MENGELE: Justice Dept. to Join Search for Nazi : Justice Dept. to Join Search for Mengele

Atty. Gen. William French Smith ordered an investigation Wednesday into the whereabouts of Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death” of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and into whether U.S. authorities had any contact with him after World War II.

“Nothing would make us happier than to locate him and help bring him to justice,” said Stephen S. Trott, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division.

The probe is likely to take “a matter of months,” according to Neal M. Sher, director of the department’s Office of Special Investigations, which will contact both U.S agencies and foreign governments to determine the status of any current efforts to locate Mengele.

Controversy Renewed

The controversy over the fate of the notorious Nazi war criminal was renewed last month when evidence surfaced showing that Mengele might have been arrested by American authorities in Vienna in 1947 and later freed. The evidence was contained in declassified U.S. government documents obtained and released by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.

The Pentagon responded that “none of the documents indicate any American units” captured the doctor or had any contact with him after the war.

Mengele, believed to be hiding in South America, would be 73 if he is still alive. He heads the list of Nazi war criminals still at large. He is wanted for his allegedly central role in the murder of at least 400,000 people, mostly Jews, at Auschwitz and for performing hideous medical experiments on camp prisoners.

Gerald Margolis, director of the Wiesenthal Center, hailed Smith’s announcement as “a great moment” in the hunt for Mengele and said the U.S. investigation is “a first step and a necessary step” toward his eventual capture. Asked if he is convinced that Mengele is alive, Margolis replied, “I have no evidence to the contrary.”

He said the questions raised by the documents obtained by the center include whether Mengele was actually interned in 1947 by the U.S. Army counterintelligence corps and whether he attempted to gain entrance into Canada in 1962.

Smith, asked what could be done with the facts turned up by the investigation, said, “We really can’t speculate on the consequences or the reaction to what we might find.”

But Trott noted that other nations have an interest in prosecuting Mengele, and Sher identified the interested nations as Israel and West Germany.

Seeks More Documents

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center, said the center plans to sue for access to four other documents concerning Mengele that have been withheld by the Army on grounds of national security. The Pentagon said Wednesday that it had turned over those documents to the Office of Special Investigations.

Hier, who was in Paris on Wednesday, called the Justice Department inquiry “the only course the attorney general and the Reagan Administration could take.” He said federal records on the Nazi fugitive are “in complete disarray” and that only a thorough review will determine whether more leads exist.

Hier, who led the center’s own investigation into Mengele’s whereabouts, was returning from West Germany, where he had discussed the Mengele case and other war crimes issues with that country’s minister of state.

Although he said he was “elated” by Smith’s announcement, Hier said the Administration could do more--including placing pressure on the leaders of Paraguay, Mengele’s reported hideout--to bring the “Angel of Death” to justice. The Administration’s tough line against international terrorism rings hollow, he said, unless “the master terrorist of them all, Josef Mengele, cannot escape with impunity.”

Smith’s announcement of the U.S. investigation came the same day that an international panel in Jerusalem appealed to “all governments, all heads of religions and creeds, all international associations” to help bring Mengele to justice.

The six-member panel completed hearings Wednesday on Mengele’s death camp experiments in genetics and concluded that there is sufficient evidence to try Mengele for crimes against humanity.