LETTER FROM BUENOS AIRES
In South America, he married and was able to practice his profession as a physician. While on the run, he used the alias Helmut Gregor but also sometimes used his real identity: Josef Mengele. The Nazi doctor from the Auschwitz extermination camp, infamously known as the "Angel of Death" for his experiments on prisoners, fled to Argentina in 1949 before moving to Paraguay and then Brazil, where he died in 1979 without ever having been brought to justice. "He could rely on good contacts and money to evade those searching for him," noted Legado, the journal of Argentine archives, in 2017.
Like Mengele, other Nazi officials evaded prosecution after the end of World War II, as the Nuremberg Trials began in November 1945 to judge the senior leaders of the Third Reich for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Their escape led them thousands of kilometers away to South America, notably to Argentina.
On Monday, March 24, the Argentine government announced the upcoming declassification of new documents regarding the settlement of these Nazis within the country. Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos specified that "banking and financial operations" facilitating their escape "have still not been made public." This announcement followed a meeting between the ultraliberal President Javier Milei and representatives of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. On this occasion, the human rights NGO presented him with a letter from the United States Senate Judiciary Committee requesting that "Argentina cooperate in the investigation into Crédit Suisse's (now UBS Group AG) aid to Nazis," the Argentine presidency posted on X on February 18.
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