Switzerland’s Federal Intelligence Service announced it will grant access to classified files on Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz SS doctor known as the “Angel of Death,” reversing years of refusals to historians and researchers seeking to examine the material.
The decision came after the intelligence service reassessed the file’s classification status. Access will be granted under conditions and restrictions to be defined, and the move will also trigger a broader review of the agency’s policy on accessing classified archival material held in the Swiss Federal Archives.
The dossier has long drawn historian interest because it may contain evidence about whether Mengele was present in Kloten, Switzerland, in March 1961—and critically, whether Swiss authorities knowingly allowed the internationally wanted Nazi fugitive to escape.
Mengele served as an SS physician at Auschwitz, where he murdered thousands of prisoners and conducted horrific medical experiments. Following Nazi Germany’s defeat, he fled to South America, where he died in 1979 without ever facing justice for his crimes.
For decades, Switzerland’s intelligence service denied access to the file, citing source protection, foreign intelligence concerns and privacy rights of Mengele’s descendants. Historian Gérard Wettstein challenged the refusal in court, ultimately forcing the reassessment.
The intelligence service now says the Mengele dossier falls under a 2001 government decision establishing a liberal access policy for archival material reviewed by the Bergier Commission, which investigated Switzerland’s wartime ties to Nazi Germany.
The file will be made available not only in Wettstein’s current appeal but in future cases under the same conditions.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
