought access to these files. Initially, Swiss authorities maintained that the documents would remain sealed until 2071 for security reasons and to protect the identities of individuals mentioned within.
Historian Gérard Wettstein successfully challenged these restrictions before the Federal Administrative Court, leading to the dossier’s publication online. Authorities redacted certain sections to safeguard sources and the personal information of third parties. The police service of the federal prosecutor’s office compiled the dossier, a predecessor to Switzerland’s federal intelligence services, and transferred it to the Federal Archives in 2001.
This article used information from The Associated Press.
