Declassified Argentine Files Reveal How Josef Mengele Lived Openly and Escaped Across Latin America

Declassified Argentine archives released in 2024 reveal how Josef Mengele — the Auschwitz physician known as the "Angel of Death" — led a conspicuously open postwar life in Argentina and moved across Latin America with the help of sympathetic networks and bureaucratic disarray.

What the archive contains

The multilingual trove (Spanish, German, Portuguese and English) includes a dedicated binder on Mengele with photographs, immigration and business records, surveillance notes, correspondence, press clippings and intelligence summaries. Together these documents trace decades of sporadic investigations and show how information about one of the world's most wanted war criminals was collected, fragmented and often mishandled.

Eyewitness testimony and identity

Among the records is an interview with José Furmanski, an Argentine-born Pole and Auschwitz survivor who identified Mengele and described the doctor’s cruel experiments on twins. Furmanski’s account appears alongside press clippings and other materials that alerted Argentine authorities to accusations against Mengele.

"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," Furmanski is quoted as saying in the files.

Aliases, business activity and official awareness

The files show Argentine officials knew by the mid-to-late 1950s that Mengele had entered Argentina in 1949 using an Italian passport in the name Helmut Gregor. That document helped him obtain an immigrant ID card in 1950. Records also show he registered as a partner in a Buenos Aires medical laboratory in 1958 and — in 1956 — even obtained a legalized copy of his original birth certificate from the West German embassy, later petitioning to have his ID amended to his real name.

An internal memo dated 12 July 1960 traces his declared business links and notes that a "José Mengele" was entered as a contributing partner in the firm FADRO-FARM on 10 July 1958 and withdrew in April 1959. The archive documents personal details known to local intelligence: family arrangements, business interests and suspected associates.

Fragmented investigations and missed opportunities

Despite the volume of material, the records portray an intelligence community hampered by fragmentation, poor interagency communication and inconsistent political will. An arrest warrant and extradition request from West Germany in 1959 was reportedly denied by an Argentine judge on grounds that the request was politically motivated, and action on searches and surveillance was often delayed or disjointed. In several instances press publicity apparently warned suspects before authorities could act.

Flight through Latin America

Under growing international pressure after 1959, the files indicate Mengele left Argentina for Paraguay, where he reportedly obtained citizenship and benefitted from protection by the regime of Alfredo Stroessner. Around 1960 he is believed to have entered Brazil clandestinely through the tri-border area near Paraná state. The documents describe assistance from German-Brazilian farmers who hosted fugitive Nazis and provided rural safehouses.

In Brazil he used multiple aliases — including Peter Hochbichler and a Portuguese form of his name, José Mengele — and lived at properties linked to German immigrant families in São Paulo state. He died in 1979 after suffering a stroke while swimming off the coast of Bertioga. Buried under the false name Wolfgang Gerhardt, his remains were exhumed and positively identified in 1985, with DNA confirmation following in 1992.

Conclusion

The declassified files provide a detailed, if fragmented, picture of how Mengele navigated postwar South America: sheltered by sympathetic networks, at times living openly, and ultimately enabled by bureaucratic gaps and limited coordination among authorities. The records underscore how archival material and survivor testimony together help reconstruct how notorious war criminals evaded capture for decades.