Israel Accepts Tests Proving Mengele Death
Israel said Wednesday that it accepts results of genetic tests showing that infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death,” died in Brazil in 1979.
A Justice Ministry statement noted that investigators from Germany, the United States, Brazil and Israel had agreed in 1989 that remains found in Brazil in 1985 were those of Mengele.
“But at the request of Israel, to remove even the slightest doubt, the announcement was delayed until it was possible to carry out the decisive check of the genetic profile,” it said.
Alec Jeffreys, a British genetics scientist, carried out the tests after Mengele’s son gave a blood sample in January. In Frankfurt, Germany, Jeffreys said the tests proved “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the remains were Mengele’s.
In Vienna, Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal said: “We now close the Mengele file. There is nothing stronger than a genetic test.”
Since 1985, alleged sightings of Mengele in Portugal and the United States had fueled theories that he was still alive and had again evaded justice.
Mengele was accused of murdering 400,000 Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.
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