Special to the JTA More Tests Made to Determine Whether Mengele is Really Dead

The Justice Department has sent to Brazil an expert in physical anthropology from the Smithsonian Institution to conduct additional tests of the remains exhumed from a cemetery near Sao Paulo believed to be those of the notorious Nazi death camp doctor Josef Mengele.

The anthropologist, Donald Ortner, said in a telephone interview that he did not want to comment on the outcome of the tests he conducted during his one day visit to Brazil earlier this month. He did say, however, that he was in the process of editing a report that will be submitted to the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI).

In addition, Ortner said he believed the report would be incorporated into a final report, scheduled for release next month, by a team of 17 highly respected forensic experts who visited Sao Paulo last summer to conduct tests to ascertain whether the body exhumed from a cemetery at Embu, near Sao Paulo, under the name of Wolfgang Gerhard, is in fact that of Mengele.

The preliminary report by the forensic team concluded that the body uncovered in the cemetery was that of Mengele, who is reported to have drowned in a swimming mishap at Bertioga Beach on February 7, 1979. The preliminary report stated that within reasonable scientific certainty, the remains were those of Mengele.

‘A DRAMATIC DEVELOPMENT’

However, Eli Rosenbaum, a former prosecutor with the OSI and now general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, described Ortner’s visit to Brazil as “a dramatic development.” He also pointed out that the findings of the preliminary report failed to mention what Rosebaum describes as one of the two “known unusual physical identifiers” that would make certain the remains were those of Mengele.

Mengele became the subject of a massive international manhunt just months prior to the uncovering of what are believed to be his remains. The Israeli, West German and United States governments coordinated intense efforts to locate the Nazi war criminal, known as the “angel of death” for his experiments on inmates at the Auschwitz death camp during the Holocaust.

Most American Jewish organizations who have closely monitored the hunt for Mengele through the years tended to support the findings of the preliminary report. According to one source familiar with the forensic team’s efforts, the final report to be issued next month in New Orleans on February II at the Hyatt Regency during a convention of forensic experts will reach the same conclusions as the preliminary report. But Israel has not officially closed the books on the Mengele case. It has reportedly sent officials to Brazil to conduct further tests of the remains and the personal belongings discovered at the residences where he is said to have lived the last years of his life. A report is expected soon from the West Germans, and then from the U. S. on the Mengele affair.

QUESTIONS STILL LINGER

But according to Rosenbaum, questions still linger about the forensic team report, and in particular, its failure to mention at any point the discovery of traces of the bone disease sepsis osteomyelitis. Mengele is said to have had the rare bone disease in 1926-27, and according to Rosenbaum, the disease would not mask itself soon thereafter. He suggested that it would be detectable in the remains uncovered in Brazil.

But this, too, remains in dispute. Ortner asserted in the interview that osteomyelitis, depending on the degree in which it was contracted, may not be detectable. Nonetheless, Rosenbaum said it was “extraordinarily disengenuous” of the report to not have found any detection of the disease.

It is unclear to what degree Mengele suffered from the disease, which involves a serious inflamation of the bone marrow. According to a two-part series on Mengele this week by syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, “A medical school colleague of Mengele has stated that the osteomyelitis was so severe that a piece of diseased leg bone broke off and had to be removed surgically.”

While Ortner said he did not want to discuss details of his tests in Brazil, he did say he found certain features in the skeleton that required further study. He was not part of the original forensic team and had only a passing interest in the team’s work in Brazil. But he said he does not expect the final report by the forensic team to be much different than the team’s preliminary findings. “I honestly don’t think there will be any surprises,” Ortner said.

Other sources in the American Jewish community with close contacts among the forensic team that was in Sao Paulo last summer suggested that Ortner did not find any trace of the disease. These same sources said Ortner’s report, as interpreted to the JTA, would confirm that there was no trace of the bone disease, thus confirming the conclusions reached by the forensic experts.

A Justice Department official refused comment on the Ortner visit to Brazil. Mike Wolf, deputy director of the OSI, told the JTA that the department did not want to comment on Ortner’s visit until he issued a written report on his studies.

POSSIBILITY OF HOAX STILL REMAINS

Anderson reported this week that there are other nagging questions that remain unanswered. He cited an internal document of the WJC which noted that “Mengele had earned a Ph. D. in anthropology.”

It continued, “Mendele’s family is among the wealthiest in Germany … moreover, he was in contact during his years in South America with … Nazi sympathizers.” Therefore, the WJC document stated, “Mengele was in a position from the standpoint of scientific, financial and logistical resources, to pull off a fairly sophisticated hoax.”

Anderson also wrote: “Leaving out the circumstantial evidence, all that is left is a number of similarities between the remains and Mengele: sex, height, age at death, the gap between the upper front teeth, the skull/photograph match and the apparent matching of the few teeth that were found to old dental records. ‘Any minimally competent hoaxster’ could have found a body with most of these similarities, and added the rest, the WJC claimed.”

Anderson’s associate, Lucette Lagnado, who has done extensive research on the Mengele issue, said in a telephone interview that the possibility of a hoax remains. “If anybody could have, he had the expertise,” said Lagnado, who is writting a book on the death camp doctor.

“Mengele was fascinated with anthropology … it was his passion,” said Lagnado. Mengele, she added, “was a hoaxster.” But Lagnado remains convinced that when the forensic team issues its final report next month, they “will make an extraordinary statement” that the bones exhumed from the grave in Sao Paulo were those of Mengele.

Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles said he was “99 percent certain” that the bones exhumed in Brazil were Mengele’s. He said this conviction comes largely from the fact that there has not been a single definitive citing of Mengele since 1979.