What Swiss archives held on the ‘Angel of Death’: Mengele file opened decades early

According to the FIS announcement dated September 10, the decision followed strong public interest and numerous requests for access. Rather than allowing individual applicants to consult the records on site, the agency published a digital copy online.

Spanning more than 200 pages, the file contains official correspondence, photographs and newspaper clippings. Qazinform examined several items, from a letter discussing Mengele’s possible presence in Switzerland to contradictory reports about efforts to track him down in South America.

A possible Swiss lead

One document is dated August 15, 1960. In a letter addressed to the Federal Political Department, as Switzerland’s foreign ministry was then known, the federal police discuss a report suggesting that Mengele might be in the country.

The author thanks the department for information about the “German war criminal Dr Mengele” and asks whether the police division should investigate his whereabouts.

The letter also raises the prospect of extradition. The author suggests that, if Mengele were indeed in Switzerland, the West German authorities would almost certainly request his extradition. The recipient is advised to contact the police division responsible for such matters.

The document does not establish that Mengele was in Switzerland. It records discussions about a reported presence and possible next steps, without providing any findings from a subsequent search.

Reports from Paraguay

Another newspaper clipping carries the headline “Mengele, the death doctor of Auschwitz, is in Paraguay.” The French-language report, citing AFP, stated that he had obtained Paraguayan citizenship and was working as a doctor.

The article also said Mengele had been spotted in Argentina in 1959, but an extradition request sent to the authorities there had produced no result. According to the report, he hurried into hiding after learning of the press interest.

The same clipping included a qualification from the justice ministry in Bonn: officials did not know whether Paraguay would agree to extradite him.

The Mossad hunt and conflicting accounts

A clipping titled “The Mossad hunt” examines what Israeli intelligence reportedly knew about Mengele’s whereabouts. It claimed that intelligence agents had located him several times in South America.

In particular, the article described an alleged attempt to capture him in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in June 1982. According to the report, the operation failed because the police intervened.

That account conflicts with the chronology established later: Mengele died in Brazil in 1979. The clipping illustrates how contradictory reports about his whereabouts could be.

Letters to his son and life in Argentina

The file also contains a feature from the German magazine Bunte headlined “No one asked about his deeds.” It is presented as his son’s account of how Mengele escaped punishment.

The spread reproduces part of a handwritten letter. According to the editorial caption, Mengele defended and justified what happened in the concentration camp in letters to his son Rolf. The magazine also raised the question of who helped him remain in hiding, asserting that he had numerous helpers.

Alongside the letter is a photograph of Mengele with a dog. The caption identifies the location as a house in Florida, a suburb of Buenos Aires, where he lived from 1949 to 1953.

Another archival page contains a photograph of a woman identified in the accompanying text as Marta Mengele, whose maiden name was Will. The document lists an address in Merano, Italy, but does not specify when or under what circumstances the photograph was taken.

The search in the press

A clipping from the Swiss newspaper Die Weltwoche, dated March 14, 1985, bears the headline “Mengele’s ugly shadow falls over America.” The article discusses the search for the Nazi doctor amid debate in the United States about the Nazi past.

It is accompanied by a photograph of President Ronald Reagan and Simon Wiesenthal, known for his efforts to track down Nazi perpetrators.

An escape route and a wall of silence

A page from Der Spiegel’s issue No. 17 of 1985 discusses Mengele’s escape from Europe and the silence surrounding his whereabouts. According to the article, he travelled from Genoa to Buenos Aires in the summer of 1949 using a passport issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The magazine reported that some people with knowledge of Mengele’s whereabouts refused to disclose it. It cited Hans Sedlmeir, a former authorized representative of the Karl Mengele agricultural machinery company in Günzburg, as saying that he would take the secret about the company owner’s son to his grave.

The page also features a photograph captioned “Mengele tribunal in Jerusalem, 1985.” The accompanying text identifies Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and Auschwitz survivor Eva Mozes among those pictured, noting that Mozes and her twin sister had been subjected to Mengele’s experiments.

These newspaper and magazine clippings reflect information and assessments circulating in the press at the time. Their inclusion in the file does not, in itself, mean that Swiss intelligence verified their claims.

Why the records were opened early

The review of access restrictions followed a request from a historian, which the FIS rejected in February 2026. The historian appealed to the Federal Administrative Court.

During the proceedings, it emerged that the file belonged to the material evaluated by the Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland and the Second World War, commonly known as the Bergier Commission. A Federal Council decision dated December 7, 2001, calls for a liberal access policy for such records within the scope of archiving law.

The FIS explained that no list identifies the files covered by that decision, nor are the relevant records marked accordingly. The agency therefore previously had no way of knowing that the Mengele file fell into this category.

In May, the FIS announced that it would reconsider its position. On September 8, it issued a new ruling granting access with redactions.

The agency said it kept redactions to a minimum. Information subject to statutory source protection was withheld, along with certain personal data relating to federal administration employees and third parties.

The file was compiled by the police service of the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland, a predecessor of the FIS. It was transferred to the Swiss Federal Archives in 2001, where the unaltered original remains. A digital copy is available on the department’s website.

Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death,” was an SS physician at Auschwitz. He participated in selecting prisoners for murder in gas chambers and conducted inhumane medical experiments, including on children. After the war, he fled to South America and evaded justice. He died in Brazil in 1979, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that Kazakhstan’s National Archives had digitized more than 110 million pages and introduced an AI-powered search system. Its Eternal Memory portal also holds records on more than 705,000 World War II veterans.