Switzerland’s Federal Intelligence Service said it will allow access to archival files on Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz SS doctor known as the “Angel of Death,” after years of rejecting historians’ requests to view the material.
The intelligence service said access to the dossier will be granted under conditions and restrictions to be defined later. It said the decision followed a reassessment of the file’s status and would also prompt a broader review of its policy on access to classified archival material.
The file, held in the Swiss Federal Archives, has drawn interest because it may contain information about whether Mengele was in Kloten, Switzerland, in March 1961 and, if so, how Swiss authorities allowed the internationally wanted Nazi war criminal to escape.
Mengele murdered thousands of people as an SS doctor at Auschwitz and carried out horrific medical experiments on prisoners. After Nazi Germany’s defeat, he fled to South America, where he died in 1979 without ever being brought to justice.
For years, Switzerland’s intelligence service refused access to the file, citing source protection, foreign intelligence material and the privacy interests of Mengele’s descendants. Historian Gérard Wettstein challenged the refusal in court.
The intelligence service now says the dossier falls under a 2001 government decision calling for a generally liberal access policy for archival material reviewed by the Bergier Commission, which investigated Switzerland’s ties to Nazi Germany during World War II.
The service said the Mengele file will be made available not only in the current appeal process, but also in future cases under the same conditions.