Josef Mengele

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Josef Mengele" on Dan Snow's History Hit

Introduction In the February 19, 2025 episode of Dan Snow's History Hit, host Dan Snow delves deep into the life and atrocities of Josef Mengele, infamously known as the "Angel of Death." Joining him is Bettina Anton, a distinguished journalist and author of Hiding Mengele: How a Nazi Network Harbored the Angel of Death. Together, they explore Mengele's rise within the Nazi regime, his heinous experiments at Auschwitz, his escape to South America, and the lingering shadows of his legacy.

Early Life and Education Dan Snow sets the stage by painting a picture of Mengele's seemingly ordinary beginnings.

Dan Snow [02:09]: "He was originally German, living a quiet, comfortable life in Argentina and Brazil... But he was in fact Josef Mengele, one of the most infamous murderers of the Holocaust."

Bettina Anton sheds light on Mengele's upbringing, emphasizing that there were no early signs of his monstrous future.

Bettina Anton [06:10]: "He was a very regular guy, actually. He was like a smart guy that went to very good universities in Germany."

Mengele hailed from a wealthy Bavarian family, attended prestigious universities like Munich and Frankfurt, and earned two PhDs—one in medicine and another in anthropology. His academic prowess was recognized, with his research being peer-reviewed and respected in the scientific community of the time.

Alignment with Nazi Ideology As the political climate in Germany shifted, Mengele's alignment with the Nazi ideology became evident.

Bettina Anton [08:37]: "He was part of the Nazi Party. And this was very, very normal because if you didn't join the Nazi Party, you couldn't like, advance your career."

Mengele's involvement with the Nazi Party and the SS was not just political but deeply intertwined with his scientific pursuits. His studies were heavily influenced by the racist and xenophobic ideologies of the Third Reich, aiming to prove racial hierarchies through scientific measurements, such as analyzing jaw sizes to distinguish between "races."

Role in Auschwitz Mengele's most notorious period was his tenure at Auschwitz, where his obsession with twins and racial purity led to unimaginable horrors.

Dan Snow [15:00]: "Mengele was very, very sadistic... he was always there more than his working hours because he wanted to find people that could be useful for his search."

At Auschwitz, Mengele conducted cruel experiments on inmates, particularly focusing on twins to study genetics. His practice of using one twin as a subject and the other as a control was a twisted attempt to advance his research, often resulting in the death of both siblings if one did not survive his experiments.

Bettina Anton [19:01]: "He prohibited the rutelies to nourish her child... this is a sadistic experiment."

One of the most harrowing accounts is that of Ruth Elias, a pregnant Czech woman whom Mengele spared initially but subjected her to brutal experiments that denied her child proper nourishment, causing immense suffering and trauma.

Escape to South America As World War II drew to a close, Mengele's escape from justice became a focal point of his dark legacy.

Bettina Anton [28:07]: "He had a prison warrant against him in 1959... So Mengele felt that he was safe by doing this."

Using the infamous "rat lines," Mengele fled Europe, eventually settling in Argentina. His network of Nazi sympathizers across Latin America, including influential figures like Perón, facilitated his move and provided him with a semblance of safety. In Argentina, and later Paraguay and Brazil, Mengele lived under various aliases, blending into the German expatriate communities.

Life in South America Mengele's life in South America was a stark contrast to his brutal past, yet remnants of his sinister nature persisted.

Bettina Anton [32:14]: "He was very cautious all the time."

Initially living humbly in Buenos Aires under the name Helmut Gregor, Mengele eventually established himself more comfortably, owning a pharmacy and integrating into local society. His interactions with fellow Nazi criminals like Adolf Eichmann highlighted the continued presence and influence of Nazi ideologues in Latin America.

The Hunt and Death Despite multiple attempts by the Mossad to capture him, Mengele evaded justice until his untimely death.

Dan Snow [41:03]: "And he survived until 1979 and died swimming."

In 1979, while swimming near Bertioga, Brazil, Mengele drowned, marking the end of a man who had evaded capture for decades. His death closed a dark chapter but left lingering questions and a legacy of terror.

Conclusion: The Legacy of Josef Mengele Bettina Anton emphasizes the importance of remembering Mengele's story to prevent the resurgence of similar ideologies.

Bettina Anton [47:57]: "We are all humans. There's no such thing as pure race. This is something that shouldn't happen anymore. This is horrible."

Dan Snow echoes this sentiment, underscoring the enduring relevance of understanding Mengele's actions within the broader context of history and human rights.

Notable Quotes

1. Dan Snow [02:09]:
   "He was originally German, living a quiet, comfortable life in Argentina and Brazil... But he was in fact Josef Mengele, one of the most infamous murderers of the Holocaust."

2. Bettina Anton [06:10]:
   "He was a very regular guy, actually. He was like a smart guy that went to very good universities in Germany."

3. Bettina Anton [08:37]:
   "He was part of the Nazi Party. And this was very, very normal because if you didn't join the Nazi Party, you couldn't like, advance your career."

4. Bettina Anton [19:01]:
   "He prohibited the rutelies to nourish her child... this is a sadistic experiment."

5. Bettina Anton [28:07]:
   "He had a prison warrant against him in 1959... So Mengele felt that he was safe by doing this."

6. Bettina Anton [47:57]:
   "We are all humans. There's no such thing as pure race. This is something that shouldn't happen anymore. This is horrible."

Final Thoughts This episode of Dan Snow's History Hit serves as a profound exploration of Josef Mengele's life, unraveling the complexities of his persona—from a respected academic to a perpetrator of some of history's darkest crimes. Bettina Anton's insights and personal research provide a nuanced understanding of Mengele's enduring impact on history and collective memory.

Transcript

[Dan Snow]

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Forever.

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[Dan Snow]

It'S the 7th of February 1979. We're on a beautiful white sandy beach on Bertioga in Brazil. A 68 year old man, harmless looking, nice looking, old gentleman. He's swimming off the coast but he has a heart attack and drowns. It appears to be a human tragedy. Or not. He's originally German, but like the large German community in South America, he's been living a quiet, comfortable life in Argentina and Brazil. Towards the end of his life, he's built himself what's been described as a tropical Bavaria. Drinking, socializing, whiling away the time with memories of the homeland. Only a few of these people that he was drinking and fraternizing with knew his true identity. He was in fact Joseph Mengele, one of the most infamous murderers of the Holocaust during the Second World War. Mengele had been an SS physician, a doctor. He'd been nicknamed the angel of Death for carrying out sadistic experiments on human beings at the concentration camp at Auschwitz Birkenau not only had he sent tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people to the gas chambers, he'd perpetrated unspeakable crimes, all in the name of science. On hand picked inmates at the camp, he was one of the most prolific perpetrators in the history of crimes against humanity. But he managed to evade multiple clandestine operations to capture him by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. And he'd ended up living out his life in peace in South America, far more than he deserved. He's been the subject of countless books and films. But as I learned in this podcast, one of the most disturbing facts about Mengele, who committed some of the most heinous crimes we can imagine, is that he was an intelligent, a cultured, an accomplished man. He was highly trained. He'd done two PhDs, he, he conducted research that was peer reviewed, valued by the scientific community. He was a decorated war veteran. And yet something went terribly, badly wrong. His thirst for knowledge, his desire to experiment led him to conduct sadistic, twisted experiments on human beings. If you want to go back and listen to our episode on 27 January, you can learn more about the Holocaust and the vast camp system that men like Mengele were involved in. But this episode digs into this one man. I should warn you, elements of it are very upsetting indeed. Here to tell me all about it is a remarkable journalist and writer, Bettina Anton. She's a member of the German Brazilian community. She worked for years as a news editor on Globo tv. She's the winner of the Vladimir Herzog Award for Journalism and is the author of Hiding Mengele How a Nazi Network Harbored the Angel of Death. And just to say Benita refers to the camp where the Roma and Sinti people were held, she's its historical name, the name that the Nazis refer to as. So we have left it in the podcast because of that context. So here is the story of Josef Mengele. Bettina, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

[Bettina Anton]

Thank you, Dan, for inviting me.

[Dan Snow]

So, Bettina, just. Is there anything in his upbringing, if you were writing the story of his life in 1935, was there anything in his upbringing, anything suggested that this was a monster?

[Bettina Anton]

I don't think so, Dan. The thing is, he was very regular guy, actually. He was like a smart guy that went to very good universities in Germany. He went to the Munich University and also to the Frankfurt University. So he was studying a lot, he was doing a good job. So you wouldn't say he was a monster, but what you have to take into account was the ideology that was around at this time, the ideology of the Third Reich in this context, he was not a monster, but he was following an ideology that was racist, that was. That had xenophobia, that had a lot of bad things that we are trying to fight against nowadays. But at that time, during the Nazi period, it was normal and it was even emphasized, let's say.

[Dan Snow]

So, okay, so that's interesting. So he grows up just in a wealthy family of industrialists. Tell me about his early life.

[Bettina Anton]

Yeah, he was born in Bavaria. He came from a wealthy family. His father was an industrialist, was a businessman, and he owned a company, agricultural machinery company, and they had a lot of money. His father was a very powerful man in his city, ginsburg, in the 1930s, he even invited Hitler to do some discourses in his own company because he had the space for this. So he invited Hitler himself. His father was not properly like an ideological Nazi, but he was a very pragmatic man. So he knew Hitler was powerful. So he invited Hitler to do his discourse in his own company. And Mengele wanted to stand out for himself. So he didn't want to follow the steps of his father. And so he decided he wanted to be a doctor. And he wanted to be a doctor that. That did research, not that was like treating people. He wanted to be a scientific doctor, let's say.

[Dan Snow]

So, so in. In the 1930s, he's studying, but he's also interested in Nazi ideas. Is he also. Is he joining Nazi or Nazi affiliated groups?

[Bettina Anton]

Yeah, he was part of the Nazi Party. And this was very, very normal because if you didn't join the Nazi Party, you couldn't like, advance your career. That was what happened to his boss, his boss in Auschwitz. He wasn't from the Nazi Party. He had to join the Nazi Party, otherwise he wouldn't advance. You know, he wouldn't be anything But Mengele. He not only enjoyed the Nazi Party, but he also joined the SS in the 1930s.

[Dan Snow]

He's doing medical research. Is he in the mainstream? Would he publish papers? Would people around the world go, that's interesting, or was he already at the illegitimate edge of scientific endeavor?

[Bettina Anton]

That's a very important point. Many people say that Mengele was a pseudoscientist and so on, but he wasn't. He had two PhDs and he was pretty much mainstream. And he was very good. His tutor, academic tutor, was Von Verschuer. Von Verschuer was the main name in Nazi Germany to study twin research, and twin research was used to study genetics. This was the state of the art in the genetic studies, you know. But it's interesting. Before Auschwitz, Mengele never did research on twins. His research was based on family trees. And he was doing a lot of research, like in the University of Frankfurt and also Munich. And he wrote papers. And his papers, they were. They were consulted even in the 50s, even after the war, you know, that's a bit scandalous. And he was not pseudo scientist. He was a scientist that was working in the mainstream medicine of the Third Reich.

[Dan Snow]

So what were these papers on? What's he interested in the 1930s? His scientific work?

[Bettina Anton]

One of his studies was to determine race by examining different jaws from different races. So that's why he had a PhD in medicine and another PhD in anthropology, because I didn't know that. But anthropology was something that doctors studied at the time because they wanted to measure everything and have data to prove that some races were better than others. So that's why Mengele was studying the jaw and measuring a lot of people's jaws, so he could prove only by examining the jaw that one race was different than the other, because they had this idea of biological race and also of pure race. Of course, the Nazis wanted to prove that there was a pure race. The Aryans were a pure race and better than the others, so especially better than the Jews.

[Dan Snow]

So he's a scientist, but he's politically motivated, or he's definitely motivated by the politics of the time, this idea of racial hierarchy and supremacy.

[Bettina Anton]

Yes, for sure. Because at this time, if you were at university, you were thinking like that, you were immersed in this ideology that race was very important and that you could use science to prove that one race was better than the other. And how could you prove this scientifically? By measuring people, by using data, by using numbers. That's why they were always measuring people.

[Dan Snow]

Extraordinary jaw size. Imagine if it was that simple. Okay, so when the war breaks out, he ends up serving as a medical officer. In 1940, yes.

[Bettina Anton]

When the war breaks out, he serves in the east front. But then he got hurt, and then he went back to Berlin. And there in Berlin, his tutor, von Verschuer, was working for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, which was a very important institute in Berlin to advance science, to do research and so on. So Mengele meets von Verschuer there, and he talks to other researchers as well. And one difficulty they had at this time, because Germany was at war, was to find people to do research on. And many people didn't agree to be research on. Now, of course, if you have a child, twin children, you don't want them to be hurt or to, you know, it was very, very difficult. So he got to know many difficulties that his peers had in researching at this time. And as I said, like twin research was one of the main means that they had to research genetics at this time.

[Dan Snow]

He's awarded gallantry medals on the battlefield. He rescues soldiers from a burning tank during the invasion of Russia.

[Bettina Anton]

Exactly. That's what happened. He was brave. And then later he had another medal because of his work in Auschwitz. So you can see that he was not a guy that was a part of the system. He was pretty much inside the system. You know, he had two important medals because of his services to Nazi Germany.

[Dan Snow]

When did he first hear about Auschwitz?

[Bettina Anton]

You cannot say it for sure, but this period when he was in Berlin, he was working at a department where the doctors went to the concentration camps. So he figured out that the concentration camps was a place where he can find a lot of guinea pigs, a lot of people where he could experiment on. So in Berlin is where he get this idea to go to Auschwitz. And then he had this opportunity because one of the doctors that was working in the Gypsy camp got ill. And then he went back to Berlin, and then Mengele took his place and went on to be the doctor responsible for the Gypsy camp. And he arrived in Auschwitz in May 1943.

[Dan Snow]

Before we come to his particular role, let's remind people what was happening at Auschwitz. Jews, Romani, Poles, enemies of the German state, would arrive in Auschwitz and doctors would immediately, on the platform, separate them, wouldn't they, into different groups.

[Bettina Anton]

Yes. This was a decision by Himmler himself, because he decided that the doctors, preferably doctors that had also a degree in anthropology, should decide who should live and who should work longer, until death, of course, until exhaustion. That's what happened in Auschwitz and also in many other camps. And that's why doctors, SS doctors, used to work on the ramp. That's how they call the platform, the train platform in Auschwitz, the ramp, in German, the hamper. And you know, Mengele was very famous at this time because he worked a lot at this platform, because he didn't work only his working hours, but he was always there. He wanted to be there more than his working hours because he wanted to find people that could be useful for his search. He was looking for twins. He was looking for people that were different so he could research on these people.

[Dan Snow]

So is he the first person with this idea? So previously, doctors and Auschwitz, they're either sending people instantly to their deaths or they're deeming them fit and allow them to be worked to death in the various factories. Is he the first person going there thinking, hang on, I can do scientific experiments here?

[Bettina Anton]

Unfortunately not. Other doctors did experiments in Auschwitz as well. We had some doctors that did experiments trying to sterilize women. Because the Nazis had this ideology, not only to kill all the Jews, to massacre the Jews, but also they wanted to sterilize Poles and Slavs. They wanted them to work until death, but they didn't want them to have children. So the Nazi doctors were trying to find ways to sterilize these women so they could still work, but not procreate. So you had other doctors doing this research using X rays, using other stuff. And many women died in this process as well. But Mengele was the most famous one because he took the medical research to another level. Mengele managed to create, like a concentration camp inside the concentration camp. He managed to put together hundreds of twins in Auschwitz, also other people, but mainly Jews, but mainly twins. So he managed to put together hundreds of twins, creating almost a concentration camp inside Auschwitz.

[Dan Snow]

He's also sending people to the gas chambers as well, is he? I mean, he's responsible for that. If people are not recovering from his experiments or not recovering in his infirmary, they get sent off to be gassed.

[Bettina Anton]

Yeah, sure. This was another part. And he was very, very sadic. You can see that many people tell these stories. He sent people to the gas chamber. At the time that he was sending people to the gas chamber, of course they didn't know that they were going to die because they tried to keep calm. Otherwise people would panic and so on, so they didn't know where they were going. And of course, he's accused of sending thousands of people to the gas chambers and killing thousands of people. You don't have the right number, but it's like hundreds of thousands of people that he sent to the gas chambers.

[Dan Snow]

Can you tell us, and I apologize, listeners, if this is uncomfortable, but can you share with us some of the human experiments that he became infamous for?

[Bettina Anton]

Yes, I think one of the stories that most horrible for me is the story of a Czech woman called Ruth Elias and she went to Auschwitz. She was a young woman, she was in her early 20s, and she was pregnant. And Mengele didn't notice that she was pregnant when she arrived. So she didn't send her to the gas chambers because normally pregnant women would go directly to the gas chambers. And then when she was already like eight months pregnant, Mengele noticed her and he said, okay, you can keep the baby, but I will examine you. I will see you every day until you have the baby. And then, okay, she could have the baby. And when the baby was born, it was a little girl. Mengele started his most horrific experiment, which was he prohibited the rutelies to nourish her child. And so he asked a nurse to put a bandage around her chest so he could nourish the child. And the child was screaming day and night, day and night, because Mengele wanted to know how long a baby could survive without nourishment. So I cannot see the point of this research, let's say so, because I don't think it's a research for me. This is a sadic experiment. And I cannot see why would you do that. You know, this is something that's so sad. And Hoteliers was one of the women who gave her testimony in the mock trial in 1985 in Jerusalem much later. And you can hear her telling her own story, how she gave birth in Auschwitz and what happened. And every time I see her testimony and I read about her, I cry because this was something you cannot understand.

[Dan Snow]

This is Dan Snow's history here. More after this.

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[Dan Snow]

And he was interested in twins because he could experiment on one of them and use the other one as what he referred to as a control. Is that correct?

[Bettina Anton]

Yes, exactly. And that's the story of Eva Moses. She arrived with her sister Miriam when she was 10 in Auschwitz. And she heard that if one twin died, the other one died as well, would die as well, because he had a pathologist. And then when one twin died, he ordered the other one to be murdered as well so he could compare the corpses to see what was the effect of what he injected in one twin. So Mengele injected something in Eva Moses and she never found out what she was injected into. You know, she had health problems until the end of her life. And when she was a 10 year old in, in Auschwitz, she spent like almost a week between life and death, but she managed to survive. And she had such a great willpower because she knew if she died, her sister Miriam will die as well.

[Dan Snow]

So.

[Bettina Anton]

So she managed to survive, but she never knew what happened to her. It was some kind of experiment, but she doesn't know what happened to her. And there are no records about what happened to her. There are lots of experiments that he did. For example, he put mother and daughter in a cage, and they were in a very small cage. And then he was injecting things on their spines and they got like bubbles from this. They were getting nausea, they were feeling very unwell, but they didn't know what happened to them. You had a lot of experiments. He was taking blood out of children and he sent his blood to Berlin to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. He also was taking eyes of people who had heterochromy. That means people who had one eye from one color and the other one another color. He was sending these eyes to Berlin. He also kept a collection of Jews skeletons because, as I said before, they were trying to prove the superiority of the Aryan race and the inferiority of the Jewish race. So they had to have physical proof. At this time, scientific proof was very important. And of course they could not prove this because this is not true. He did research on typhus as well. He managed to fight typhus and to eliminate typhus in Auschwitz by killing hundreds of women. By doing this he won another medal. As we were talking about medals. He won a medal by killing all these women from one barrack and then cleaning all this barrack, the Ziphe, taking this barrack and sending these women to the gas chamber. 600 women, more or more. And then after the barrack was disinfected, new prisoners came in and so on. So that's how he managed to eliminate typhus in Auschwitz, which was a very big problem at the time.

[Dan Snow]

So the entire population in which the typhus emerged, whether they had typhus or not, they were all immediately executed.

[Bettina Anton]

Yes. And he won a medal by doing this. This is so absurd, but at that time was pretty normal.

[Dan Snow]

Was he keeping notes? Was he writing papers? Was he filing this information?

[Bettina Anton]

Yes, he was recording what he was doing. And you can see there's a doctor called Martina that worked with him. She wasn't a doctor, she was an anthropologist. Sorry. And she says that he was keeping notes. Yes, and he took his notes to Argentina. We have this information that he took his notes to South America, but I don't know where these notes are. And yes, I think his big dream was to be a great academic after the war. And he was going to use all the research he was doing in Auschwitz to be this great professor in a German university because he was hoping that Nazi Germany would win the war so he could be this great academic that he was dreaming about. He was very narcissistic, you know, he thought of himself very greatly and he wanted to be the best and above everyone. That's the feeling I have when I was reading what he did and the testimonies about him.

[Dan Snow]

And he was assigned to a different camp just before the Red army liberated Auschwitz. And he ended up in American hands in 1945. How did he escape? Did the Americans know who they had?

[Bettina Anton]

We know in hindsight that the Americans had Mengele twice actually he went to try prison of war camps. But in one camp he gave a false name and he was incriminated by a friend of his, like another Nazi because you know, it was not honorable to lie about your name. But he gave another name and in the next camp because the Americans were in Bavaria. It was the American sector in Bavaria. And he went to another camp and at this camp he gave his real name. But he didn't have the SS tattoo with his blood type. So they didn't know that he was from the ss. And he managed to escape this camp. He took one document, his friend gave him his document. And he managed to keep this document with another name. And that's how he went to Bavaria and went to work in a farm for some years until 1949. But he realized it was impossible to live in Germany because at any time he could be caught and sent to either to Auschwitz. There were going some trials on in Auschwitz and some fellow doctors were being hanged in Auschwitz. He was seeing was what was happening in Germany after the war. So he got afraid and decided to go to Argentino in 1949.

[Dan Snow]

He escaped along the so called rat line where SS officers and friendly fascists, I suppose help people escape through northern Italy. When he arrived in Argentina, what did.

[Bettina Anton]

He do at the beginning? When he arrived, he didn't use his real name. He kept using Helmut Gregor, which was the name that appears on his passport from the Red Cross. He lives in Buenos Aires for 10 years. He didn't practice medicine at the beginning and he didn't say he was a doctor because he was really afraid to being caught. So he starts living with another, another European expat. Like he had a very humble beginning, let's say so in Buenos Aires. But later, as years went on, he met a lot of other Nazi. A lot of Nazi criminals. And I went to Buenos Aires to do some research. And it's incredible because you see the houses where they met, they were like big houses. And you can imagine all these criminals meeting there and talking and maybe having fun. There was Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Willem Sassen, which was an SS officer as well. Hans Ullerich, which was the most condecorated German pilot in the second World War. So all these guys work together, living in. In Buenos Aires. And they met regularly. You can see where they lived. You know, they were mixed in the German community in Buenos Aires. There was a strong German community in Buenos Aires at this time. And also a Jewish community. That's something very weird. But yes, they all met there. And of course you had Peron. Peron was a sympathizer of the Nazis because of two things, because. But on like the fascist ideology. And also because he was interested in the Nazis who had knowledge and could help modernize Argentina. And that's what Rudo did. Rudo, the pilot. He helped modernize Argentinian air force. So he had this interest as the Americans also had.

[Dan Snow]

Do you think Mengele, did he practice any science, I guess we can call it again, in his life, or did he avoid medicine and. Well, and experimentation?

[Bettina Anton]

He avoided the beginning. I know he was living with a colleague. The doctor of his colleague got ill and he treated her. So the colleague found out that he was a doctor. But from this episode you can see that he didn't present himself as a doctor because it would be very obvious who he was. I think. So. He was very cautious all the time.

[Dan Snow]

And his name was out there. Right, because during the Nuremberg trials and elsewhere, Mengele was infamous already. Right. So he was most wanted.

[Bettina Anton]

It was not immediately after the war, but yes, it was like growing. The stories were growing. Like after the war, you had a lot of people, a lot of survivors who knew who Mengele was, because as I said, he was a constant presence at the platform where people were going to the gas chambers. So people knew him, people knew who he was. And also later on, you had the Auschwitz trials, and his name came up. This was in the 60s, and his name came up a lot. And the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem as well. A lot of survivors mentioned the name of Mengele. So, yes, he became very famous later on. Yeah. So in Buenos Aires, his father bought a pharmacy company for him. So in his late years in Buenos Aires, he had a nice life because he started to use his own name. Joseph Mengele. He had this company, he was married again, he has bought a house. So everything was going very well for him until the turning point, which was Eichmann kidnapping.

[Dan Snow]

So Mossad, the Israeli authorities, kidnapped a fellow SS veteran living in Argentina. And that was a wake up call for Mengele, was it?

[Bettina Anton]

Yes, totally. And then something that was really amazing for me doing this research was why was Eichmann kidnapped? Why wasn't it another officer? Why was Eichmann, you know. And then I asked this to Rafe Tun, which was the commander of this mission. And he told me, because we caught him first, only because of this, because it could have been Mengele. That was the difference. You know, the story was made because of this, you know, because they got to Eichmann first. And the first tip they got about Eichmann was given by a Jewish survivor of the Dachau camp, which is very close to Munich. And this guy, his daughter was dating or having some kind of relationship to Eichmann's son. So, you know, what the odds. And that's how they got to Eichmann first. And Eichmann had another name. He didn't use his own name. He used the name Ricardo Clement. But he had a routine that you can follow him because he went every day to the same work, every day, took the same bus, and so on. On the other hand, Mengele was much more cautious. Although Mengele was using his real name in Argentina in the end of the 50s, there was a prison warrant against him in 1959. So he got very cautious and he went to Paraguay. And he went there because he had his Nazi friends there that were introduced to him by Rudel, the pilot that I mentioned. This is a very important name, the story. And these guys helped him get the citizenship, the Paraguayan citizenship. And if you are a Paraguayan citizen, you cannot be extradited to Germany, for example. So Mengele felt that he was safe by doing this. But when the Mossad kidnapped Eichmann, he thought, I'm not safe anymore, because that's not a problem of extradition. That's another kind of problem. They can appear out of the blue and take me wherever I am, here in Paraguay, so I have to move on. And that's how he came to Brazil. And that's the interesting part, because Rudo, it's a very important person in this story. He had relations in many Latin American countries, not only Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, a lot of Latin American countries. And they had this thing called Kameradenwerk. You say this in German, which is you had your buddies, you know, you had a network of Nazi buddies. And Vodo contacted Wolfgang Gerhardt in Brazil, which was an Austrian and also a Nazi. And he asked Wolfgang to receive the doctor in Brazil and to give him shelter and to provide some assistance while he was here. I'm talking from Brazil right now. So that's how Mengele arrived in Brazil in October 1960. And Rudo was such a fanatic. Even in the 60s, he was very fanatic. He distributed here in Brazil like a Nazi newspaper that was forbidden in Germany. And he even put a swastika on the top of his Christmas tree. His first turn was called Adolf because of Adolf Hitler. So he was a really Nazi fanatic. And this guy, Wolfgang Gerhard, who kept his friendship to Mengele until the end of his days, received Mengele in Brazil. And he used to live in a very poor neighborhood that didn't have electricity, anything. And he had these four children. He thought, you know, although I'm very honored to have the doctor in my house, doctor being Josef Mengele, I cannot keep him with me. So he found the family, the Stammer family, who were Hungarians, they came to Brazil because they were escaping Communism. In Europe, they were Nazis, but they were escaping communism. And he introduced Josef Mengele as a Swiss guy and asked them, please, could you take this friend? He's alone, he can work as a manager in your farm, maybe, and so on. So they accepted Mengele. And they only found out that Mengele was Mengele one year later. And then it was too late. They were already living together. And Mengele lived with this family, the stammer family, for 13 years. And they never, never denounced him to the police, to the authorities. They never did anything. And in my research, I found out that they had, like, business together. For example, they bought a farm, a small farm in Brazil. And in his letters, Mengele tells his friend Wolfgang Gerhard about how much money he gave to buy this farm and so on. And of course, Mengele doesn't appear in the documents because he was a fugitive and he wasn't using his real name here in Brazil. So by his letters, you can find out how this relationship was. It was like a relationship of friendship. Later, they didn't have friendship anymore, but they had business together.

[Dan Snow]

You listen to Dan Snow's history. There's more coming up.

[Bettina Anton]

Foreign.

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[Bettina Anton]

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[Dan Snow]

And he survived until 1979 and died swimming.

[Bettina Anton]

Yes, he died swimming. Very close to a place where I am right now. I'm on holidays here on the coastline of Brazil. And he died in Berchoga. His son, Hof Mengele, gave one big interview to Bunta magazine. And in this interview, he said that his father had a miserable life here in Brazil and died alone and so on. I think this is one way of seeing things. But by reading his letters, I have another thought about this, you know, because I don't think he had a very miserable life here. No, not at all. He had his close friends. He could talk to them. He went to waterfalls, he went to the beach. He went for A walk with his dogs. He loved gardening. He loved drinking wine and talking to his friends. He could go to the German bookstore here in Brazil, buy his books, because he loved reading. He even loved Brazilian soap operas. And he watched all the three soap operas. And that's something I knew by his letters. And this was a bit funny for me, you know? And he even kept a diet here, you know, he writes that he used to have a salad at night because he wanted to keep his figure. So that's not something that you imagine of a war criminal of this magnitude, eating salad and watching soap operas and then going out with his friends, going to a churrascaria, which is something very, very common in Brazil. Churrascaria is a restaurant where you can eat meat, good meat from South America, you know. Do you think this is a miserable life? I don't think so.

[Dan Snow]

This is still a controversial or still a dangerous story in South America. You were threatened when you were doing this research and writing?

[Bettina Anton]

Yes, I was, more than once. Because something that it's interesting is that Mengele died in 1979, and the police found out about this story in 1985. But until now, we didn't have anyone from the German community digging into this story. And that's what I wanted to do, you know, I wanted to understand, because I was a school child when this happened in 1985. And the person that harbored Mengele here in Brazil in his last years was Liselotta Bossart, who was my school teacher. And she disappeared from school Suddenly. I was 6 years old at that time, and I was wondering what happened, what happened to my teacher? And I always heard this, the adult saying the name Mengele. And I knew that was something very, very bad, something evil that he did, but I didn't know what he did. And this was a story that was in my mind for many, many years. And 20 years later, as a journalist, I wanted to find out in my community how people dealt with this. So I talked to a lot of people, a lot of parents at the time. Did they know Mengele, how did they react? And so on. I talked to the director at my school at the time as well. Was this normal to have Nazis around? And so on. And fortunately, I found out that this was not a Nazi nest as it could have been. So I'm glad about my research in this point, but that was something that was never dealt with before. So one of the first persons I wanted to talk to was my school teacher, of course, Lizzy Lotta Bossert. Yes, she was the one who buried Mengele under the false name of Wolfganger here in Brazil in 1979. So I went after her and it was very, very difficult to find her because she disappeared from the Internet. You have a lot of news about her from 1985, but after that you cannot find anything, almost anything. And then I didn't even know if she was alive or not when I started my research, you know. And then after asking a lot of people, I got to the director of the school and he told me, I think she's still alive. I saw her at some German events, maybe. I think she's still alive. I saw her recently and then I thought, okay, I'm going to call her, because I had her phone number, but no one picked it up. So I decided to go to her house, which was very close to mine. Actually. She used to live less than 5km from where I live. So I went there and I rang the bell and then suddenly a woman came out from the second floor and said, who is it? And I said, bettina, you're a former student, what do you want? And then I told her I called her by the name I used to call her when I was a child. If you come down, I tell you what I want. And then I think she got curious and she came down and we started talking. And then I told her that I was a journalist as well and that I wanted to talk about Mengali and so on. So from the beginning she said, I don't talk about the subject, you know, I have made a deal with the Jews and I don't talk about it. So it was very mysterious. Which Jews was she thinking about? And so on. And then we kept talking, you know, small stuff and so on. And suddenly she started threatening me and she said this was a very dangerous case, she didn't want a former student to get hurt. And she kept saying a lot of very, very strange things to me, you know, I was really afraid, but I was there, I didn't go away. And it was good because she told me a lot of things. But when I left her, I thought, oh my God, I don't want to write this book anymore, I don't want to talk about this. You know, I was really afraid. And my sisters, I have three sisters, they were making fun of me. Are you afraid of a 19 year old woman? And then I said, yes, she's 90, but I don't know who she's related to. You know, she could have like a Nazi network behind her, I don't know, neo Nazi. Network. So I was really afraid. But then after talking to a lot of people, I calmed down and then I kept my research. And I think people who participated in this story, there are many people that are still alive here in Brazil. They don't want to have their names besides Mengele.

[Dan Snow]

Well, I'm not surprised, but thank you very much to you for writing such a important and powerful book. Why is it important that we remember this story then?

[Bettina Anton]

You know, unfortunately nowadays we still have some problems that are related to this ideology of racism, of xenophobia. While researching this stuff, you think this is a thing of the past because it's so absurd and so horrible. You think people don't do this anymore, but unfortunately they do. This ideology of extreme right, of racism, of xenophobia, this is something that should be in the past. It shouldn't happen anymore. We are all humans. There's no such thing as pure race. This is something that shouldn't happen anymore. This is horrible.

[Dan Snow]

Can agree on that. What is your book called?

[Bettina Anton]

It's called Hayden Mengele.

[Dan Snow]

Well, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

[Bettina Anton]

Thank you so much for this talk. It was great.

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