West Germany will ask Brazil for the extradition of Josef Mengele if the former Nazi concentration camp doctor is found in that country, a West German Foreign Ministry spokesman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today.
He said a copy of the warrant for Mengele’s arrest, issued a year ago by the Prosecutor’s office in Freiburg, has been forwarded to the West German Embassy in Rio de Janeiro with a request that it be relayed to the Government of Brazil in the event Mengele is found in Brazil.
According to reports received there from Buenos Aires, Dr. Mengele, whose “medical” experiments were responsible for many deaths of Jewish men, women and children, entered Argentina with a Red Cross passport and was naturalized by the Argentine Government. He once worked as a biochemist and was reported to have had close connections with the Argentine Health Ministry.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
