Bossert wrote to Sedlmeier of Mengele's demise and had the remains buried as Wolfgang Gerhard at Our Lady of the Rosary Cemetery in Embu, 12 miles west of Sao Paulo. Rolf returned to Brazil at year's end to settle his father's affairs, rewarding the Bosserts for their service (and silence) with cash and the Eldorado bungalow. The Mengele family decided not to publicly reveal his death, and the sightings of him continued. He was in Ascuncion, a 'torture techniques' consultant to Stroessner, practicing his skills on Ache Indians in the Chaco. He was hiding out at Nazi enclaves in Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay. He was living in Bedford Hills at Westchester County NY. In response to President Jimmy Carter's shift in policy to Paraguay by highlighting its human rights abuses and threatening to cut off foreign aid, the government revoked Mengele's citizenship in a public relations ploy, acknowledging he had been out of the country since 1960-61.
In 1985 the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz (the date is now know as Holocaust Remembrance Day) was marked by a ceremony at the camp, attended by many of its survivors. This was followed in February by a widely viewed televised mock trial of Mengele in Jerusalem, with 106 of his victims taking the stand. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin announced that if he was still alive he must be brought to justice.
On May 31, 1985, acting on a tip received by the West German prosecutor's office, police raided Sedlmeier’s home. They found an address book and copies of correspondences to and from Mengele. The police in Sao Paulo were notified and the Bosserts interrogated, eventually revealing the location of the grave. The remains were exhumed on June 6 and an extensive examination was performed, including a process involving the use of two video cameras and a video mixer to superimpose what was left of the skull with a verified photograph of Mengele's head. Pathologists had no dental X-rays to work with, a vital component to forensic identification. They concluded that with a high degree of probability the body was Mengele's (DNA testing confirmed the identity in 1992). Rolf issued a statement on June 10 admitting it was his father's. He said the news of the death had been kept quiet to protect the people who had sheltered him for many years. The Mengele family has refused repeated requests by Brazilian officials to repatriate his skeletal remains to Germany. The bones are now in storage at the Sao Paulo Institute for Forensic Medicine.
Alois Brunner, the last war criminal
Alfredo Stroessner
The North King docked in the Argentine capital on August 26, 1949. By that time Argentina was the most developed country on the continent. It had both enormous natural resources and a highly literate people. Buenos Aires was a culturally advanced and sophisticated city, in many ways resembling Paris. There was a widespread parochial and elitist attitude among the religiously conservative Roman Catholic population. A cattle aristocracy controlled the nation, an oligarchy of 200 families allied through marriage. But the gulf between rich and poor was vast - countless lived in villa miserias (shanytowns) enduring the most squalid conditions. Argentina had a large and politically powerful German community. Martin Bormann had called Argentina 'our greatest benefactor'. The Abwehr had established a large network of agents throughout the country. Juan Peron, an ardent admirer of Benito Mussolini's fascist corporate state, was the country's President and Eva Peron its First Lady, the beloved champions of the impoverished descamisados (shirtless ones). They both greatly benefited from the booty the Nazi hierarchy smuggled out of Europe during the war, when the prospects of Germany's victory became increasingly doubtful. Reichsbank records reveal 3500 ounces of platinum, 550,000 ounces of gold, 4600 carats of diamonds (all of which was in no small part confiscated from Jews in the KZ system) and millions in American, British and Swiss currency were shipped on six Unterseebooten during Aktion Feuerland. This bounty was deposited in vaults at the Banco Germanico and Banco Transatlantico in the name of Peron's then mistress Eva Duarte. It was administered by four German trustees until they all died, none from natural causes.
This was Helmut Gregor's new world. He first took a job as a carpenter (because it came with a room) in the Vincente Lopez district. After several weeks at the modest lodging Gregor moved into the boarding house of a Nazi sympathizer in the posh suburb of Florida, where he eventually joined a circle of acquaintances having formerly held prominent positions in the Third Reich, including Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the Luftwaffe's most decorated ace (his feats were so extraordinary Hitler had a special gold and diamond studded medal created for him). Rudel was associated with the Kameradenwerk (a.k.a. Odessa), working its Argentine end counseling recently arrived Nazi fugitives on matters such as how to obtain the necessary forged documents for a new life. Gregor was introduced to Adolf Eichmann in 1952, who was living in Buenos Aires under the alias Ricardo Klement. The two men met occasionally in the city's cafes but never became close friends. In the early 50's Gregor began to make trips to Paraguay to explore business opportunities for the Gunzburg firm, traveling extensively throughout the California sized nation. In 1953 Gregor moved back to Bueno Aires and bought a small carpentry business. His estranged wife wanted to remarry and he did not object. A divorce was granted to Joseph and Irene Mengele in Dusseldorf Germany on March 25, 1954. The same year Gregor moved to the predominately German suburb of Olivos. In March 1956 he traveled to Switzerland to vacation with Martha, his younger brother Karl Jr.'s widow, her son Karl Heinz and his son Rolf (the boys were the same age and knew him as Uncle Fritz, regaling them with stories of his wartime exploits on the Eastern front).
When he returned to Argentina he wanted to be Josef Mengele again. He got the necessary documentation from the West German embassy proving date / place of and name at birth, then went before the national court in Buenos Aires to swear that Helmut Gregor and Josef Mengele were one and the same person. In November the federal police issued him a new identity card in his real name. He then obtained a passport from the West German embassy. That October Martha and her son moved to Argentina, and in July 1958 she and Mengele were married. In 1957 he traveled to Santiago Chile as a representative of Karl Mengele & Sons (his brother Alois was now in charge). Accompanied by Rudel they met up with Walter Rauff, who had developed the mobile gas vans that killed close to 100,000 and later served as Gestapo Chief in Milan Italy, spending a week together reminiscing about good times past. Mengele sold his workshop and bought a stake in the fledging pharmaceutical company Fadro Farm, being listed on its board of directors as Dr. Josef Mengele.
Herman Langbein, a Viennese left-wing activist, was sent to Auschwitz and worked as a clerk in Dr. Wirth's office. He began compiling a dossier of Mengele in the mid fifties and during his research discovered Mengele's divorce papers, learning he was in Buenos Aires. Langbein brought his file to Bonn's Justice Ministry to persuade them to issue a warrant for Mengele's arrest. He was told he needed to present his case to the prosecutor's office of the state where Mengele was born, which Langbein didn't know. More digging on his part revealed the birthplace to be Gunzberg in Freiberg. Word of Langbein's activites must have filtered back to Mengele through his family for by August 1958, after he was questioned along with several other doctors suspected of practicing medicine without a license when a teenage girl died following an abortion and fearing the publicity would lead to his Nazi background and activities being discovered, he decided to relocate to Paraguay where there was no formal extradition treaty with West Germany. In contrast to Argentina the country was quite backward, ruled by the iron-fisted Alfredo Stroessner. Mengele sold his shares in Fardo Farm and by May 1959 had settled in the southeast region of the country known as Alto Parana bordering Argentina. The locals called it Neuva Bavaria, being inhabited by 60,000 settlers of German descent. For the next 15 months he lived on the farm of Alban Krug, a diehard Nazi and head of the local farmers' cooperative. Martha and Karl Heinz remained in Buenos Aries, but made occasional visits across the border. On June 5, 1959 a judge in the Freiburg court drew up an indictment against Mengele. The arrest warrant set out 17 counts of premeditated murder. It was passed to the Foreign Office in Bonn to begin extradition proceedings from Argentina, where it was believed Mengele still lived. This news was leaked to the press and by late 1959 the World Jewish Congress was appealing to Auschwitz survivors to come forward and supplement the evidence already provided by Langbein and the Freiburg court. On October 24, 1959 Mengele was issued a Paraguayan identity card as Jose Mengele and on November 27 his naturalization certificate. No such documents were obtained for Martha and Karl Heinz.
Isser Harel, chief of the Mossad (Israel CIA), personally led the team of agents in Operation Eichmann, which on May 11, 1960 abducted him off a Buenos Aires street on his way home from work. Eichmann had to be held in a safe house until May 20, when he could be secretly flown back to Tel Aviv. During those eight days Harel tried desperately to locate Mengele, still thought to be living there, to pull off a second kidnapping. Once back home Harel set up a special Operation Mengele unit. From the spring of 1961 through '62 agents were sent to Europe and South America to try and penetrate Mengele circle of friends and family for knowledge of his whereabouts. When the news of Eichmann's capture was made public Mengele realized his refuge at the Krug farm was no longer safe. By September 1960 he had decided to relocate to Brazil.
Mengele in 1971 sings a verse of 'In Paris, in Paris sind die Mädels so süß' (In Paris, in Paris the girls are so sweet) - from the 1992 French documentary 'Josef Mengele, le rapport final' (based on the Posner and Ware book):
"In Paris, in Paris ist im Frühling so süß, ein Monsieur bei den Damen zu sein. In Paris, in Paris ist im Frühling so süß, ein Monsieur bei den Damen zu sein. Jede lacht Dir zu, jede sagt Dir zu und schwört Dir treu zu sein, doch nicht Dir allein. In Paris, in Paris ist im Frühling so süß, ein Monsieur bei den Damen zu sein."
(In Paris, in Paris, it's so sweet in spring to be a monsieur with the ladies. In Paris, in Paris, it's so sweet in spring to be a monsieur with the ladies. Each one laughs at you, each one tells you and vows to be true to you, but not to you alone. In Paris, in Paris, it's so sweet in spring to be a monsieur with the ladies.)
Evita
Rolf and Josef Mengele in Sao Paulo Brazil, October 1977
Hermann Langbein
Oberst Hans-Ulrich Rudel Eagle of the Eastern Front
For more on all of this you must read and you need to see:
Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) - Leni Riefenstahl's documentary film of the 1934 Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg.
Hitler's SS by Richard Grunberger (1970), a brief but excellent account of the Schutzstaffel.
Marathon Man (1976) - directed by John Schlesinger and adapted from the novel by William Goldman, co-starring Sir Laurence Olivier as Dr. Christian Szell, the White Angel, a Mengele mold Auschwitz dentist. Is it safe?
The Boys From Brazil (1978) - directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and based on the novel by Ira Levin, starring Gregory Peck in an entertaining portrayal of the mythical Mengele attired in a lounge lizard's white leisure suit.
Mengele The Complete Story by Gerald L. Posner and John Ware (originally published in 1986).
Schindler's List (1993) - directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Liam Neeson. The story of German businessman Oskar Schindler, who saved over one thousand Polish Jews from extermination by employing them in his factories, was originally told in the novel Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally.
The Specialist (1999) - film footage of Eichmann's trial compiled by Leo Hurwitz and edited by Eyal Sivan and Rony Brauman.
Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State (2005) - a BBC docudrama series written and produced by Laurence Rees.
Der Untergang (Downfall 2005) - the genesis of the online Hitler rant parodies, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegal about the final days of the Third Reich with an extraordinary performance by Bruno Ganz.
Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard (2018) - for more on Bormann, Eichmann, Mengele and SD Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie (the Butcher of Lyon). Also detailed are the Ravensbrück Aufseherinnen (female overseers), the Jewish Avengers and the astonishing post-war career of SS Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, Hitler's favorite commando.
Video and audio files created by Mark Felton Productions.
During the 1947-8 Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen trial SS-Gruppenfuhrer Otto Ohlendorf, Kommandant of Group D, testified that he forbade using babies for bayonet practice or smashing their brains out against a tree, and to allow a mother to hold her infant to her breast so the shooter could kill both with one bullet, saving ammunition. Despite an appeal for clemency by Pope Pius XII for such humanitarian gestures, Ohlendorf was hanged on June 7, 1951 at Landsberg Prison (where Hitler dictated Mein Kampf a quarter century before).
The Seal of Henricus Rex
The Man Who Wasn't - this widely circulated postwar photograph misidentifying Mengele misled his pursuers for years.
The Great War in eight acts below
Forensic expert Dr. Daniel Romero Munoz presents the exhumed skull of Josef Mengele at a press conference in Sao Paulo on June 21, 1985.
Bingo!
(Left) Heinrich Himmler laying a wreath at the Quedlinburg Abbey crypt of Henry the Fowler (876-936), Duke of Saxony and first non-Frankish King of East Francia. At the time of his death Henry was about to be crowned the Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo VII. The Reichsfuhrer-SS believed himself to be the reincarnation of this medieval German state founder.
Rudel introduced him to Wolfgang Gerhard, a former Austrian Hitlerjugend leader who had emigrated to Brazil in 1948. Involved in real estate, Gerhard helped Mengele settle his Paraguayan affairs by selling his land for reportedly $20,000. Martha was tired of this life on the run, and Mengele agreed to a separation. She and Karl Heinz returned to Gunzburg. In Brazil Gerhard knew of remote farms and estates, ideal for a man seeking sanctuary. First Mengele stayed with Gerhard at his farm in Itapeceria, about 45 miles from Sao Paulo. After several months Mengele, now as Peter Hochbichler, went to live on and manage the coffee and cattle farm at Nova Europa, some 200 miles northwest of Sao Paulo, owned by Geza and Gitta Stammer, a Hungarian couple who fled their native land as the Iron Curtain was descending across Europe. In July 1962 the Stammers and Hochbichler purchased a 111 acre farm called Santa Luzia in Serra Negra, 93 miles north of Sao Paulo. Eventually Hochbicher revealed his true identify to Stammers. They lived together here for the next 13 years. As Geza also worked as a surveyor and was often away from home for several weeks at a time, Mengele and Gitta had an affair lasting almost as long as his stay with them.
When Mengele learned of Eichmann's execution he became obsessed with his own security. He had an 18 foot high wooden watchtower built on the farm, telling the Stammers it was to indulge in his passion for bird watching. The tower gave him a perfect view of the surrounding fields and dirt tracks, with a clear sight of Lindonia, the nearest town five miles away. He was up there for hours on end.
One of the first Nazis to befriend Mengele when he arrived in Argentina was Willem Sassen, a Dutch former SS Untersturmfuhrer. Believing the Holocaust to be a great Jewish lie, he convinced Eichmann to give a first hand accounting to set the record straight. Sassen recorded this interview on 67 tapes. What he heard shocked him. Eichmann proudly confirmed the reality of the Final Solution, only regretting that all of the 10 million Jewish enemies weren't killed. Sassen profoundly considered this a criminal undertaking irrevocably staining SS honor. He sold the magazine rights for the tapes to Time-Life on condition the material not be given to the Israelis as they prepared their case against Eichmann, awaiting trial in Jerusalem. Zvi Aharoni, onetime chief interrogator for the Shin Beth (the Israeli FBI), was a key member of Operation Eichmann and now headed Operation Mengele. Frustrated by the delays of the apparently halfhearted West German judicial efforts to extricate Mengele from first Argentina then Paraguay, and unable to locate Mengele through his own resources, Arahoni opted for a radical new approach. He and other Mossad agents met with Sassen in Uruguay, educating him to what Mengele had done in Auschwitz with irrefutable evidence. Sassen finally agreed to help locate Mengele, after negotiating a monthly fee of $5000 for his services. He quickly learned Mengele was living near Sao Paulo and that Gerhard was his Brazilian protector. Arahoni's team surveilled Gerhard, discovering he made frequent stops to a wooded area with a few nearby farmhouses off the road to Curitiba. The Israelis (one of whom spoke fluent Portuguese) began reconnoitering the area, posing as picnickers. One Sunday they were approached by three men, two young locals and a middle aged European. The two parties engaged in a brief conversation before the three went on their way. Aharoni was certain the older man was Mengele. As his orders were not to kill Mengele if found but to return him to Israel for trial, Aharoni needed to get confirmation of identity from the photos surreptitiously taken during the encounter before any kidnapping plans could be developed. When Aharoni returned to the Mossad headquarters in Paris to meet with Harel he learned. much to his consternation. that Mengele was now a low priority target. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, an avowed enemy of the state of Israel, announced that his military had successfully launched four rockets with a range up to 350 miles threatening the whole of Israeli territory. This capability came as a complete surprise to the Israeli government. Harel lost the confidence of Prime David Ben-Gurion and was replaced by General Meir Amit, chief of military intelligence, in April 1963. Amit's priority was to devote all of Mossad's efforts to guaranteeing his nation's security in the future, not to redress wrongs, no matter how horrific, from the past. This policy was greatly responsible for victory in the 1967 Six Day War. Mengele had dodged a major bullet.
West Germany still believed Mengele was in Paraguay. In 1963 Chancellor Konrad Adenauer offered 10 million Deutschmarks (about $2.5 million) to President Stroessner for his extradition, but the offer was not accepted. This raised suspicions that the Nazi fugitive was being protected by the government. On February 7, 1964 the Bonn foreign ministry revealed both his Paraguayan identification and naturalization card numbers along with their dates of issuance to prove Mengele was indeed a citizen of the country. The Paraguayan interior ministry simply rebutted that he was presently not there (knowing full well he went to Brazil, they inexplicably never revealed this information) . The German skepticism regarding his country's denials was taken by Stroessner as an personal attack on his integrity, escalating the rancor between the two nations. West German ambassador Eckart Briest was summoned to the presidential palace and told if his government persisted in this matter he would be declared a persona non grata. This war of words coincided with the extensively press covered trial of SS personnel from Auschwitz - 21 officers, doctors and guards stood in the dock since December 1963. More gruesome details of Mengele's role emerged during testimony. Fritz Bauer, chief prosecutor of the West German state of Hesse, described Mengele as extremely wealthy, having friends in the highest echelons of Paraguayan government and society and living openly under his own name. Similarly Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter from Vienna, portrayed Mengele as residing in luxurious estates protected by armed guards and attack dogs with access to jungle hideaways, commanding a Nazi underground known as Die Spinne with vast financial resources, sighted everywhere (including the Greek island of Kythnos, Cairo and Spain), eluding a worldwide network of sleuths and always managing to avoid capture (sometimes only by minutes) leaving his enemies dead in the wake of the failed attempt. Cynics suggested this omnipotent and omnipresent Angel of Death helped increase donations to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.
In 1964 the universities of Munich and Frankfurt rescinded his degrees in anthropology and medicine. Mengele was no longer a doctor.
The Mengele and Stammer coexistence under one roof was difficult to begin with and grew increasingly more so with the years. Mengele was moody, in turns needy and domineering (he forbade the couple to speak Hungarian in his presence and lectured them in the proper way to raise their sons Miki and Roberto, deeming them his intellectual inferiors). Despite their continuing affair, Gitta bore the brunt of his tirades and considered him to be 'an impossible old man'. As a boss, known to the farmhands as Senior Pedro, he was a harsh taskmaster and treated them with great disdain, which was another sore point with the Stammers. Gerhard would intervene when required to calm the storm. To avoid conflicts Mengele spent more time in solitary pursuits. He had become a skilled carpenter, completely remodeling and rebuilding the farmhouse. Mengele had a fascination with arches, adding them to bookshelves, tables and window frames.
By 1969 the younger Stammers had finished school and Geza wanted to be nearer Sao Paulo for his work. He and Mengele bought a four bedroom house on two acres set on a hilltop at Caieiras, 25 miles from the city. But the change of scenery did not improve the relationship among the three. Gerhard, in a last gamble to prevent the final breaking point, introduced Mengele to Wolfram and Liselotte Bossert. Wolfram worked as a maintenance manager in a paper manufacturing company. Knowing Mengele as Peter Hochbichler he found they shared many interests in German music, literature, philosophy and politics (although Bossert was neither a Nazi nor an anti-Semite). Mengele grew very fond of the couple and their children Sabine and Andreas, who came to call him Onkel. Every Wednesday he dined at their home and the Bosserts frequently took him to Sao Paulo, where he learned how to get around on his own. Mengele was gradually resuming a social life for the first time in ten years. With part of his share from the sale of the Serra Negra farm, Mengele bought and rented out an apartment in a high-rise building at the center of the city. Its deed was registered to Miki Stammer for security's sake. Hans Sedlmeier, Mengele's boyhood friend and the Gunzburg firm's sales manager, acted as a courier dropping off cash to South America when needed. He also served as a mailman, delivering and posting letters to and from Alois, Karl Heinz and Rolf (Martha, who never filed for a divorce, had moved to Merano in Italy). Mengele inherited a Brazilian identity card from his longtime protector, who decided to return to West Germany. Bossert was an amateur photographer, and with his help Mengele produced a reasonably good forgery, splicing open the laminated card, placing his picture over the original and resealing it. Peter Hochbichler was now also Wolfgang Gerhard.
Mengele was successfully treated for an intestinal blockage at a Sao Paulo hospital in July 1972 as Gerhard, his new card passing scrutiny. In February 1974 Alois died and his son Dieter, along with Karl Heinz, assumed control of the company. Also by early 1974 relations between Mengele and the Stammers had completely broken down. They sold the Caieiras farm and moved to the city, but not together. By January 1975 Mengele moved into a small bungalow at 5555 Alvarenga Road in the relatively poor Eldorado section.
On November 9, 1970 the West German President Dr. Gustav Heinemann, after one last unsuccessful request for Paraguayan assistance in locating Mengele, announced it would be futile to attempt any further official measures Likewise the Mossad was no longer interested in him since the administration of General Amit and his successor Zvi Zamir. The Nazi hunters Tuvia Friedman, Serge and Beate Klarsfeld (who had found Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, in Bolivia) and Wiesenthal continued to claim Mengele sightings and activities in Paraguay and Peru. Ladislas Farago, American best-selling author and former naval intelligence officer, wrote in his 1974 'Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich' that he ran Bormann to ground in a remote Andean region of Bolivia. In an interview during a publicity tour for the book Farago said he had also spoken to Mengele, living as Dr. Nadich in the Paraguayan border town of Pedro Juan Cabellero.
Alone and lonely, Senior Pedro's (as his Eldorado neighbors also knew him) health began to deteriorate. He suffered from high blood pressure, rheumatism in his hands (depriving him of his favorite pastime, carpentry), an inner ear infection affecting his balance, a degenerative spinal disorder, a prostate condition, migraines, allergies and insomnia. His fear of being kidnapped by Israelis returned. His closest companion was a 16 year old neighborhood gardener named Luis Rodriguez. On May 17, 1976 Mengele suffered a mild cerebral hemorrhage and was taken to the Santa Maria Hospital. Released two weeks later he returned home to convalesce, cared for by Noberto Glawe, a friend of Miki Stammer. At this point in Mengele's life the only thing he looked forward to was a reunion with Rolf, whom he had not seen since 1956.
Mengele first broached the idea for the visit in 1973, but Rolf took four years to decide whether or not to make the journey (the Odyssey, as his father referred to it) and personally confront him about his Auschwitz past. Rolf was politically left of center, a lawyer by profession and considered the Holocaust to be one of the greatest crimes against humanity. He never had an interest in joining the family business and was distant from his cousins, dismissing them as the Gunzburgers. Torn between a flesh and blood bond and the knowledge of his father's monstrous deeds, Rolf decided he could not postpone the confrontation any longer. Sedlmeier served as an intermediary between the two men as a travel plan was developed. On October 10, 1977 Rolf departed for Rio de Janeiro from Frankfurt as Wilfried Busse. Mengele had insisted Rolf use a false passport for the journey. Busse was a friend of and lookalike for Rolf, who had gone abroad with him earlier in the year. Rolf stole his passport at that time. From Rio he took a charter plane to Sao Paulo. There he took a taxi to Wolfram Bossert's home, who drove him to Alvarenga Road in his VW bus. Everyday Rolf engaged his father in a philosophical debate and found him to be still fervently committed to Nazi principles and racial views, unrepentant in the role he played by justifying those actions taken as simply performing his duty. Despite this unbridgeable gap Rolf found his father to be highly intelligent (besides German Mengele spoke Spanish, Portuguese, Greek and Latin, and had requested his son bring a dictionary translating the latter into English, which he wanted to learn ) and of a cultivated manner. After two weeks Rolf decided to return home. Mengele later wrote to Rolf expressing gratitude for his son taking the time to visit and that now he could die in peace. For Rolf the meeting resolved the conflict between filial loyalty and his obligation as a lawyer - he would not hand over his father to the authorities. Old eugenic habits never die; after Mengele learned that Rolf's fiancee was a twin of Nordic stock he wrote her requesting a detailed genealogy of her family. She did not reply.
Mengele then fell in love for the third time in his life. Elsa Gulpian de Oliveira, his new housemaid, was 40 years his junior. Mengele wanted Elsa to move in with him, but she insisted on marriage first, which he would not agree to. In October 1978 she left him. This rejection left Mengele a broken man. Around Christmas he began wandering around in an absentminded state, oblivious to his surroundings and causing a couple of near miss traffic accidents. Concerned about their friend's welfare, the Bosserts invited him to stay at their rented beach house in Bertioga, 25 miles south of Sao Paulo. Mengele took the two hour bus ride there on February 5. Two days later at 4:30 p.m. Mengele went swimming in the Atlantic to cool off from the mid-summer's hot sun and suffered a massive stroke. Wolfram Bossert saw his distress from the shore, swam out and managed to rescue him. Still alive when pulled from the water, Josef Mengele died shortly thereafter.
Letters from Mengele to his family prior to 1973 were handwritten and burned for fear their discovery would lead to the author's identity . After 1973 they were all typed and saved.
Mengele kept a diary from May 1960 to January 1979.
Mengele wrote an autobiography titled 'Fiat Lux' (Let There Be Light).
All his writings were believed to be in the possession of the Mengele family. In 2010-11, 32 volumes of his diary were sold by the auction house Alexander Autographs in Chesapeake City Maryland for over $245,000 to two undisclosed collectors. The seller was reported to be someone from Brazil.
In the end he won - he didn't die in Jerusalem.
Martin Bormann, head of the Parteikanzlei and private secretary to Der Fuhrer
The bare bones of the matter at hand
Mehr (more) Deutsche . . . Abwehr (German Counterintelligence), Unterseeboot (Submarine, U-boat), Aktion Feuerland (Operation Land of Fire), Oberst (Colonel), Luftwaffe (Air Force), Parteikanzlei(Party Chancellery), Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), Kameradenwerk (Comrades Action), Die Spinne (The Spider), Gruppenführer (Lieutenant General), Prost Oma (Cheers Grandma), Augenweide (Eye Candy)
SS Oberst Walter Rauff Murderer of Milan
Juan Peron
Zvi Aharoni
Claus von Stauffenberg