5/5 After the Angel of Death
  by Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas)
"The Search for Mengele"

After the Angel of Death

Amos Lassen

Of all the Nazis aside from Hitler, Josef Mengele was the most infamous. He was responsible for sending hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths as well as performed the worst medical experiments on adults and children. After the war was over, Mengele managed to escape justice for forty years.
First Run Features is releasing "The Search for Mengele", a documentary on the hunt for the notorious Nazi. Narrated by David Frost, the film traces Mengele's escape through Germany to Italy and then on to South America to Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil where he was finally died. The movie looks at Mengele's life as recalled by those that knew him and we hear how he lived during his final years as he remained undercover in a multi-racial society, something that he worked to eliminate in Germany. The film also raises the question that Mengele cannot be dismissed as a solitary monster because that would be a bit too convenient. The film questions whether Mengele alone could have been solely responsible for the deaths and it is possible that he was just the product of a "warped system of values". Is there a possibility that something like the reign of terror of the Third Reich could happen again? Most important is the question of why Mengele was never caught.
"The Search" was filmed in ten countries and features interviews and photographs and it looks at Mengele's life and his crimes as well as at those that aided him in eluding justice and we learn that if the agencies of the world really wanted to catch him he could have and would have been caught.
Perhaps the most interesting interview is with Rolf Mengele who discovered that his "Uncle Fritz" was actually his father.