Klarsfeld Said She Supports Findings That Mengele is Dead

Beate Klarsfeld, the German-born international Nazi-hunter, said here that she supported the findings of an international team of forensic experts who concluded that war criminal Josef Mengele died in a swimming mishap in 1979.

“I’m convinced Mengele is dead,” Klarsfeld told some 220 members of the United Jewish Appeal’s Presidents Mission at a gala dinner at the Hofburg Palace. “And even if we cannot be one hundred percent certain that Mengele is in the cemetery in Sao Paulo, I think this case is closed.”

Regarding another war criminal, Alois Brunner, considered by many to be the most wanted former Nazi alive today, Klarsfeld said he has been reported last seen in Syria. But, she added, “I think Brunner is no longer in Syria,”although she said this information has not yet been verified.

Klarsfeld’s address to the UJA delegation, representing some 40 communities across the United States who left for Israel on Saturday night, came after a day-long visit by the group to the Mauthausen concentration camp.

A VISIT TO MAUTHAUSEN

Established in 1938, Mauthausen was primarily used as a labor camp for political prisoners. Of the more than 200,000 persons that passed through the camp, some 110,000 perished there. It contained at least 20 sub-camps.

The camp today is operated as an Austrian museum. But according to members of the delegation and local Jewish officials, the camp has been whitewashed and sanitized.

“This camp has been so whitewashed that you have to work to remember where you are,” said Harvey Steinberg, head of operations of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee here.

The camp is situated in a picturesque setting, looking over the hills of the village of Mauthausen. During the war, it served to supply cheap labor for local businesses and factories.

Steinberg told the UJA delegation that “prisoners were marched in and out every single day and if you lived anywhere in the vicinity–a 50-mile radius– you would have to be more than deaf and dumb not to be aware of what was going on around you.” Delegation members toured the camp facilities where thousands of Jews were killed. They walked through the gas chamber, to the crematorium where they placed red and white carnations. Later, they recited Kaddish, and each delegation participant placed a memorial candle at the base of a monument to the Jews who were killed there.

A DIFFERENT SCENE RECALLED

Dorothy Goren of Los Angeles recalled that she had visited the same camp in 1971. She said her visit now was much different. “I remember a dirty, filthy barrack, ” she said. “I remember walking into a room that literally had clothing left over from the camp on the ground.”

Now, the barracks, which once held the inmates of Mauthausen, are freshly painted on the exterior, and the interior is clear. There was freshly cut green grass where the barracks once stood. During Goren’s last visit, there was no grass around Mauthausen at all.

Morris Sherman of Los Angeles said he was angered by what he saw at Mauthausen. “I was angry that the trees were still green, it just seemed too natural, that nature did not respond to the horror that happened here,” he said.