Argentina had detailed info on Mengele during stay in country, declassified documents show

1 December 2025, 4:24 am

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A federal police agent holds two photos and the identity card found in the house in which the man believed to be Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele lived, June 7, 1985. Photo on left shows Mengele eating. Photo on right shows Mengele during a picnic with friends and in the middle is the identity card. (AP Photo)

The Argentine government maintained a detailed dossier on Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, who led a relatively carefree life in the country until he fled to Paraguay in 1959, declassified documents reported on by Fox News show.

Mengele, notoriously known as the “Angel of Death” for the brutal medical experiments he conducted on prisoners at Auschwitz, initially entered the country on a fake Italian passport in 1949 under the name Helmut Gregor, according to the documents.

The Argentine government at the time was known to harbor Nazis who fled Europe following the war, and by the 1950s, it was aware Mengele was in the country, an analysis of the documents by Fox shows.

Mengele felt so comfortable in Argentina that in 1956, he began to use his real name. He asked for his original birth certificate from the West German Embassy in Buenos Aires, and requested his ID cards be remade as such.

A memo from Argentina’s Federal Coordinate Directorate in 1960 demonstrates the country’s knowledge of Mengele’s identity, citing his explanation of why he used a fake name to enter the country when he came forward to change his official identity.

“Thus, it appears that, while maintaining his real name, the subject belonged to the SS Society… during which time he demonstrated being nervous, having stated that during the war he acted as a physician in the German SS, in Czechoslovakia, where the Red Cross labeled him a ‘war criminal.’ He had studied Anthropology and was known to the Justice in the courts of Nuremberg, especially regarding the study of skulls and bones, but that union was considered a crime in National Socialist Germany,” a translation of the document says.

By the time the memo was written, Mengele had fled to Paraguay after international pressure increased on Argentina to extradite him, following a request by West Germany.

Around 1960, he arrived in Brazil, where he lived until his death in 1979. According to the documents, Argentine intelligence tracked the Nazi throughout his life in South America.