Das Verschwinden des Josef Mengele
Auschwitz, it's a chilling name, the place where the Nazis set up their largest extermination camp, where countless people were murdered, where crimes were committed that defy imagination. There was Block 10, the building where Josef Mengele carried out his horrific medical experiments on people considered inferior. His work earned him the nickname Todesengel, the angel of death.
When the war ended, Mengele initially managed to hide in Germany before finally fleeing to South America in 1949. Via Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, he eventually ended up in Brazil, aided everywhere by former Nazis and sympathisers. He died in 1979, a free man.
In 2017, the biographical novel La disparition de Josef Mengele by French writer/journalist Olivier Guez was published, a biographical novel about the years Mengele spent in South America. Mengele, still a die-hard Nazi, never showed a moment of remorse for anything he did in his criminal life. Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov filmed it in a moving and impressive way, with August Diehl in the lead role.
