Switzerland releases 200-page intelligence dossier on Nazi ‘Angel of Death’ Mengele

Files include material indicating the convicted German war criminal may have entered the alpine nation while on the run, which historians have long sought to substantiate

By AP 10 September 2026, 7:29 pm

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Notorious Nazi physician Josef Mengele as a young doctor, left, and the 'ramp' at Auschwitz-Birkenau in May of 1944, where Mengele sometimes selected inmates for life, death or 'experimentation.' (Public domain)

BERLIN — The Swiss federal intelligence service on Thursday published a 200-page dossier on the notorious Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, the German doctor known as the “Angel of Death” for conducting horrific medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz.

During World War II, Mengele served at the Auschwitz extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where about 1.1 million people were killed, approximately 1 million of them Jews. He became infamous for carrying out brutal medical experiments on inmates, including children, under the guise of scientific research.

After the war, Mengele obtained a Red Cross travel document under a false identity, allowing him to leave Europe. Like many former Nazi officials, he spent years in hiding in Latin America while being pursued internationally for his crimes. He drowned in 1979 while swimming on the coast of Brazil.

The documents released by Swiss authorities include material provided to police suggesting that Mengele may have returned to Switzerland after initially fleeing Germany, or may have been planning to enter the country under a false name, according to the German news agency dpa.

Historians seeking to establish whether Mengele spent time in Switzerland while being pursued as a war criminal, without Swiss authorities catching him, had long sought access to the files.

Swiss authorities had maintained that the documents should remain sealed until 2071 on security grounds and to protect individuals named in them.

German prosecutor, head of Central Office of the Judicial Authorities of the Federal States for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, Jens Rommel shows an index card bearing the name of former physician Josef Mengele in the archives room of the institution on April 19, 2018 in Ludwigsburg, southwestern Germany. (AFP PHOTO / THOMAS KIENZLE)

Historian Gérard Wettstein successfully challenged those restrictions before the Federal Administrative Court, leading to the online publication. Some sections have been redacted to protect sources and the personal data of third parties, authorities said.

The dossier was compiled by the police service of the federal prosecutor’s office, a predecessor of Switzerland’s federal intelligence services, and transferred to the Federal Archives in 2001.