2 New Witnesses Place Mengele in Brazil

Two new witnesses told Brazilian police Tuesday that in 1976 they had helped an ailing former German army doctor they came to believe was the notorious Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele.

The sworn depositions of Ernesto Glawe and his 33-year-old son, Norberto, who were born in Argentina of German descent, bolstered the Brazilian police conviction that Mengele lived quietly near Sao Paulo while the international search for him focused elsewhere.

Norberto Glawe said he and his father visited the man, whom they knew as Peter Gerhard, between eight and 10 times during 1976. Norberto Glawe said he was present when the man suffered a stroke that year.

Records of Peter Gerhard

Norberto said he took the man to a local hospital, where records show he was admitted as Peter Gerhard. After the man was released from the hospital, Norberto Glawe said, he lived with him for about a month in the Sao Paulo suburb of Eldorado Paulista.

Norberto Glawe told police the man, whom he described as “egocentric,” claimed to have been a former German army physician. The Glawes said they were both suspicious of the man and thought he was living under an assumed identity.

One day, according to the depositions, Ernesto Glawe found in Peter Gerhard’s house a brochure from the Mengele family’s farm implements company in West Germany.

The father and son said they concluded that the man was Josef Mengele and broke off relations with him. The Glawes said they did not report their suspicions because they were not certain of them, and because they were afraid.

Scientific Examination

Meanwhile, Brazilian authorities pressed for technical and scientific evidence to support mounting testimony that Mengele lived unmolested nearly in Brazil for almost 20 years.

Brazilian forensic specialists said they were “photographing, weighing, measuring and X-raying,” the remains of a drowning victim exhumed last week. The man was buried in February, 1979, as Wolfgang Gerhard. Police say that Mengele, who had been using the “Peter Gerhard” identity, assumed Wolfgang Gerhard’s name and identity documents when the real Wolfgang Gerhard returned to Austria around 1975.

A spokesman for the forensic specialists, who have declined all offers from foreign experts eager to assist them, said no conclusions of the study will be announced until the examination is complete around the end of June.

In Los Angeles on Tuesday, Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, said his associates will forward copies of Mengele’s SS medical and dental records through the Brazilian Embassy in Washington to Wilmes Roberto Teixeira, one of the pathologists investigating the case in Sao Paulo.

According to Hier, the SS medical documents indicate that Mengele was involved in a motorcycle accident in 1943 but include nothing likely to support an identification of Mengele based on the finding of an abnormal pelvic bone found in the coffin exhumed last week in Brazil. Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal himself said in New York last week that Mengele is believed to have suffered a broken hip.

Hier Disputes Wiesenthal

However, Hier said Tuesday, “There is no indication where he (Mengele) was injured or even whether he was hospitalized. . . . No conclusion could be drawn that Josef Mengele had a hip injury or that the pelvic bone was broken, or that this could lend credence to the idea that the remains might be those of Josef Mengele.”

Sao Paulo Police Chief Romeu Tuma said Tuesday that West German and Brazilian technicians have obtained “good fingerprints” from personal effects thought to have been Mengele’s. The chemicals used to highlight the old prints need some time to “fix,” Tuma said, adding that once the fingerprints can be handled, they will be compared with fingerprints of Mengele provided by West Germany and Paraguayan police.

Times staff writer Mathis Chazanov in Los Angeles contributed to this story.