Notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, the physician known as the “Angel of Death” for his barbaric experiments and selections for the gas chambers, lived openly and comfortably in Argentina for years despite authorities knowing his true identity, newly declassified intelligence files have revealed.
Released under Argentinian President Javier Milei, the documents show that local agencies tracked Mengele after he slipped into the country in 1949, yet repeatedly failed to act, Fox News reported.
A combination of political protection, bureaucratic hesitation, and press leaks helped one of the world's most wanted war criminals evade capture.
Mengele, responsible for lethal pseudo-medical procedures and the torture of prisoners, especially twins, arrived in Argentina using an Italian passport under the alias Helmut Gregor. But by the mid-1950s, intelligence files confirm authorities knew the “Angel of Death” was living among them.
Born in 1911 in Gunzburg, Germany, Mengele studied medicine and anthropology and later joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS in 1938. He began his role at Auschwitz in May 1943, where he selected prisoners for forced labour or immediate death and carried out gruesome experiments, including surgeries without anesthesia, disease infections, and attempts to alter eye colour through injections.
His name became synonymous with the terror of Auschwitz and the atrocities that killed more than a million people, most of them Jews.
Despite his crimes being exposed during the Nuremberg trials, Mengele managed to establish a new life in Argentina. Newly released records show that by 1956, he had even requested his original birth certificate from the West German Embassy in Buenos Aires and was brazenly using his real name.
A 1957 memo said that Mengele appeared “nervous,” adding, “He (Mengele) demonstrated being nervous, having stated that during the war he acted as a physician in the German SS, in Czechoslovakia, where the Red Cross labelled him a ‘war criminal.'”
The files reveal Argentine agencies knew he lived in Carapachay, outside Buenos Aires, and that he had married his brother's widow. Authorities even mentioned a visit from his father.
Yet no arrest was made. In 1959, West Germany issued an arrest warrant and requested extradition, but a local judge rejected it, arguing it was derived from “political persecution.”
International pressure mounted, pushing Mengele to flee to Paraguay, where he was granted citizenship. When authorities finally raided his Buenos Aires laboratory, he was already gone. He later surfaced in Brazil, protected by German farmers.
Mengele died in 1979 after a stroke while swimming near Bertioga, Brazil. Buried under a false identity, his remains were dug up in 1985 and conclusively identified through forensic testing. Today, his bones are used for forensic teaching at the University of Sao Paulo's Medical School.
