The Friends of Dr. Mengele

Beginning in 1945 and continuing for some years after, hundreds--possibly thousands--of German and Austrian Nazi war criminals were quietly granted official protection in Argentina. Their journey from the ruins of Hitler’s Third Reich to the comforts of President Juan Peron’s Argentina had been carefully prepared, with a well-financed escape network in place by the time of Germany’s defeat. Once in Argentina the wanted war criminals appear to have had enough money at their disposal to buy favor from a regime that in any event was ideologically sympathetic to the Nazi cause.

For decades, Argentina denied any official complicity in the sheltering of the escaped Nazis. Now, to his credit, President Carlos Saul Menem has ordered official war-criminal files opened. The first batch of documents confirms what Nazi hunters have known for decades: Some of Hitler’s worst thugs and sadists were warmly welcomed by Argentina.

Among them was Dr. Josef Mengele, notorious for the monstrous “medical” experiments he performed on helpless inmates at the Auschwitz death camp. Mengele entered Argentina under an alias in 1949. In 1956, however, he felt secure enough to apply under his own name for an Argentine identification card. At the same time he asked West Germany’s embassy in Buenos Aires for a copy of his birth certificate. Thus two governments knew beyond any doubt exactly where one of the major wanted war criminal was residing. Yet no immediate effort was made to arrest him. Not until 1959 did West Germany’s government issue an arrest warrant, but Mengele--perhaps alerted by a sympathizer--fled to Paraguay. He is believed to have died in a swimming accident in Brazil in 1979.

The opening of the Argentine files will serve the ends of history, but it comes far too late to satisfy the imperatives of justice. Many of those who eagerly took part in this century’s worst crimes were able to live out their lives in security and peace. To the shameful crimes they committed must be added the shame of those who made their escape from retribution possible.