Editing Josef Mengele (section)

==In South America==
[[File:WP Josef Mengele 1956.jpg|thumb|Photograph from Mengele's Argentine identification document in 1956]]
Mengele worked as a carpenter in [[Buenos Aires]], Argentina, while lodging in a [[boarding house]] in the suburb of [[Vicente López Partido|Vicente López]].{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|p=95}} After a few weeks, he moved to the house of a Nazi sympathizer in the neighborhood of [[Florida Este, Buenos Aires|Florida Este]]. He next worked as a salesman for his family's farm equipment company, Karl Mengele & Sons, and in 1951 he began making frequent trips to [[Paraguay]] as a regional sales representative.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|pp=104–105}} He moved into an apartment in central Buenos Aires in 1953, used family funds to buy a part interest in a carpentry concern, and then rented a house in the suburb of [[Olivos, Buenos Aires|Olivos]] in 1954.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|pp=107–108}} Files released by the Argentine government in 1992 indicate that Mengele may have practiced medicine without a license while living in Buenos Aires, including performing abortions.{{sfn|Nash|1992}}

After obtaining a copy of his birth certificate through the West German embassy in 1956, Mengele was issued an Argentine foreign residence permit under his real name. He used this document to obtain a West German passport using his real name and embarked on a trip to Europe.{{sfn|Levy|2006|p=267}}{{sfn|Astor|1985|p=166}} He met with his son Rolf (who was told Mengele was his "Uncle Fritz"){{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|p=2}} and his widowed sister-in-law Martha, for a ski holiday in Switzerland; he also spent a week in his home town of Günzburg.{{sfn|Astor|1985|p=167}}{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|p=111}} When he returned to Argentina in September 1956, Mengele began living under his real name. Martha and her son Karl Heinz followed about a month later, and the three began living together. Josef and Martha were married in 1958 while on holiday in [[Uruguay]], and they bought a house in Buenos Aires.{{sfn|Levy|2006|p=267}}{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|p=112}} Mengele's business interests now included part ownership of Fadro Farm, a [[pharmaceutical]] company.{{sfn|Astor|1985|p=167}} Along with several other doctors, he was questioned in 1958 on suspicion of practicing medicine without a license when a teenage girl died after an abortion, but he was released without charge. Aware that the publicity could lead to his Nazi background and wartime activities being discovered, he took an extended business trip to Paraguay and was granted citizenship there in 1959 under the name "José Mengele".{{sfn|Levy|2006|pp=269–270}} He returned to Buenos Aires several times to settle his business affairs and visit his family. Martha and Karl lived in a boarding house in the city until December 1960, when they returned to West Germany.{{sfn|Levy|2006|p=273}}

Mengele's name was mentioned several times during the [[Nuremberg trials]] in the mid-1940s, but the Allied forces believed that he was probably already dead.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|pp=76, 82}} Irene Mengele and the family in Günzburg also claimed that he had died.{{sfn|Levy|2006|p=261}} Working in West Germany, [[Nazi hunter]]s [[Simon Wiesenthal]] and [[Hermann Langbein]] collected information from witnesses about Mengele's wartime activities. In a search of the public records, Langbein discovered Mengele's divorce papers, which listed an address in Buenos Aires. He and Wiesenthal pressured the West German authorities into starting extradition proceedings, and an arrest warrant was drawn up on 5&nbsp;June 1959.{{sfn|Levy|2006|p=271}}{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|p=121}} Argentina initially refused the extradition request because the fugitive was no longer living at the address given on the documents; by the time extradition was approved on 30&nbsp;June, Mengele had already fled to Paraguay and was living on a farm in [[Hohenau, Paraguay|Hohenau]], near the Argentine border.{{sfn|Levy|2006|pp=269–270, 272}}{{sfn|Brooke|1993}} Mengele reportedly worked as a [[veterinary surgeon]] under the alias of 'Francisco Fischer' while living in Hohenau, before leaving Paraguay for Brazil sometime in 1964.{{sfn|Gibbs|2024}} After a request from Paraguayan Attorney General Clotildo Jimenez, the [[Supreme Court of Justice of Paraguay|Supreme Court of Paraguay]] annulled Mengele's citizenship in August 1979.{{sfn|Belnap|1979}}

===Efforts by Mossad===
In May 1960, [[Isser Harel]], director of the Israeli intelligence agency [[Mossad]], personally led the successful effort to capture [[Adolf Eichmann]] in Buenos Aires. He was hoping to track down Mengele so that he too could be brought to trial in Israel.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|p=139}} Under interrogation, Eichmann provided the address of a boarding house that had been used as a [[safe house]] for Nazi fugitives. [[Surveillance]] of the house did not reveal Mengele or any members of his family, and the neighborhood postman claimed that although Mengele had recently been receiving letters there under his real name, he had since relocated without leaving a forwarding address. Harel's inquiries at a machine shop where Mengele had been part owner also failed to generate any leads, so he was forced to abandon the search.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|pp=142–143}}

Despite having provided Mengele with legal documents using his real name in 1956 (which had enabled him to formalize his permanent residency in Argentina), West Germany was now offering a reward for his capture. Continuing newspaper coverage of his wartime activities, with accompanying photographs, led Mengele to relocate again in 1960. Former pilot [[Hans-Ulrich Rudel]] put him in touch with the Nazi supporter Wolfgang Gerhard, who helped Mengele cross the border into Brazil.{{sfn|Levy|2006|p=273}}{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|p=162}} He stayed with Gerhard on his farm near [[São Paulo]] until a more permanent accommodation could be found, which came about with Hungarian [[expatriates]] Géza and Gitta Stammer. The couple bought a farm in [[Nova Europa]] with the help of an investment from Mengele, who was given the job of managing for them. The three bought a coffee and cattle farm in [[Serra Negra]] in 1962, with Mengele owning a half interest.{{sfn|Levy|2006|pp=279–281}} Gerhard had initially told the Stammers that the fugitive's name was "Peter Hochbichler", but they discovered his true identity in 1963. Gerhard persuaded the couple not to report Mengele's location to the authorities by convincing them that they themselves could be implicated for harboring a fugitive.{{sfn|Levy|2006|pp=280, 282}} In February 1961, West Germany widened its extradition request to include Brazil, having been tipped off to the possibility that Mengele had relocated there.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|p=168}}

Meanwhile, [[Zvi Aharoni]], one of the Mossad agents who had been involved in the Eichmann capture, was placed in charge of a team of agents tasked with tracking down Mengele and bringing him to trial in Israel. Their inquiries in Paraguay revealed no clues to his whereabouts, and they were unable to intercept any correspondence between Mengele and his wife Martha, who by this time was living in Italy. Agents who were following Rudel's movements also failed to produce any leads.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|pp=166–167}} Aharoni and his team followed Gerhard to a rural area near São Paulo, where they identified a European man whom they believed to be Mengele.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|pp=184–186}} This potential breakthrough was reported to Harel, but the logistics of staging a capture, the budgetary constraints of the search operation, and the priority of focusing on Israel's deteriorating relationship with Egypt led the Mossad chief to call off the manhunt in 1962.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|pp=184, 187–188}}{{sfn|Horovitz|2018}}

===Later life and death===
In 1969, Mengele and the Stammers jointly purchased a farmhouse in [[Caieiras]], with Mengele as half owner.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|p=223}} When Wolfgang Gerhard returned to Germany in 1971 to seek medical treatment for his ailing wife and son, he gave his [[Identity document|identity card]] to Mengele.{{sfn|Levy|2006|p=289}} The Stammers' friendship with Mengele deteriorated in late 1974, and when they bought a house in São Paulo, he was not invited to join them.{{efn|name=relationship|Based on entries in Mengele's journals and interviews with his friends, historians such as [[Gerald Posner]] and Gerald Astor believe that Mengele had a sexual relationship with Gitta Stammer.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|pp=178–179}}{{sfn|Astor|1985|p=224}} }} The Stammers later bought a bungalow in the Eldorado neighborhood of [[Diadema, São Paulo]], which they rented out to Mengele.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|pp=242–243}} Rolf, who had not seen his father since the ski holiday in 1956, visited him at the bungalow in 1977; he found an "unrepentant Nazi" who claimed he had never personally harmed anyone and [[Superior orders|only carried out his duties]] as an officer.{{sfn|Posner|Ware|1986|pp=2, 279}}

Mengele's health had been steadily deteriorating since 1972. He suffered a [[stroke]] in 1976,{{sfn|Levy|2006|pp=289, 291}} experienced high blood pressure, and developed an ear infection which affected his balance. On 7&nbsp;February 1979, while visiting his friends Wolfram and Liselotte Bossert in the coastal resort of [[Bertioga]], Mengele had a heart attack while swimming and drowned.{{sfn|Evans|2008|p=746}} His body was buried in Our Lady of the Rosary cemetery in [[Embu das Artes]] under the name "Wolfgang Gerhard",{{sfn|Montalbano|1985}} whose identification Mengele had been using since 1971.{{sfn|Blumenthal, July 1985|p=1}} Other aliases used by Mengele in his later life included "Dr. Fausto Rindón" and "S. Josi Alvers Aspiazu".{{sfn|Zentner|Bedürftig|1991|p=586}}