U.S. Justice Department Closes Its File, Agrees Body in Brazil Was That of Mengele

The U.S. government agrees with Brazilian investigators that Josef Mengele is dead and has shut down its active hunt for the Nazi war criminal, the Justice Department told Congress on Friday.

The department “accepts the conclusion” that a body exhumed two months ago near Sao Paulo, Brazil, is that of Mengele, Neal Sher, head of the department’s Office of Special Investigations, told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Friday’s hearing effectively closed the active role that Congress had taken in the hunt for Mengele, the former Auschwitz doctor known as the “Angel of Death.”However, the Justice Department is continuing to investigate a report that Mengele was once in U.S. custody.

Howard Safir, associate director of the U.S. Marshal’s operations branch and head of the Mengele search, said he had recommended thatthe case be closed.

Although both Sher and Safir said they were not convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was Mengele, they both said they accept the forensic team’s conclusions.

After Mengele’s body was uncovered, people who knew him during his years in Brazil told journalists and investigators that he had lived quietly and in relative obscurity--in contrast to reports that he was living in heavily guarded seclusion in Paraguay.

Although the hunt for Mengele has ended, Sher said his office is still investigating reports that the Nazi may have been detained by U.S. officials or Army soldiers shortly after World War II ended.

“Information available at present suggests that Mengele was never knowingly interned by American authorities but might have been interned under a fictitious name after the war and released immediately,” he said.