Josef Mengele and Other Nazis in Exile in Argentina
On June 24, 1949, Helmut Gregor disembarks the North King ship after a three-week Atlantic crossing from Genoa to Buenos Aires. He is nervous as he waits to pass through customs. He’d hoped--spent money in a bribe, in fact--to be met on the dock by a high-ranking member of the Argentine secret police, even if such honors weren’t usually accorded to one who’d only managed to rise to the level of captain in the SS.
But here he stands, even more worried now that a customs official is opening Gregor’s small briefcase, the man’s eyes widening as he views hypodermic syringes, blood samples, microscopic slides of cell fragments, anatomic drawings, notebooks. These, for Gregor? The man who claims to be a mechanic?
An amateur, amateur biologist, Gregor mumbles. Just an amateur.
The customs official’s stomach complains. It’s approaching the lunch hour. Why delay it any further with this, the customs official decides, so he waves Helmut Gregor through. And Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz Angel of Death, begins the first day of the next 30 years of his life in exile, as chronicled in The Disappearance of Josef Mengele.
The literary work by Olivier Guez was translated and published in English in 2022. Released six years ago in France, the book received the prestigious Prix Renaudot literary award in 2017. https://www.amazon.com/Disappearance-Josef-Mengele-Novel/dp/1788735889. This author’s review for the Historical Novel Society appears here: https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/the-disappearance-of-josef-mengele/
Deeply personal, Disappearance blends fiction with fact as it imagines Mengele’s thoughts, feelings, and dreams and traces the people, places, and events that populate his life in South America. At first buoyed by connections with other exiled leaders from the Third Reich--a decorated Luftwaffe pilot, an administrator of the T4 euthanasia program, and meetings with Argentine leader Juan Perón himself--Mengele enjoys friendships, success as head of a carpentry and furniture factory, and monetary support from his family in the 1950s. Threats that he may be betrayed for money, reports of his crimes in the press, and the nagging images of Adolf Eichmann on trial in Israel after his capture by agents of Mossad in Argentina in the 1960s foment suspicion and paranoia and spur Mengele’s withdrawal to labor on a farm in the back waters of Paraguay. Migraines, infections, bouts of colic, an arrest warrant from West Germany, and publication of Simon Wiesenthal’s The Murderers Among Us with a chapter on “The Man who Collected Blue Eyes” fuel volatile moods. Increasing isolation and illness take their toll, resulting in a haggard, unshaven shadow of a man who ekes out an existence until he dies by drowning in 1979.
Argentina and the Third Reich
Mengele was one of many former leaders of the Third Reich who escaped to Argentina after World War II. Recent information from Swiss bank accounts documents 12,000 Nazis who had immigrated to Argentina after the war. This is why so many Nazis fled to Argentina (yahoo.com) Five who found their way to Tres Bocas delta and the River Plate in the late 1940s are profiled in the 2022 revised edition of The Real Odessa by journalist Uki Goñi:
Erich Priebke, who was responsible for the deaths of 335 Italians in the Ardeatine Caves
Dr. Gerhard Bohne, one of the heads of the Third Reich’s euthanasia program
Josef Schwammberger, an SS commandant of three Polish concentration camps
Adolf Eichmann, head of the Office of Jewish Affairs that identified, rounded up, and deported Jews to concentration camps in Europe
Josef Mengele, who conducted medical experiments on children and sent up to 4000 women a day to death in the women’s camp at Birkenau
(The 2022 book, How Nazi War Criminals Escaped Europe, updates Goñi ‘s 2002 The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina.)
https://www.amazon.com/Real-Odessa-Criminals-Escaped-Europe-ebook/dp/B0BJ88DC2H
While several South American countries welcomed former Nazis, Argentina actively recruited them, building on its past history and planning for the future.
Although Argentina was technically neutral during the war, many wealthy businessmen and government leaders, including President Juan Perón, were early and continuing supporters of the Axis powers. Perón himself served as a military attaché to Benito Mussolini in the late 1930s. Why Were Nazis Accepted in Argentina After WWII? (thoughtco.com)
After the war, Perón hoped Argentina would occupy what he called the “third position” and operate as a powerhouse nation between the capitalist west and communist east. Juan Domingo Peron and Argentina's Nazis (thoughtco.com) Perón also sought the expertise of industrialists, inventors, military leaders, and scientists to bolster the country’s infrastructure by building dams, nuclear power plants, aircraft, and other ordnance.
The country set up escape routes across northern Europe that led down through Spain and Italy to ocean-going ships for another, strictly personal reason. Perón set out to save Nazi officials from prosecution as war criminals because of his beliefs and definition of military honor. In the memoirs he recorded on cassette tapes, he expressed his anger and resentment: “In Nuremberg trials…something was taking place that I personally considered a disgrace and an unfortunate lesson for the future of humanity. I became certain that the Argentine people also considered the Nuremberg process a disgrace, unworthy of the victors, who behaved as if they hadn’t been victorious.” (Goñi, Uki. The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina)
Ratlines
Formal escape routes, or ratlines, guided Nazis and other fascists out of Europe and into countries that served as havens, including not only Argentina but Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru in Latin America as well as Spain, Switzerland, and the United States. Ratlines (World War II) - Wikipedia
The first ratlines were networks that fostered immigration of European Catholics to Argentina beginning in 1942. By 1946, Spain was the center for ratlines that were leading escaping Nazis out of Europe via Vatican channels. The shift of focus from Catholic emigres to Nazis came with the appointment of Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal as Vatican emissary to “visit German-speaking internees in Italy” in 1944. Later, Croatian priests operated a ratline for Albanian, Montenegrin, and Croatian war criminals through Genoa in 1946 and -47. Ratlines (World War II) - Wikipedia
Argentina’s own ratline or Odessa network was set in motion when war criminals and Nazi collaborators were flown in from Madrid to meet with President Perón in 1947. The network, as described by Argentine journalist Uki Goñi in The Real Odessa, included an immigration bureau in Switzerland that supposedly was created to recruit German “technicians” to lead and staff military projects but actually rescued individuals who were destined for Nuremberg war crimes trials. The network was vast, rescuing not only German Nazis but French, Belgian, Slovak, and Ustashia/Croatian war criminals, and thorough--providing each man with an alias, lodging, money, travel documents, and steamship tickets. (Goñi, Uki. The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina)
The Real Odessa and the Odessa File
Goñi’s Real Odessa will take many readers back to the 1970s when English writer Frederick Forsyth published the novel The Odessa File and Jon Voight and Maximillian Schell starred in the film adaptation. The novel and film follow a young German reporter who is tracking down details from the diary of a Holocaust survivor in his search for the Butcher of Riga concentration camp. After talking with Simon Wiesenthal, the reporter concentrates on ODESSA, the Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen or Organization of Former Members of the SS.
Was ODESSA an actual, global network of high-ranking SS officers who helped war criminals protect their assets and escape to the West? The Unredacted website presents evidence on both sides of the question. https://theunredacted.com/odessa-the-nazi-ratline/
As noted in Unredacted, the name Odessa was found in Western intelligence reports, and well-regarded authors and investigators, such as Wiesenthal, believe the organization existed (credit: Dutch national archives/wiki). But others, including former Nazis, say there was no large-scale organization of this type (only smaller networks). Even if there were, it would not carry a name bound to attract attention, like Odessa.
The Real Odessa acknowledges similar paths taken by Forsythe’s fictional reporter Peter Miller and Argentine journalist Uki Goñi. In the introduction to the 2022 edition of the book, Philippe Sands characterizes Goñi’s challenges--“long periods of silences, cover-ups, and squirrelling away of incriminating materials” in the post-war years--and his ability to find clues about what actually happened, run down new avenues of exploration, and piece together details in a meaningful whole. Goñi also shifts attention away from Europe and sheds light on actions taken by western governments and international organiations like the Vatican.
Sands writes: “What I took away from The Real Odessa, and what has informed my thinking ever since, is that no country or people has a monopoly on horror. Events that occur in a particular place and time invariably have roots and networks that are nourished across many spaces and eras. To understand a particular act it is necessary to cast a wider net, and to dig deep; nothing is ever only quite what it seems, and acts seen as decent by one community will be treated as far more nefarious by another.” He concludes: “With his book, Uki Goñi opened a door through which I and others passed, allowing us to gaze upon an iceberg. It is, as he tells us and we now know, but the tip.” (Goñi, Uki. The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina)
Sources:
How South America Became a Nazi Haven | HISTORY
Why Were Nazis Accepted in Argentina After WWII? (thoughtco.com)
Juan Domingo Peron and Argentina's Nazis (thoughtco.com)
This is why so many Nazis fled to Argentina (yahoo.com)
Josef Mengele | Holocaust Encyclopedia (ushmm.org)
Goñi, Uki. The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Peron's Argentina. London: Granta, 2002.
Ratlines (World War II) - Wikipedia
How Ratlines Helped Thousands Of Nazis Flee Europe After WW2 (allthatsinteresting.com)
The Nazi Ratlines: The system of escape routes for Nazis fleeing Europe at the end of WWII (thevintagenews.com) The Nazi Ratlines: The system of escape routes for Nazis fleeing Europe at the end of WWII (thevintagenews.com)