Did Mengele continue his perverted work in Brazil?

The Angel of Death

If someone ever deserved the sobriquet "Angel of Death" it was Joseph Mengele. As a doctor at Birkenau from 1943 until his flight in the face of the Red Army in January 1945, he conducted appalling experiments (although what the evil bastard did could hardly be called scientific), mainly on twins but also on others including the dwarf Ovitz family. He once attempted to create conjoined twins from two Roma children. Essentially he represented a clinically callous evil. Click here for more details of his ghastly deeds.

Mengele's subjects rarely if ever had the benefit of anaesthetic

After the war Mengele escaped capture and justice (although death would have been far too good for him) or possibly the fate meted out to amoral scum like Werner von Braun or the utterly evil Japanese Unit 731 - to be taken in to the service of the USA or the other allies, He lived the rest of his life in South America dying from a stroke while out swimming in 1979. It is believed that the sharks refused to touch his body.

According to an article in the Telegraph last week a historian claims believes that Mengele's ghastly experiments may have borne fruit: for years scientists have failed to discover why as many as one in five pregnancies in a small Brazilian town have resulted in twins – most of them blond haired and blue eyed.

The twins of Candido Godoi

But residents of Candido Godoi now claim that Mengele made repeated visits there in the early 1960s, posing at first as a vet but then offering medical treatment to the women of the town.

In a new book, Mengele: the Angel of Death in South America, the Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa, a specialist in the post-war Nazi flight to South America, has painstakingly pieced together the Nazi doctor's mysterious later years. After speaking to the townspeople of Candido Godoi, he is convinced that Mengele continued his genetic experiments with twins. After working with cattle farmers in Argentina to increase their stock, Mengele fled the country after fellow Nazi, Adolf Eichmann, was kidnapped by Israeli agents. He allegedly found refuge in the German enclave of Colonias Unidas, Paraguay, and from there, in 1963, began to make regular trips to another predominantly German community just over the border in Brazil – the farming community of Candido Godoi. And, Mr Camaras claims, it was here that soon after the birthrate of twins began to spiral.

"I think Candido Godoi may have been Mengele's laboratory, where he finally managed to fulfil his dreams of creating a master race of blond haired, blue eyed Aryans," he said. "There is testimony that he attended women, followed their pregnancies, treated them with new types of drugs and preparations, that he talked of artificial insemination in human beings, and that he continued working with animals, proclaiming that he was capable of getting cows to produce male twins."

Some of Mengele's victims

The urbane German who arrived in Candido Godoi was remembered with fondness by many of the townspeople. “He told us he was a vet," said Aloisi Finkler, a local farmer. "He asked about illnesses we had among our animals, and told us not to worry, he could cure them. He appeared a cultured and dignified man." Another farmer, Leonardo Boufler, said: "He went from farm to farm checking the animals. He checked them for TB, and injected those that were infected. He said he could carry out artificial insemination of cows and humans, which we thought impossible as in those days it was unheard of."

A former mayor and town doctor, Anencia Flores da Silva, set out to try to solve the town's mystery. He interviewed hundreds of people, and discovered one character who crept on cropping up: an itinerant medic calling himself Rudolph Weiss. Dr da Silva said: "In the testimonies we collected we came across women who were treated by him, he appeared to be some sort of rural medic who went from house to house. He attended women who had varicose veins and gave them a potion which he carried in a bottle, or tablets which he brought with him. Sometimes he carried out dental work, and everyone remembers he used to take blood."
The people of Candido Godoi now largely accept that a Nazi war criminal was an inadvertent guest of theirs for several years in the early 1960s. The town's official crest shows two identical profiles and a road sign welcomes visitors to a "Farming Community and Land of the Twins". There is also a museum, the House of the Twins.

"Nobody knows for sure exactly what date Mengele arrived in Candido Godoi, but the first twins were born in 1963, the year in which we first hear reports of his presence," he said.



Again I have no idea whether this is all a load of nonsense but it is intriguing. It is the greatest tragedy that Mengele did not answer for his crimes. Having said that when I think of his sort I really hope there is a hellish afterlife, despite being a very lazy atheist. I am sure eternity would be painful for him....

Eva Kor, a victim of Mengele's experiments who has found it in her heart to forgive. More on her in a later post.