Switzerland Plans To Release Secret Files On Nazi War Criminal Mengele.

Bern; May 2026: Auschwitz Mengele, nicknamed the ‘Angel of Death’, is best known for his work at the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz, where he personally decided on the entrance ramp who would go straight to the gas chamber and who was fit to work or for his sadistic medical experiments. He chose mainly children and twins for them.

After the World War II, he managed to escape from Europe, but according to speculation – which was later confirmed, he also resided in Switzerland, although an international arrest warrant was issued for him. Historians have repeatedly requested access to the Swiss secret services on this matter, but local authorities have so far refused.

Using a false identity, Mengele managed to obtain Red Cross travel documents from the Swiss consulate in Genoa, northern Italy, which he used to escape to South America. The Red Cross intended to issue such documents to thousands of people throughout Europe who had been displaced or made stateless by the war. However, some Nazis who were trying to escape prosecution also managed to obtain them, for which the Red Cross later had apologised.

Although Mengele fled Europe in 1949, he spent a skiing holiday in the Swiss Alps with his son Rolf in 1956. This information has been known since the 1980s. Officially, Mengele spent the rest of his life in South America.

But Swiss historian Regula Bochsler has always wondered whether Mengele had returned, especially after an international arrest warrant was issued for him in 1959. While researching Switzerland’s possible role as a transit country for fleeing Nazis, the historian discovered that in June 1961, the Austrian intelligence service had warned Switzerland that Mengele was traveling under a false name and might be on Swiss territory.

Mengele’s wife rented an apartment in Zurich and applied for permanent residency there. “There seems to be evidence that Mengele was planning a trip to Europe in 1959”, Bochsler told the probing agency entrusted to find out the truth. “Why did Mrs. Mengele rent an apartment in Zurich?” the historian asks.

Bochsler was able to access police files in Zurich, which proved that the apartment was being watched in 1961. The police even recorded that Mengele was driving her Volkswagen accompanied by an unidentified man.

In 2019, Bochsler asked the Swiss Federal Archives to open the files, which were supposed to remain sealed until 2071 for reasons of national security and to protect her extended family. She was denied. Last year, her fellow historian Gérard Wettstein also asked to open them, and was also denied. However, when he went to court, the FIS changed its mind.

But in a statement this month, the intelligence service suggested that full disclosure of the files could take some time. “The applicant will be granted access to the file under conditions and requirements that are yet to be defined”, the secret service said. But not everyone is convinced that the Mengele files could reveal too much, as per reports of the Switzerland authorities.

Mengele was never arrested, let alone convicted. When he died in Brazil in 1979, he was buried under a false name. In 1985, his body was exhumed, and in 1992, DNA tests confirmed that it was his.

Team Maverick.