Survivors of sadistic medical experiments by the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele are disputing evidence that the Auschwitz death camp doctor is indeed dead.
They are questioning the conclusions by the governments of Israel, the United States and West Germany that the remains of a man said to have drowned in 1979 while swimming near Sao Paulo, Brazil, were those of Mengele.
The survivors are members of a group called Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors, known by the acronym CANDLES.
Ending a three-day conference at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, they urged Israel and West Germany to reopen their investigations “to dispel such doubts as exist” about Mengele’s fate.
Known as the “Angel of Death” because he selected inmates for the gas chambers, Mengele also performed harrowing experiments on live subjects.
He was particularly obsessed with identical twins. Surviving twins recently returned from a memorial mission to the Auschwitz site and gathered for the conference here.
Speakers cited evidence that Mengele was seen alive well after the remains of the drowned man were exhumed and subjected to forensic tests by international experts.
The speaker of the Knesset, Dov Shilansky, a Holocaust survivor, said two years ago that he had evidence from a Brazilian dentist, Dr. Helena Bueno Viera, that she treated Mengele long after the alleged drowning. He used the alias Pedro Miller, Viera said.
The United States has closed its case on Mengele. Israel says its file is still open. But experts from the two countries concurred that the weight of evidence points to Mengele’s death by drowning 10 years ago.
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.
