Mengele: The Ratline, Four Decades on the Run, and Justice Delayed

At the end of January 1945, as the Red Army approached Auschwitz, Josef Mengele gathered papers, research material, and anything that could help him disappear. He left before Soviet troops arrived. The man who had stood on the Auschwitz platform deciding who would work and who would die in the gas chambers was not captured with the camp guards.

After the war, Mengele did not vanish into a remote forest. He moved through cities with passports, churches, patrons, and family money. In 1949 he entered Argentina as Helmut Gregor. In 1956 Argentine authorities issued documents in the name of Josef Mengele. When investigators closed in, he moved through Paraguay and Brazil. In 1979 he died at Bertioga under the name Wolfgang Gerhard. The remains were exhumed in 1985; DNA confirmed the identity in 1992.