The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center today presented Brazilian authorities with documents relevant to the investigation of the body exhumed at a cemetery in Enbu, near Sao Paulo, which may be that of the notorious death camp doctor, Josef Mengele.
The Center’s legal counsel in Washington, Martin Mendelsohn, presented the documents, requested by the Brazilian authorities, to the Brazilian Embassy in Washington. The documents include information on medical, dental and other records about Mengele. Among the documents is an account of a motorcycle accident which Mengele suffered in 1943.
The accident may provide one of the primary clues as to whether the remains uncovered last weekend in the cemetery in Brazil are that of the death camp doctor, held responsible with the deaths of some 400,000 persons at the Auschwitz death camp during the Holocaust.
Mengele is reported to have suffered a broken hip in Germany. A forensic expert has reported seeing an abnormality of the pelvic, or hip, bone that could be a remnant of this injury. Nonetheless, the forensic examination of the remains purported to be Mengele’s are continuing and final results are not expected for at least a week.
Meanwhile, Abraham Foxman, associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said yesterday that he remained skeptical of Mengele’s alleged death by drowning in 1979 despite the statement to that effect released yesterday by Rolf Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor’s son.
“The Brazilian corpse is still a mystery despite Rolf Mengele’s claim that it is his father,” said Foxman, director of international affairs of the ADL. “We remain skeptical because it all seems orchestrated, an ambitious cover up.”
The Wiesenthal Center also announced that a delgation of experts assembled by the Center and approved by authorities in Brazil will go to Sao Paulo to assist in the investigation of the body exhumed last week. The delegation is headed by Dr. Clyde Snow, a forensic anthropologist and consultant to the office of the chief medical examiner in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The two other members of the delegation are Dr. Leslie Lukash, chief medical examiner of Orange County, New York; and Dr. John Fitzpatrick, chief medical examiner of Cook County, Illinois.
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