During World War II, Mengele served in the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where around 1.1 million people were murdered, approximately 1 million of them Jews. He became famous for carrying out brutal medical experiments on inmates, including children, under the guise of scientific research. Nazi “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele (Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images) After the war, Mengele obtained a Red Cross travel document under a false identity, allowing him to leave Europe. Like many former Nazi officials, he spent years hiding in Latin America while being pursued internationally for his crimes. He drowned in 1979 while swimming off the coast of Brazil. The documents released by Swiss authorities include material provided to police that suggests Mengele may have returned to Switzerland after initially fleeing Germany, or may have planned to enter the country under a false name, according to the German news agency dpa. Swiss media reported that the dossier contains numerous newspaper articles, most of them focusing on suspicions that Mengele remained in Switzerland on several occasions, even while an international arrest warrant was still in force against him. Archive(Photo: Swiss Archives)Document from 1967(Photo: Swiss Archives)Document from 1969(Photo: Swiss Archives)The archive also includes police reports, parts of which have been redacted. These include entry bans and arrest warrants against Mengele, as well as police reports on investigations of suspects who may have provided him with a hiding place. Switzerland’s Federal Intelligence Service, or FIS, said it had made “as few redactions as possible.” Personal information relating to federal administration employees who have ties to the FIS and its predecessor organizations, information subject to legal source protection, and information relating to third parties, except public figures, remain protected. The FIS also said it would carry out a broader review of its policy on access to archival documents. Access to the archives had long been sought by historians who wanted to establish whether Mengele spent time in Switzerland while being hunted as a war criminal, without being captured by Swiss authorities. Swiss authorities had maintained that the documents should remain sealed until 2071 for security reasons and to protect the people named in them. Mengele’s skull (Photo: AP) Historian Gérard Wettstein successfully challenged those restrictions before the Federal Administrative Court, leading to online publication. Some sections have been redacted to protect third-party sources and personal data, officials said. Wettstein had already expressed his satisfaction with the measure in May, in a report on the Tagesschau news program of the Swiss public broadcaster SRF. He described it as “an important step” that would help dispel myths about Mengele’s stay in Switzerland. The file was compiled by the police service of the federal prosecutor’s office, predecessor of Switzerland’s federal intelligence services, and transferred to the Federal Archives in 2001. According to previous Swiss media reports, Mengele had already arrived in Switzerland in 1956 under a false identity, calling himself Dr. Helmut Gregor. Three years later an arrest warrant was issued for him.
