The Disappearance of Josef Mengele by Olivier Guez

Author:Olivier Guez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

43.

Travelling under the protection of a praetorian guard of Indians in March 1961, Mengele is identified in the small town of Mato Grosso, but manages to escape the ambush plotted by the Brazilian police. Some months later he is reported arrested in the state of Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil. This turns out to be an unfortunate mistake: the man detained is identified as an ex-Waffen SS member on holiday. Mengele is spotted once again in February 1962, this time in a town on the border with Paraguay. His hotel is stormed by an elite military police unit, but he left that very morning. The Argentine press announces that he murdered a Mossad agent in Bariloche. Armed and extremely dangerous, he has a private army in his pay, which accompanies him wherever he goes.

Since a reward has been put on his head and the nature of his crimes fully revealed, Mengele is a subject of fantasy and conjecture. He is becoming a mythical creature; ‘the diabolical doctor, Satan’s henchman, not comparable to a man despite his appearance’, playwright Rolf Hochhuth writes in The Deputy: A Christian Tragedy in 1963.

Mossad is not sidetracked by the wild rumours. The special unit has its headquarters in Paris, headed by Zvi Aharoni, a German Jew instrumental in the kidnapping of Eichmann, who swears he will drag his compatriot before an Israeli court. He has accurate information and has identified two of Mengele’s contacts in South America: Krug and Rudel. But the hunt is complex, the family and its entourage in Günzburg are impenetrable, and Krug’s family is suspicious – one of the girls resists the playboy allure of the special-unit agent sent to charm her. Aharoni deploys several more agents in Paraguay, convinced that Mengele has returned there; the Israelis have got wind of his naturalisation. Rudel is tailed all over South America, and Martha’s mail is intercepted. Aharoni tries to infiltrate the German community’s institutions in Asunción. Mossad is turning up the heat, but not yet to boiling point. Mengele is still one step ahead.

That is, until the spring of 1962. In Uruguay, Aharoni has hunted down some big game with the sort of deeply personal knowledge spymasters can only dream of. Sassen comes forward, prepared to traduce his old friend Mengele, ostensibly because he has sullied the honour of the SS but principally because Sassen needs money to support his glitzy, luxurious lifestyle – and all his mistresses. Mossad greases his palm handsomely. The Dutch adventurer has lost track of Mengele, but soon finds out that he has fled to Brazil and identifies his new protector, Wolfgang Gerhard, the fugitive’s only contact with the outside world. The Mossad agents do not let go of Gerhard. And one morning, the Austrian’s Ford Anglia takes off into the savannah, bound for an isolated farm.

Aharoni goes for a picnic in the vicinity of the farm with two agents who are Brazilian Jews. Three men come to meet them. One of them is of medium build and looks European; he has a moustache and a hat pressed down firmly over his eyes.

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