Original subtitles

mengele was known as the angel of death

[Music]

he wanted to improve the stock of the

aryan race

the idea was that i should go now and

try to find mango

he was living in fear of being arrested

there are sightings everywhere of

mengele

they refused to give anything up they

said no it's not mengele it's not true

they lied they denied it there were many

who believe that he could have

staged a death

and there still are people who think

that he's alive

[Music]

buenos aires 1958

the argentinian capital's old world

charm and famed nightlife have made it a

magnet for european expatriates

[Music]

it is also a magnet for nazi war

criminals

fugitives like dr joseph mengele

the angel of death

[Music]

he liked buenos aires and there was a

large german community some of whom were

nazis

he had a bit of cash he was a man about

town and certainly he was very well

connected

he met hans rudel hitler's most

decorated pilot

he met bill himsen who was a wanted war

criminal from belgium

he was still very much a passionate nazi

this was not a life on the run that was

terrible it was quite luxurious

[Music]

and in 1958 the man that we think of as

the angel of death the most haunted man

of the world was in the telephone book

in argentina

one of the things that happens that

changes everything for mengele is that

in 1959 he's indicted by the west german

government

the auschwitz-birkenau doctor is wanted

for mass murder and also for performing

unspeakably cruel medical experiments on

children as young as five

germany demands argentina hand him over

to face justice and that scared him it

made him feel unsafe in buenos aires and

that was good because he he deserved to

live in fear

what megala doesn't know is that there

is more to fear than just an extradition

order

israeli agents are on the hunt for nazis

in argentina and they've already caught

one

he took off his clothes to to make sure

that he doesn't got any weapon or

raise the blade to kill himself

i told him who we are and what we

demand from him

adolf eichmann

the architect of hitler's final solution

is in israeli hands

after kidnapped eichmann's via hironi

interrogated him and said where's

mengele where's mengele

and he refused to answer about any

question about this

and eichmann was absolutely you know

loyal

and and said i have no idea where he is

in fact the two had shared cake and

coffee several times in buenos aires

eichmann and mengele actually meet each

other at the abc cafe and they don't get

on very well

he viewed eichmann is a lower class

officer who lived in this terrible area

of argentina in the suburb of buenos

aires mengele was more regal he

associated with intellectuals he had the

top end of the reich eichmann was on the

he was a working-class stiff at the

mercedes factory

the mossad interrogators apply more

pressure

finally eichmann cracks

he knew that mengele was somewhere in

the argentine maybe in buenos aires but

he he had no contact with manganese

he bent him before but he had no idea of

his address

when

what is doing now

for the mossad mengele is right up there

with eichmann on their most wanted list

mengele the worst name in israel the

nightmare

he was a real butcher

[Music]

england's big interest was in genetics

and he wanted to

look at how you could improve the stock

of the aryan race and therefore

propagate a master race

the auschwitz-birkenau concentration

camp was the site of mengele's

nightmarish medical lab

part of his experiments were about

sterilization so to find out how they

could sterilize the the eastern races

the slavs the gypsies those less the

inferior races at a faster rate

and he had power of life and death

most of mengele's human guinea pigs

perished

but the experiments get progressively

worsened by the time he leaves there he

is the monster that we've all come to

know him for

three days after the eichmann abduction

agent itan meets with issa harrell

the mossad chief has some good news

issa rahel found the address

of mengele in buenos aires

is very keen to think i can bring back

two i could get mengele as well the

mossad boss wants to mount a full-blown

commando raid on the address he wanted

to do a second operation

while the first one wasn't finished

and this is bad thinking

if you involve two things at the same

time

you

you multiply the risk for

failure so i suggest not to do it

but harel doesn't want to miss what may

be their only chance to capture the

notorious doctor he overrules his agents

operation mengele is on

the israelis actually went

looking around buenos aires during that

period in which they were holding

eichmann in the safe house

they stake out a boarding house where

they suspect mengeler is living

that

was really risky because we all traveled

on false passports

on languages we didn't master

if you were caught in argentina in 1960

as a known foreign spy you wouldn't be

executed but you would have been the

guest of the argentine government for a

very very long time

[Music]

mossad agents have tracked nazi war

criminal joseph mengele to what they

hope is his hideout in buenos aires

he sent

a few people

to check this apartment

and they were making pretty sort of

blatant inquiries as to where he was and

they were going up to the boarding house

where they thought he had lived and said

is this where dr menela lives hoping

that maybe they'd say oh don't you mean

mengele yes he's he lives over there

the risks were definitely the german

community of buenos aires

there is a german community of a quarter

million people then

it is the large german community that

has drawn nazis like eichmann and

mengele to argentina the country's

totalitarian regime led by juan peron

has made them feel right at home

everybody wonders you know why did south

america and argentina in particular

become the place where the nazis came to

after the war and the truth is that

there were already links between the

nazis

and argentina during the war

during the war perron and the argentine

government had secret agreements with

himmler's uh foreign espionage service

when the war ended it was a natural

extension of washington's role during

the war to it for it to receive nazis

afterwards

but he was not in the house

practice that we couldn't find him that

much that means that he was dug in

better than eichmann

[Music]

with no sign of the nazi doctor harel

decides to cut his losses and return to

israel with eichmann alone

i'm afraid at that stage the mossad were

on a very cold trail indeed and mengele

had long flown the coop

mengele moved not because of the

israelis but by sheer luck paraguay

wouldn't be in buenos aires they would

miss him

in december 1961

an israeli court convicts adolf eichmann

and hangs him for his crimes

but mossad chief esser harrell has not

given up on joseph mengele

haraldo was still determined

that mengele was

someone they wanted to catch he he was a

notorious figure so aharoni was ordered

to mount an operation and to try and

find him

senior massage agent zv aharoni returns

to south america to track down the nazi

doctor

the idea was that i should go now and

try to find mangalore

he goes undercover as a historian

writing a book about the ss

v and his agents calm argentina uruguay

bolivia and chile

some information pointed the way to

paraguay

but

when we were there he had already left

[Music]

the mission proves more challenging than

even the eichmann capture

it pushes the team to the limit

finally after two years of searching to

catch a break

they had picked up this belgian war

criminal

he was a former dutch ss officer called

the lamb

sassan is a former drinking buddy of

mangala

and they said to him we're going to take

you back for war crimes unless you give

us something better

he said i'll give you a mengele

assassin was very much plugged into the

network and and he suggested that

mengele was in brazil

and so aharoni and his team went there

[Music]

he

said he might been hiding in the house

but identifying the future of nazi won't

be easy

he changed his name

more than once

and had a relatively low profile

one of his distinguishing features was

this gap between his teeth and he was

nervous

about that knowing that it was an

identifying feature

he grew a big bushy mustache that

effectively covered the front teeth and

made it difficult for anyone to

see this gap

the team narrows their search to a ranch

on the outskirts of the city

for the stakeout aharoni is joined by

fellow agent rafi etan the man who led

the eichmann mission

we were looking for mangale

in the farm about 50 kilometers from sao

paulo the israeli spies spend days

watching the ranch

the information provided by sassen

is beginning to look like another dead

end

and then

i saw a man with a mustache

and

two people

like bodyguards

watching him

one of them

for sure was mengele

[Music]

mengele was posted to auschwitz in may

of 1943. it was only a couple of months

after he turned just 32 years old

[Music]

we were loaded into cattle cars

people were praying

crying

he's standing

at the ramps when the trains pull in

he wanted to be there to select the

people under the right and to the left

those who would live and those who would

die

the strongest would be chosen for slave

labor

young children

the old and the infirm

would be sent straight to the gas

chambers and everybody understood that

there was no longer any escape

he was looking for his experiment

victims what mengele wanted were twins

one of the best ways of establishing

how how genes work is to look at

identical twins

one you do the experiments on the other

is the control you do nothing on and you

can see the changes and measure them one

against the other

he'd inject different color pigments

into their eyes he would use the twins

to try to unlock this secret of what he

viewed as the twin birth and that

involved in some cases the shooting of

twins in the back of the head and then

dissecting them as the corpses to see

what was going on

it's not like you know he was just

the sort of

surgical murderer he was also a brute as

well

my mother grabbed my twin sister and me

by the hand

hoping

that as long as she could hold on to us

that she could protect us

i in my childish curiosity looked around

trying to figure out what on earth is

that place

then i realized

that my father and my two older sisters

have disappeared in the crowd

[Music]

and nazi was running yelling in german

twins twins

[Music]

we were wearing as always matching

outfits in this case it was burgundy

dresses

he demanded to know from my mother if we

were twins

and my mother didn't know what to say

she asked if that was good

nathan added yes

and my mother said yes

i remember looking back

and seeing her arm stretched out in

despair

and she was pulled away

i never got to say goodbye to her

the israelis went out and they looked at

that farm they staked it out and zvr

roni the head of the mossad team told me

these men walked past him and one of

them he was convinced was mengele

[Music]

after 18 years on the run

it appears the angel of death is in the

crosshairs of the mossad

mossad operatives believe they have

cited the world's most notorious nazi

fugitive

i'm sure that we did see actually

mengele

for now the team's mission is limited to

surveillance

they return to israel to plan their next

move

agent zv aharoni reports to mossad chief

israel

parel didn't believe their intelligence

our roni said as a field agent that he

felt as though the man he saw was

mengele and that that was enough

therefore to go but what hero was saying

to him is guess what this is 1961 it's

now 16 years after the end of the war

you're making a visual identification

based upon somebody's ss photograph

which was taken in 1938 i need more

evidence harold says

the operation is cancelled

we've got something else to do and there

were greater problems back at home

because nassar head of egypt had just

fired rockets capable of hitting israel

and german rocket scientists were down

there working on them and israel spent

the next year on an assassination

plot of killing off the rocket

scientists

operation mengele is shelved

[Music]

the mossad's nazi hunting unit is

quietly disbanded

and uh

mangala lived

but the nazi doctor is no longer

enjoying the good life

after 1959 when he had to flee argentina

because the extraditional request his

life went into a very sharp decline

mengele was growing increasingly

paranoid that he was going to be caught

he's living a very nervous life

joseph mengele has no idea that the

mossad have given up their chase

he remains terrified that like adolf

hikeman he will be kidnapped and hanged

for his crimes

he ended up on these little outback

farms in the wilds of brazil

he does build a watchtower in one of

these farms he lives in and he uses it

to survey you know the surrounding acres

and kilometres around that's his very

commanding position

and he also had this whole pack of dogs

with him

so he was a very very paranoid very edgy

figure

[Music]

israel may have given up the hunt but in

west germany

prosecutors continue to build the case

against mengele

there's a very loyal retainer of the

mangalay a family called sadelma

prosecutors suspect hans settlemyre has

provided mangala support since his

flight from europe

a judge who was then running the the

office that would investigate mengele

decided to go ahead and swear hans

settlemyre in under sworn oath and

questioned him about whether he was

supporting mengala the family was money

was going to him or anything else

settlemeyer lied just through his teeth

said we've never seen him don't know

anything about him probably dead don't

send him a penny

and they never went out to find out

anything else they accepted his word

[Music]

mangala's long flight is now nearly 20

years in the making

outfits is liberated in in january 45

but before that happens mengele's make

goodies escape

but he got away 10 days before the red

army liberated the camp it was complete

and utter chaos tens of thousands of

prisoners moving through the camps at

the same time um nobody quite sure of

who was anybody

he fled with a suitcase full of

his scientific findings and he was

picked up finally by the americans in

june of 1945

what saved him was that mengele's vanity

when he had joined the ss one of the

things you had to do was have a blood

type tattoo put under your arms so that

if they were wounded and unconscious

they would know what kind of blood for

transfusions

he was fastidious

narcissistic and he didn't want a tattoo

apparently mengele didn't want to marr

his body so he never had that

distinguishing feature of an sas man or

officer and that really helped him

so in the days at the end of the war and

they had a quite a simple

litmus test take off your shirts raise

your hands if they found a tattoo they

put you to one side and they would

interrogate you if there was no tattoo

when you had some kind of reasonable

story then you were released as what

which is what happened with him

[Music]

mengele drifted homeward through germany

mengele did not go back and live openly

under his own name in his hometown he

lived under an assumed name

on a farm

in bavaria where he works for you know

two three years

american investigators show up at his

wife's home

and say do you know what happened to

your husband and she says i hear he's

dead on the eastern front and they close

the file

but mengele's family knows that he is

alive and well they even sent him money

via hans settlemeyer he came from a very

rich family the mengele family were a

family who produced farm machinery

and in germany

the mengala family

ran the largest business in glensburg

gunsberg was a company town

but as long as dr mengele stays in

germany

he remains at risk

he was living in fear of being arrested

he saw what happened to you know the

nazis in the nuremberg trials where all

the nazi leaders were

tried convicted

and executed by hanging he knew as a

former auschwitz doctor that that this

could very probably be his fate if he

was caught so he contacts his family

back in goonsburg

and uh and sadelma puts him in touch

with various people who can help him if

you had enough money you could flee

so he crossed into austria from austria

he crossed into italy

and like many other nazis he reaches

genoa

he got an argentine

landing permit in the name of helm

mcgregor

he boarded a ship called the north king

to buenos aires

mengele arrived in argentina in august

1949.

before long he begins selling farm

machinery across south america

his business thrives from 49 to 59 those

10 years he spent in argentina were

actually very good years but after

fellow ss officer adolf eichmann is

kidnapped and indicted

mengele's world begins to crumble

and let me tell you there is nothing

that scared the nazi war criminals in

south america more than that indictment

it ruined everybody's day and especially

ruined mengeles

he's just going from a succession of

farms being an itinerant farm manager

effectively

in paraguay in brazil

and

at one point when he was on a farm in

brazil

there was a young calf had a hernia

and mengele got out his surgical tools

and performed this incredibly

delicate and successful operation on

removing this hernia and the farm

workers realized that actually

you're not just some swiss farm manager

you claim to be you know you're

something else

though the mossad has failed to capture

him

mengele's carefree life is gone for good

so mengele grows increasingly isolated

depressed and he's ends up in a very

modest bungalow on the outskirts of sao

paulo

ironically as mengele's fortunes dwindle

his legend grows increasingly outlandish

throughout the late 60s and early 70s

the the reputation of mengele grows out

of all proportion

it's partly fueled by simon wiesenthal

who was kind of made

joseph mengele he's sort of

poster boy you know this is the nazi we

all want to capture this is the really

bad one this is this is angel of death

private individuals such as simon

vicente you know the clarksvilles in in

paris

they were the ones who were keeping the

flame alive

we had known that

mengele was

living in paraguay and

that's the reason i

demonstrated it in front of the ministry

of justice in order to get informations

about the fate of mengele

the klaasfelts did try to look for him

but probably a bit too late in the day

and a lot of people remained absolutely

convinced that mengele was in paraguay

all the way through the late 60s and 70s

and in fact he had left paraguay

everyone had this notion of

mengele living in some jungle fortress

with you know dogs yapping at his boots

and

cigarette boats out on the river and

minions following him around

you've got the mengele of popular

culture boys from brazil the white suit

all powerful nazi hiding in the jungle

the real stuff of myth we thought

hollywood was doing documentaries

instead of films

it turns out he lived a fairly squalid

life

and he's got this terrible nervous habit

of chewing the ends of his moustache and

he chews his mustache so much that

he ends up with a hairball

his paranoid nature gets worse and worse

he's not

a

nazi hiding in the jungle with a huge

estate he's a little old man with a

hairball

forty years have passed since the fall

of the third reich

but joseph mengele doctor of the

auschwitz-birkenau concentration camp

remains at large

[Music]

there are sightings everywhere of

mengele

saying that he was in southern spain he

was an island in greece he was in a

paraguayan jungle with a great big

factory

he was everywhere but the moon frankly

but

no one was really hunting for him if

there had been any serious effort

particularly by the german government to

find these criminals it would have been

extremely easy to find them and locate

them and have them arrested

this was a nazi war criminal living in

south america communicating regularly

with his family and getting money from

them and all they had to do was look at

the mail and they never did it

i trusted the government of the world to

do the right thing

until i realized that they were covering

up on right left and or right

in 1985 on the 40th anniversary of the

liberation of auschwitz-birkenau

eva core leads a small group of

survivors to the concentration camp they

were sent to as children from auschwitz

they traveled to jerusalem where they

hold a three-day mock trial of dr

mengele

106 victims line up to testify against

their nazi tormentor i would say that

it's probably

the

closest thing to making feel a person

like an animal like nothing like a piece

of garbage or a piece of meat

he would come every morning

immaculately dressed

i remember his black gleaming boots

he had this white coat and he was

handsome and he wore the uniform

he was this immensely um

a powerful figure

i was injected with something

that made me very ill

he would uh deliberately infect them to

see how long the infection would take in

one not the other

i had extremely high fever my arms my

legs were swollen to twice the size with

huge red patches all over painful very

painful

mengele's twisted desire

to create an aryan master race

led to torturous experiments on more

than 3 000 twins 200 survived so when

mengele came in with the four other

doctors and he looked at the fever chart

and he declared laughing sarcastically

to swear too young try walk to labor

too bad

she's so young

she has only two weeks to live

that much i understood in german

against the odds eva and her sister

miriam lived to see the red army's

liberation of auschwitz

the rest of their family perished

to me it seemed like a nightmare

that somehow if i could close my eyes

and open them up again

the whole nightmare would disappear

but the nightmare did not disappear

in 1985 campaigning by eva core and

others converges with political will

the pressure is building on the german

government and the americans and the

israelis because of this mock trial

there started to be multi-million dollar

rewards offered from mengele

law enforcement officials from three

nations meet to coordinate their efforts

the germans

were the hosts there were several people

from different agencies in israel

and the us marshal service was there

days later the international team

decides to act on a promising tip

after drinking heavily at a restaurant

mengele's fixer hans settlemyre let it

slip to a friend that he's been

supporting mengele for years

the friend alerted authorities

[Music]

the chief prosecutor in frankfurt

secures a search warrant for

settlemyer's home

[Music]

zettelmeier was always considered to be

a potential

link to mengele in south america

the hunt for the nazi doctor moves into

high gear

[Music]

may 31 1985

german special agents raid the home of

mengele family fixer hans settlemyre

they knew that if they told the local

bavarian police there was bound to be an

informer for the mengele family who

would then tip them off and you know

make sure they hid everything

so they got a different police force

from another part of the country to go

and raid sadelma's property

[Music]

the search was conducted by the the

bundes criminal omp which is the german

federal police

they do this search he thinks he's safe

is only by luck when they move this

large sort of armoire or cabinet that

they find something

behind the furniture

investigators unearthed a secret stash

of envelopes there they found these

letters that had been sent uh from

mengele

they found everything all the letters

all the addresses of his helpers

long had been rumored the fact that

settlemyre's wife had had a crush on

joseph mengele early on

and mengele had letters to her directly

as well as to han settlemeier

among the cache of letters investigators

find one that includes a stunning

revelation

with deep sorrow i tell you of the death

of our common friend

that led

the germans to believe that mengele had

died in

brazil in 1979.

settlemeier is arrested

a search of his address book links

mengele to a residence in sao paulo

[Music]

david marwell an investigator with the

u.s justice department is part of the

international force now hunting mangala

the germans

after the discovery of the documentation

in the xenomorph home

went directly to

sao paulo

[Music]

brazilian police are brought on board

romeo tuma was the

the captain who ran the brazilian

investigation for the federal police he

received the material from the germans

tuma quickly determines who lives at the

sao paulo address

a german family called the bossarts

[Music]

there they're not quite so genteel about

a search warrant they really do come in

with full force

[Music]

police questioned them about their

suspected link to mengele

and they refused to give anything up

they said no it's not mengele it's not

true they lied they denied it

[Music]

but tuma soon finds a makeshift shrine

to mengele

and a stash of his personal writing and

photographs

the truth about one of the era's most

enduring mysteries

is finally revealed

and finally they gave it up the family

admit to sheltering mengela during the

last four years of his life

and then they said where he was dead and

then where they had buried him

[Music]

mengele is buried at just outside on the

outskirts of a common cemetery where

paupers are generally buried and they

dug up a six-year-old corpse

news of mengele's death attracts a media

throng to the gravesite

[Music]

and there was mengele's skull for

everybody to see and was kind of held up

for the cameras in the rather grizzly

way and snap snap snap but questions

linger

there were many who believe that he

would could have

staged a death and he had the requisite

medical knowledge and clearly the motive

to stage a death

because he had this diabolical

reputation because he had this image

that he was this

cunning scientist beyond you know any

form of natural justice he was you know

this was all just some cunning thing

[Music]

even though mengele's bones had been dug

up

a lot of people thought that manga they

were still alive

international task force from germany

brazil israel and america believe they

have found joseph mengele

forensic scientists must now prove the

exhumed corpse really is the nazi doctor

we put together a top flight team

of

pathologists and of radiologists and

dental experts

the israelis sent down the chief

pathologist of the israeli defense force

the forensic experts set out to

compare what they knew about the living

mangala

with what evidence could be derived from

the skeletonized remains

they had compared the skull to a picture

of of mengele's face and they blended

the two together

it's very eerie but very compelling as a

piece of evidence

we spent a great deal of time examining

the bones that were discovered in this

grave and

i am absolutely confident that the bones

for joseph mengele is

but for undeniable proof

they would have to wait for the advent

of a new forensic technology

there was a lot of room for the doubters

to think

that actually maybe he's you know still

still around maybe this is all a fix and

it did take uh really

genetic testing in the early 90s to

fundamentally prove to people that these

were indeed mengele's bones they were

ground and they were able to

to collect

a tiny amount of dna enough to analyze

it

the results are definitive

the bones are joseph mengeles there he

was he was dead

the hunt for joseph mengele is over

the full details of how he died

are revealed

mengele's death was

in many ways

pitiful and it was kind of the pitiful

death that he deserved

[Music]

with some friends

he was taken down to bertioga beach

which is about 20 or 30 miles just south

of sao paulo

and

they

sat in their sort of beach house they

had a little beach house

[Music]

they persuaded him look you know uh why

don't you go out for a swim

mengele always refused to go outside

because oh i don't like the sun and

maybe and also he thought he might be

spotted by someone

and he eventually said okay i will

[Music]

cut very very strong as it is around

there

on this hot summer day mengele swam out

from the beach

a little bit further than he should have

[Music]

and

it came quite apparent within a few

minutes that he was in trouble

[Music]

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and try to resuscitate him

he'd had a stroke

and if you have a stroke while he's

swimming

the combination isn't great

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and he dies in the water either from

drowning or from the stroke itself

the interesting thing is that after his

death

they had wanted they talked about

whether they should cremate him

they couldn't get anyone in the mengler

family to sign off on it they wanted to

cremate the remains if they had done

that nobody today including me would

think he's dead

the world's most notorious nazi fugitive

would never answer for his crimes

they would have loved to have had that

trial for the historical record for

mengele the victims deserved that and

that was frustrating for the mossad

he said sometimes apologized

why

he didn't succeed to bring mengelene to

trial

when i write my memory

i'm not going to apologize

there's no punishment for a fellow like

mengele even if he's caught and he's

executed the second at the end of the

hangman's news isn't justice for what he

did but there is some justice in that

after the eichman kidnapping he is

really a bitter depressed unhappy man

that gives me great satisfaction

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i think in many ways i feel sorry for

people like joseph mengele

because they had a twisted

idea of what is right and what is wrong

i don't believe that the perpetrators

escaped scot-free i think they lived a

miserable life

filled with guilt

if you're looking for shards of justice

and all this

he didn't

lead the life that many fantasized he

did this was not a comfortable life

mengele

died an old man

in the hell with him

so

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you