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The Man Who Let Mengele Get Away
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Israel’s Mossad had the Nazis’ Angel of Death, Josef Mengele, in its grasp. Gerald Posner on why General Meir Amit, who died last week, decided not to capture him.
“I might have thought about Mengele for 10 minutes,” said Meir Amit, the celebrated chief of Israel’s Mossad from 1963 to 1968.
Amit, who died in Israel a week ago at 88, had made the admission to me in a 1985 telephone conversation, when I was researching a biography on the Angel of Death, Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele.
That a former Mossad chief was so blunt in having little interest in capturing a war criminal charged with personally selecting 400,000 victims to go to their deaths in Auschwitz’s gas chambers, and for brutal medical experiments he did on twins there, was initially startling. But the more we talked, the easier it was to understand why Amit did not mind being known as the Israeli spy chief who let Mengele get away.
“We were fighting for the survival of the state of Israel,” Amit told me. “We didn’t have the luxury of going after Nazis anymore.”
The Mossad’s greatest success in hunting Nazis was the May 11, 1960 capture of Adolf Eichmann, the emotionless bureaucrat responsible for deporting millions of Jews to the concentration camps.
The daring raid in Buenos Aires, conducted by a small team of Mossad agents in an unfriendly, then pro-Nazi country, sent shock waves through the surviving cabal of Nazi fugitives. Mengele, remarkably living under his real name in Argentina, fled to Paraguay and then a year later to the Brazilian outlands .
The Mossad, led by Isser Harel, had convinced then Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion that capturing Nazis was a proper role for Israel’s spy agency. The Eichmann operation was so costly that Harel wanted to make it worthwhile by picking up Mengele at the same time. But the Israelis couldn’t pinpoint the elusive doctor’s whereabouts, missing him at a boarding house and at Mengele’s own small garage-workshop that made children’s toys.
But Mengele’s fears of the Israelis were well placed. Harel and the Mossad formed “Operation Mengele,” and for more than two years a special team tracked him. Mengele was the top of the Mossad’s list, but Harel had a Parisian-based team chasing other Nazis—from Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, to determining whether Hitler’s deputy, Martin Bormann, had really died trying to flee Berlin in the closing days of the war or was living in a guarded compound in the Paraguayan Chaco.
From the spring of 1961 to the end of 1962, several Mossad agents who had worked on the Eichmann team traveled to Europe and South America to penetrate Mengele’s family and Nazi sympathizers in the Odessa, a group that protected Third Reich fugitives. The Mengele team was headed by Zvi Aharoni, an Israeli agent I extensively interviewed. His unit adopted a variety of cover identities: One agent was a financial consultant, another a historian writing a book on the SS.
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Gerald Posner is former chief investigative reporter for The Daily Beast. He's the award-winning author of 10 investigative nonfiction bestsellers, on topics ranging from political assassinations, to Nazi war criminals, to 9/11, to terrorism. His latest book, Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth and Power—A Dispatch from the Beach, was published in October. He lives in Miami Beach with his wife, the author Trisha Posner.
cuffs-
First, I like the element of historical reporting in The Daily Beast...
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Second, when stuck between a question of security and civil rights I inevitably ask myself, "What Does Israel Do? (WDID)?
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I hope President Obama and Mort Zuckerman discuss matters involving both Israel and security. Financial matter too for that matter; Mr. Zuckerman is one of the few that called the severity of this economic burst well in advance.
"The Week" magazine, with Margaret Carlson as its Washington Editor, often offers the last two pages of the magazine to book excerpts. It was from this that I was lead to "Teacher Man" by Frank McCourt who recently passed. I recommend this as an addition to The Book Beast.
Back to the article... very illuminating.
bigwurzz
WDID? Inevitably the wrong thing considering Israel has been at the center of a majority of the West's international relations problems for the last half century.
SteveStephens
Don't kid yourself. If they would have had a shot at that motherfucker, they would have killed that piece of shit in a New York Minute.
BabySnooks
Don't kid yourself. Menegle spent over 30 years looking over his shoulder. Never knowing who might return him to face justice. Justice would not have been a trial and hanging. Justice was his ending up hiding from the world and ending up in a Sao Paolo slum with nothing but shame as his legacy.
It was a shame, it should be added, that three countries shared in allowing him to hide. Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. Better he would have had to move from country to country. Instead of being protected.
The reality is he may be dead but his evil is not. Hopefully that is one thing Mossad did not forget when it decided to forget Mengele.
jimors
IMHO, being hanged is what he feared most. Loosely, putting him in the category of soldiers, you are always aware of whats around you.
His main cowardly concern was that all he would be subjected to the type of torturous treatment he dispensed on the innocent. May he burn in hell.
GAMOLO
Actually, Posner's report is inaccurate. Scarce resources was the cover story put out to cover the Mossad's ass for not chasing after war criminals. The decision not to apprehend Dr. Mengele or any Nazi war criminal was made above the Mossad Director's paygrade level. The Prime Minister's office in the immediate years after Israel's founding in 1948 was concerned with securing & maintaining repariations from West Germany, which was a deemed a more important consideration. Hunting Nazis was not a priority in Germany and had no popular support. Israel needed the support of the United States which build it's post war European strategy vs. the Soviet Union on the bedrock of a strong West Germany with 50,000 American troops permanently stationed on West German soil. The United States didn't want to rock the boat with Germans. We assisted former Nazi scientists who were war criminals to come to the US and work on our missile & other military projects. We also recruited former SS to work for the CIA & West German security agencies vs. the Russians. Israel had to take American desires not to upset the Germans with "Nazi hunts", especially considering that most West German major business/military/government/professional people were former Nazis. As far as Germans were concerned, the war was like a heavyweight title fight, they lost, so now let's all get along with the new Champ, the Americans, and forget the past. Too many people proftted from the property stolen from the murdered Jews, and since they aren't around anymore, why upset people now, when we want to rebuild? The Vatican assisted Nazi SS in relocating to South America, but Israel dared not unduly upset the pro-German Pope Pius X12 because scores of Jewish children given to Catholic families for care during the war were effectly held hostage by the Church in exchange for essential Israeli silence on the Church's silence during the Holocaust. The Roman Catholic Church was also an ally in the West German Christian (Catholic mostly, as most Lutherns were in East Germany) & Italian Christian political parties after the war in combating the Communist political parties, as well as an ally in America's fight against "Godless Communism" and an important factor in supporting Republican & Democratic Administrations during the cold war and later in Vietnam. Israel needed the diplomatic support of South American countries in the UN to help against the Muslim/Arab/Third World voting bloc and this would be jeopardized by chasing Nazis in South America, who had assisted the various South American leaders with money and training their security forces and in return were provided protection. There were strong German communities in these countries and plenty of anti-Semitism so Israel would have no governmental or popular support cooperation in any attempt to apprehend Nazis. Thus, for geo-political reasons deemed of greater importance, Israel made no real effort to hunt or apprehend Nazis. Israel would just have to accept the fact that the murderers got away with their Holocaust. Hunting Nazis, if desired, was instead done by private individuals, such as Simon Weisenthal and others, with virtually no help from any government. Because Nazis had little to fear from any Government, virtually each used their own name for many years, and even when they did adopt false names, their identity was well known in the communities they lived in. Private Nazi hunters obtained their information by simply sending undercover investigators into the various German communtites who from local gossip obtained the true identity of the Nazis.
Israel was finally embarassed into grabbing Eichmann only after Wisenthal and others went public in 1959 with the information that he was living in Argentina and no one was doing anything about it. The aftermath was a diaster for Israel; the entire South American continent was furious at Israel's insult to their soverign dignity and local Jewish communities were put at risk. Even today, especially in Argentia, Boliva & Vencequla the Governments do virtually nothing to punish acts of violence against Jews and their property. Israel had to vow to these countries that it would never again conduct such an operation, in order to help safe guard Jewish communities there and have some voting support at the UN.
Eichmann thus was a special exception.....and of special importance, because he was the actual Head of the Jewish Department in the SS and was the organizer of the round ups & transports from Western & Eastern Europe to the death camps. His zeal in his mission, demonstrated with the annilation of the Jews of Hungary, in mid 19944, when the entire world, including the Germans, knew the war was lost, knew no bounds.
Dr. Mengele, on the other hand, was a camp doctor at KL Auschwitz-Birkenau.....not the "Head Doctor, but one of a group, whose primary function was to select some inmates for labor (over 90% of Jews arriving were immediately gassed) and to conduct medical experiments for the military. That was his official SS duty. The gruesome experiments on twins & others were not tasked by the military, but were sponsored by his patron, the civilian Wilheim Kasier Institute, to advance German genetic pseudo-science theories & goals. Dr. Mengele used his postings at transport arrival "selections" to select twins and others for these experiments, but he did not design, create or have anyone sent to Auschwitz. The death camp would have operated without him; it was established by Himmler before Dr. Mengele arrived there and was created to murder Jews in a manner less "personal" and inhumane for the "sensibilities" of Germans who otherwise had to get blood on their uniforms as a result of the mass shootings methods employed in the Baltic/Pale of Russia/Ukraine/Belorussia, etc. operations. Dr. Mengele was essentially an opportunist who requested the posting so he could conduct his insane medical experiments. This made him in the immediate post war Israeli eyes a much lower order of fish than a genuine policy maker. Death camp survivors in Israel wanted to forget the war and the psychic scars of all the family deaths and guilt many felt for surviving. Dr. Mengele's surviving "patients" were mostly Hungarian children (all orphans of course) who certainly wanted to forget the Camp experience and try to get emotionally whole in a new country and often with either new foster parents or with communal Kibutz "parents." There was no pressure from anyone to seek out Dr. Mengele nor genuine Israeli Government desire either.
daniel66
Great article! From other reading, I understand that the Israeli Nazi Hunters located Menegele right after they located Eichmann. The dcision was made to take Eichmann and come back for Mengele; however he fled Argentina for Brazil.
In hindsight, which is always 20-20, snatching both of them at the same time would have been ideal. Mengle probably finished out his life in constant fear of being caught by the Nazi Hunters and the death that would have followed shortly thereafter.
Nuld001
Gerald Posner's very interesting article is a denouement of sorts for his "Mengele The Complete Story" written with John Ware. If you haven't read this riveting book, you owe it to yourself to read it. "Mengele" should be required reading for high school and college courses on WWII and post WWII history on Nazism. How truly tragic that due to lack of funds or other more pressing events to deal with, Harel and the Mossad never captured "The Angel of Death" alive. I remember watching on TV that Mr. Posner was part of the team sent to South America to verify that Mengele had indeed died. So the author has written and experienced this story to the end. Fantastic Article!
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SCMax101
This is really inappropriate, comparing some Republican's belief that it is not the Government's place to interfere with the poor and the murder of millions and millions of people by the Nazis. I understand completely the point you are trying to make but it is not a fair comparison.
TAMPA85
Even though I'm not a Republican to compare them to the Nazis shows how dumb you are. Grow up and educate yourself about them before you go shooting your mouth off.
finderj
Offing the handicapped is more humane than the current state of the homeless in American?!?
Where the hell do you live?
finderj
Offing the handicapped is more humane that the state of the homeless in American?!?!?!
Where the hell do you live?
johnstafford
fascinating! i didn't know about the Mossad's role in killing german scientists working on egypt's missile program.
i wonder if that program foreshadows what Israel might do to stop iran's development of an even more threatening weapon?
oldpunk
Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil were not the only countries that took in Nazis after the war, America would not have landed on the moon for another 10 years if it was not for the Nazi rocket scientists it took in.
TAMPA85
Good point!
mcmchugh99
Too bad Menegle wasn't captured and hanged. What else is there to say about him? Other agencies that should have been looking for these people around the world weren't doing the job, either, and at times were even helping some of them, which is truly disgraceful.
dailyplanet
This "explanation" by General Amit is the biggest piece of BS. What... they didn't have enough money and manpower to catch one of the most heinous Nazis? There were other more pressing business for them to attend to and couldn't divert resources to apprehend the monster of Auschwitz?
The reality is that untold numbers of people all over the world, especially prominent wealthy Jews would have stood in line to raise money and manpower for such a cause. I'm sure General Amit couldn't have been so naive as to conclude he had no such channels available to him. The tragedy is that the world will never know the real reason Mengele wasn't made to pay for his crimes. Amit and the Mossad know the true story of this f-ck up, the details of which must be so damning, damaging and appalling it by needs must remain hidden.
ocschwar
There was more pressing business: stopping 5 Arab countries relying on Nazi military advisors from finishing the job Eichman began.
ocschwar
There were: preventing Egypt from picking up where Hitler left off.
Thank you.
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