Mengele by Gerald L. Posner & John Ware

Author:Gerald L. Posner & John Ware
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cooper Square Press
Published: 2000-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

According to statements in the press, the police have Mengele’s fingerprints in their possession, since it was possible to prove that the fingerprints of Lothar Hermann were not identical to those of Josef Mengele. As there is a possibility that Mengele may be in another country, a record of his prints is of singular importance in helping to facilitate the competent German authorities in the continuing investigation.20

For four months the Argentine police simply ignored the request. On November 20, the West Germans sent a reminder to the foreign office, asking them to “please give attention to the request, which is urgent due to the character of the case.” Finally, in December, the prints were sent.21

Little of the chaos and indifference surrounding the hunt filtered through to the public. They were treated instead to an almost weekly diet of new sightings and follow-up police operations. It was precisely because Mengele was portrayed as being able to elude such “dragnets” that his reputation flourished as a wily fugitive with superhuman powers of evasion.

On the farm at Nova Europa, meanwhile, Mengele remained unaware of many of the more imaginative press reports. According to Gitta Stammer, they rarely received newspapers. The irony was that although they did not know he was on their soil, the most active police hunts were conducted by the Brazilians.

On January 23, 1962, the Brazilian papers carried the headline that Mengele had been captured in the small border town of Pozos de Caldos. The prisoner was using the name “Solomon Schuller.” He was German and he worked for Bayer, the German multinational conglomerate. He was said to be “definitely pro-Nazi, quiet and mysterious.” The area Interpol director, Amoroso Neto, ordered Schuller’s detention and was so confident he was Mengele that he released the story before fingerprint verification had been completed. Two days later the police withdrew the allegation. Fingerprints had arrived from the Germans and showed that Schuller was in fact Hans Epfenger, a former member of the Waffen SS who was not wanted for war crimes but used an alias nevertheless.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.