Switzerland has quietly unsealed classified files on Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor known as the 'Angel of Death', and the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation is demanding that every document be made public. Sources close to the foundation confirm that they have been pressing Bern for years, but the vaults only cracked this week.
The files, held in a Swiss federal archive, cover Mengele's movements after the war. He fled to South America in 1949 and died in Brazil in 1979. Why Switzerland held secrets for decades is the question that now hangs over this story.
I have traced the paper trail: Swiss intelligence monitored Mengele's correspondence with his family in Germany. They knew his aliases and his hiding places. But they did not share this information with Allied war crimes investigators. Not then. Not for 40 years.
'The Swiss were playing both sides,' said a former Mossad officer who spoke on condition of anonymity. 'They let Mengele run because he had information. On the Vatican. On the Nazi networks that flow through Zurich.'
The UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, which is building a national memorial in London, has issued a statement calling for 'full and immediate access' to the documents. Their chairman told me: 'We cannot honour the victims if we hide the truth about the perpetrators.'
But the Swiss Federal Archives are pushing back. They claim that some files contain personal data and cannot be released without consent from living relatives. A spokesman said: 'Switzerland takes its data protection laws seriously.'
That is a smokescreen, say historians. The real reason is embarrassment. The files may show that Swiss banks laundered Nazi gold well into the 1950s. And that Swiss officials helped Mengele travel through Europe using a Red Cross passport.
I have seen a 1954 memo from a Swiss diplomat in Buenos Aires. It describes a meeting with 'Dr. Gregor'—one of Mengele's aliases—and notes that he was 'cooperative'. Cooperative about what? The memo is heavily redacted.
Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz killed thousands, mainly twins and children. He was the most wanted Nazi alive after Adolf Eichmann was captured in 1960. But while Eichmann was hanged, Mengele swam free. And Switzerland held the rope.
The timing of this unsealing is curious. It comes just as the UK Holocaust Memorial faces legal challenges from local residents who do not want a 23-metre concrete structure in Victoria Tower Gardens. Some see the files as a political tool: proof that we need a national place of reflection.
But the documents themselves are the story. I have spoken to a Swiss journalist who has seen a fraction of the files. 'They show a network of priests, bankers and businessmen who protected Mengele,' he said. 'Names that would shock the world.'
The UK foundation plans to send a delegation to Bern next week. They will demand the complete dossier, including the unredacted versions. If Switzerland refuses, expect a diplomatic row.
One thing is certain: the Angel of Death is back in the headlines. And this time, the blood is on Swiss hands.
