The “new,” confident Mengele had also become a man of property, as owner of a 
7000 apartment in a high-rise building in the center of Sao Paulo. He acquired it as partial settlement for his share of the farm sale at Serra Negra. For security, the deed was registered in the name of the Stammers’ son, Miki. But the rent went to Mengele.
Although he led a frugal life at the Stammers’ farmhouse in Caieiras, Mengele never had a surplus of cash. His personal writings often reflect his money concerns. Occasionally he borrowed money from either the Stammers or the Bosserts to tide him through difficult periods. “I’m running out of money, but Mu [Bossert] loaned me 400 [currency not mentioned] on our last Wednesday meeting” is typical of many diary entries. On other occasions when his cash completely dried up, Hans Sedlmeier flew in from Günz-burg with bundles of dollars. His air fares were paid by the family firm, the cost disguised in the form of miscellaneous expenses. The cash payments, however, came straight from the pocket of Mengele’s nephew, Karl Heinz. But Mengele was hopeful that his new apartment investment would provide him with a steady and plentiful income. When he later rented it for 225 a month, he noted, “With that amount I shall try to make my living, and believe me, it’s not so easy.”
As he tried to develop some financial independence, a further boost to Mengele’s confidence came in 1971 when he inherited a priceless Brazilian identity card. It belonged to Wolfgang Gerhard, the man who had helped him through every major crisis, from his darkest days after the Eichmann kidnapping to his explosive rows with Gitta and Geza Stammer. The opportunity to assume Gerhard’s identity arose when he decided to return to Austria to find his “fortune” there.
With the help of Wolfram Bossert, a competent amateur photographer, Mengele accomplished a tolerable forgery. Bossert took dozens of passport-size photos of Mengele and then selected the one that best fit Gerhard’s description. The laminated identity card was spliced open, pictures of the moustachioed Mengele, his hair neatly combed, were stuck over the photograph of his Nazi friend, and the card was relaminated. All the other details remained Gerhard’s, including his thumb print and his date of birth, which transformed Mengele, then sixty, into a very old-looking forty-six-year-old, the age listed on the card. Although Mengele was terrified of having to produce the card, it reassured him that in a tight spot he at least had a first line of defense.
Mengele soon found that Gerhard’s parting gift would cost him dearly. After he went back to Austria, Gerhard’s wife, Ruth, developed terminal cancer. And then his son, Adolf, was also found to be suffering from cancer. With his wife dying and his son fighting for his life, it was now Gerhard who needed help—to pay the enormous medical bills. Mengele could hardly refuse. He owed Gerhard his liberty, and probably his life.
In July 1972, Mengele himself fell ill. Over the years he had lived in such a state of tension and anxiety that he had developed a nervous habit of biting the end of his walrus moustache. Eventually he swallowed so much hair that it developed into a ball that blocked his intestines. His condition became so painful and dangerous that he took the risk of admitting himself to a hospital in Sao Paulo. For the first time his new identity card was put to the test, and it nearly failed. A puzzled doctor treating Mengele told Bossert that his patient seemed physically very old for a forty-seven-year-old man. Bossert told the doctor that the date of birth was incorrectly entered on the identity card, and that the Brazilian government had promised to correct it with a new card. The doctor accepted the barely credible explanation. If the doctor had taken a slightly greater interest in the physical discrepancy he noticed, the Mengele case might have ended seven years before his death. Instead, Mengele was treated, paid the bill in cash, and was released, under the name of Wolfgang Gerhard. Mengele later wrote that his biggest problem was that he had constantly to fight the temptation to discuss his ailment with “my fellow peers,” lest this betray his extensive medical knowledge and arouse the suspicion that the patient was himself a doctor.
This early period of the 1970s, when Mengele integrated himself into modern-day life, also marked the start of a period of prolific correspondence with his family, particularly his son, Rolf, and his childhood friend Hans Sedlmeier. Usually several pages long, these letters laid bare Mengele’s emotions. As private correspondence they were stripped of the literary excesses that often marked his personal diary and autobiography, for Mengele never intended his letters, unlike his other writings, to be read by outsiders.* That is why they are probably a more accurate guide to his real nature. They portray an embittered Nazi of failing health, dissatisfied with almost everything, an unrepentant, tiresome, and inhumane old man, yet one who is tortured by the human anguish of being separated from his family.
All the individuals mentioned in Mengele’s letters were given coded names, though a child could have broken the code. “Ro” was Rolf; “Kh,” his devoted nephew, Karl Heinz; “Ma,” Martha, his loyal second wife, and so on. The letters were sent primarily to Sedlmeier by way of a post office box in Switzerland and Sedlmeier distributed them to the family. Sometimes letters were sent to a trusted family acquaintance and Mengele friend from childhood, Dr. Hermann Schweigert, in Augsburg, Germany. Schweigert played only a passive role, merely passing the letters on to Sedlmeier. For West Germany and its judiciary, the regular and unscrutinized transmission of these letters has redounded to its shame. Over the course of two decades more than two hundred letters were exchanged. The authorities have pleaded that mail intercepts were not possible because of the Federal Republic’s strict criteria for securing a warrant.
Letters sent from the family to Mengele were again channeled through Sedlmeier, who mailed them to a post office box in the Bosserts’ name. Each letter meticulously confirmed the receipt of the last; Wolfram Bossert passed the original on to Mengele and kept a copy for himself. A typical dispatch from Sedlmeier in his role as courier read:
Your letter dated 8.7.77 [July 8, 1977] I received only two days ago—the recipient was probably away. [My short letter of 18.7 which I had sent, included the enclosure from Ro, which you had long been expecting.] The two letters to Ma and Kh were passed on, including a copy of the letter mentioned at the beginning for Kh.1
The slightest hitch or mistake provoked anger and anxiety, as revealed by this letter from Mengele to Sedlmeier asking him to reprimand Rolf and his second wife, Almuth:
Mail from Ma and Kh arrived on 14.12.77 [December 14, 1977] but a parcel containing letters from Ro and Aim was only received on 28.12. They mixed up the house numbers and wrote 10 instead of 7! [7 Missouri Street was the Bosserts’ home.] This could be dangerous! Please tell them to adhere to the exact postal details.2
According to another letter to Sedlmeier, Mengele’s worst fears were realized when a letter was actually lost in the mail:
I’m amazed that you didn’t think one of my letters could have “gone astray” in some way. One can easily conjure up a whole series of possible ways my letter of 23.6 could have become lost. It was a bulky letter with enclosures to Ma, Kh, and Ro apart from the letter to you. I personally handed over the 15 typewritten pages and watched how the girl at the post office ran it through the franking machine. That doesn’t exclude the fact that she could have set the machine at O, stolen the money (17 dollars after all), and destroyed the letter. This or the action of an empty-headed letter robber would be the most harmless explanation of the loss of the letter. It’s neither here nor there.
What would be more upsetting is if the contents of the enclosures to Kh and Ro fell into the wrong hands. It mustn’t be ruled out that the censor has been at work here. This would mean delay and ensuing consequences. Mu [Bossert] had already made Xeroxes of my copies so I can send these if you really don’t receive my letter of 23.6 and you can tell me direct that there are no suspicious circumstances. We would have to draw the logical conclusion if the latter happened, and find other ways.3
Mengele’s private correspondence highlighted how much closer he was to Karl Heinz than to his own son, Rolf; he had corresponded regularly with Karl Heinz and Martha since they left South America in 1961. He tried to compensate for this by making overtures to Rolf, with whom he had no relationship worth speaking of. Rolf was brought up by his mother, Irene, and stepfather, Alfons Hackenjos, of whom he was very fond. Since I960, when at the age of sixteen, he was told his real father’s identity, Rolfs confusion of loyalties and doubts had become a heavy burden to bear. He recalls:
My father had always been Josef Mengele, the war hero who died on the eastern front. He was the educated man, versed in Greek and Latin. Now he was the doctor of Auschwitz. It had a very strong impact on me. It was not so good to be the son of Josef Mengele.4
Always there was the question from strangers: “Rolf Mengele? Not the son of the Josef Mengele?” Awkwardly, Rolf would make light of his inheritance by saying, “Oh, yes, and I’m also Adolf Eichmann’s nephew.”
Mengele attempted to draw closer to Rolf by regularly writing letters to him. But Rolf was unmoved, knowing that his father held him in lower esteem than his cousin, Karl Heinz. As early as Christmas I960, Mengele had written in his diary that a letter he received from Karl Heinz was “good, but the one from Rolf was too factual.” The knowledge that his own father preferred Karl Heinz, who had shared four years of his father’s life, created a tension and rivalry between the cousins. For Rolf it seemed that his father wanted him to model himself on Karl Heinz. Rolf rebelled by opposing his father and family on almost every issue. He went out of his way to prove to others that he did not share his father’s views:
I had nothing in common with my father’s views at all. On the contrary, my opinions were diametrically opposed. I didn’t even bother to listen to him or think of his ideas. I simply rejected everything that he presented. My personal attitude to national and international politics was never in doubt. My liberal political views, partly even “to the left,” were known. As a result of my many critical remarks, sometimes I was even suspected of being a communist.
When Mengele tried to open a dialogue with his grown-up son in the early 1970s, his barely repressed criticism of Rolf soon came to the surface. In almost every letter Mengele extended fatherly affection to his son in one sentence, only to take it back with hurtful chiding in the next. He treated Rolf in a cold and distant manner, much as his own father had treated him. A letter congratulating Rolf on his first marriage is a good example:
From the photographs one can deduce that you are happy. And why shouldn’t such a good-looking young man and his pretty and lovable wife not be that. I think I have already shown too much fatherly pride in my newly acquired daughter. Unfortunately I hardly know her, or rather I only know her as much as the few photographs reveal. But do I know the son better? . . . The description accompanying the photos—you really could have tried a little harder. I myself would have realized that these were your friends and not your enemies that accompany you to the registry office!5
Mengele’s concern for his son’s happiness always took second place to detailed accounts of his own dire predicament. He cynically manipulated Rolfs feelings of guilt about having ignored him for so many years in order to make him feel sorry for his plight:
I suppose you know each other and your decision was a good and mature one. Now this is your responsibility: to have a proper marriage even if it was without a veil, top hat and organ music. One can’t recommend more, especially seeing that I am as unsuited to being a marriage counselor as a bald hairdresser is to selling hair health products. One more little contribution I do nevertheless want to make to your new start: I will forget the pain and bitterness and not being informed of anything for years.6
In the same letter, Mengele said that he was hurt to have discovered from Sedlmeier that his son was getting married, rather than hearing it directly from Rolf. But, he said, he was relieved to hear that Rolf had “initiated Irmi into our circumstances. I am not only pleased about the fact, I see it as your duty. As your wife she has a right to be fully informed about the family circumstances.” Mengele could not, however, resist an anthropological inquisition about his future daughter-in-law, even on the basis of one photograph:
From the little photograph I could deduce some “anthropological” facts and make some psychological deductions. She can be classified as one of those pretty, dark, gentle, lovable, and surely good-tempered and hardworking young ladies from your hometown.7
As a wedding present, Mengele pledged his center-city apartment. He said it had a cash value of about 7000, though it was not a gift he could part with at the time, since “I require the rental income for my sustenance.” Rolf and his wife would own it, he quipped, “only after my situation has fundamentally changed.”
Mengele then broached a subject on which he berated Rolf time and again. He was obsessed with the idea that his son should achieve a doctorate in law. But Mengele was worried that he might not be capable of this:
In September and December you passed your attorney’s exams and you received the mark “satisfactory.” I am very pleased with that, and I am very proud of you, as a father who in his lifetime has sat for several exams. The title means nothing much to me because I am not familiar with this system of school marks and I don’t have anything to compare it with. Nevertheless, permit me to make a comparison with Ha, jr. [Sedlmeier’s son], who was in the top quarter and still did not do well enough by 10 percent to obtain his doctorate [in Munich]. Your exam results, upon examination, obviously won’t stand in the way of completing your doctorate. Is there a regional difference? Now all that is missing is that last academic hurdle, and I hope that in a short while I will hear from you that it has been mastered.
Another theme that Mengele raised in this letter and in many of his later dispatches was the state of his health. In 1972 he disclosed that he was suffering from spondylarthrocace, a painful condition in which the discs in the lower spine degenerate, as well as an enlarged prostate gland. (The intestinal blockage mentioned earlier was removed in the same year.)
To the irritation of everyone, including his new friends the Bosserts, Mengele never stopped complaining about his ailments. Wolfram Bossert told Sedlmeier:
He can really make one furious. . . . For weeks on end, all he talks about is his illness, one hundred times in all its detail. And he’s always accusing everyone: “Nobody cares about me. Now it’s too late. My health never was what it seemed.”
Wallowing in self-pity and dramatic threats, Mengele complained that he was too poor to pay for a doctor: “If money is a problem, and my family won’t pay the doctor, then I have no option but to finish myself off.”8 Bossert said that when Mengele finally got to see a doctor, he always ended up questioning his competence. But all of Mengele’s health concerns paled into insignificance when Rolf first tentatively suggested that he might travel secretly to Brazil to see his father.
For some time, Rolf had been openly skeptical of his father’s protestations that he was innocent of any crimes at Auschwitz. There was a clear conflict between what was alleged in the press and the scorn with which those charges were greeted by the rest of the Mengele clan in Günzburg. As the son of the criminal portrayed in the newspapers, it was a conflict that Rolf knew he would have to resolve for himself. He decided to confront his biological father in the flesh. From the outset, Mengele reacted eagerly to the idea of a visit. But he soon sensed that its real purpose was more than just a father-and-son reunion:
You wish to have a dialogue with me—the game: question and answer. . . . Of course a discussion is always the best way of exchanging ideas, even though during discussions one tends to defend certain positions for reasons of prestige, because during such exchanges one gets bogged down in one theme. When one has a discussion by letter, this doesn’t tend to happen, which is an advantage. I’m sure I don’t have to stress how much a meeting between us would mean to me. For want of a better way, I have always tried to be in close contact with you by writing to you. If this would now be possible, nobody would be happier than me. It is quite natural and understandable that you want to get to know me through personal contact and that you want to find out for yourself, independently from all that you have heard and read, what I am like. I after all feel the same about you.
Mengele invited Rolf to come with an open mind, “free of prejudices, biased wishful thinking, uncritical simplification, cheap resentment and patronizing arrogance.” Yet he made it clear that his own mind was closed on the subject:
Without sufficient “maturity,” greatness, and a sense of “proportion,” one should leave certain historical events as they are. . . . Your fears show me how misinformed you are about me, and that is why I am almost not upset about the way you formulate things!9
It soon emerged that Karl Heinz and Sedlmeier were the moving forces behind the idea of a meeting. According to Mengele, Karl Heinz believed that Rolf had “not shown enough interest in my problems.” Mengele hoped that the lifelong rift between the cousins—both of whom he regarded as sons—would heal as a result of their discussions about a tête à tête:
Nothing would please me more than to hope that my “sons”* would find brotherly common interest. Obviously in your natural state you are as different from each other as I was from my brother [Karl Jr.], but surely there is enough mutuality, which only needs to be unearthed. The closed nature of Kh might mean this lies a little deeper. His willingness to cultivate closer relations with you can surely be taken for granted. Maybe as you both become more mature, the concern about me will bring you closer together, unlike the years when you were growing up.10
For all the issues dividing father and son, when Mengele signed off he was pathetically grateful that Rolf had even bothered to write. “Your heartfelt words at the end of your extraordinary long letter have done my lonely heart a lot of good,” he wrote. “I would like to thank you for your nice letter and hope to get one soon again, which I will read, even if it has to be read by the light of a paraffin lamp. Till then, I and my friends greet you and I give you a fatherly hug and kisses.”
Several subsequent letters were taken up with Mengele’s views on the evils of communism, the virtues of the free market economy—“the free play of forces has the same function as it has in all manifestations of life on our planet”—and snipes at the Stammers, with whom relations continued to deteriorate because of Mengele’s interference in their affairs. Even Mengele’s younger brother Alois had a taste of just how intrusive he could be, receiving lengthy instructions on running the Günzburg firm. Mengele advised Alois on how to rear his own children, and he presented Alois with a list of Günzburg families that were “so disreputable” that Alois should not allow his children to marry into them. Alois became so irritated that he did not send greetings to Mengele on his sixtieth birthday. Mengele complained to Sedlmeier that it was “one of the saddest days of my life that I have to occupy myself at all with my brother’s hostilities.”11
In February 1974, Alois died. Despite their rift, Mengele paid tribute to Alois’s assistance over the years: “We owe him honest thanks for ‘quite some things,’ ” he wrote. In the same letter Mengele scathingly took Rolf to task for his youthful idealism of the simple life: “You say you have an appreciation for the simple life, which I do know, and you condemn all those Mercedes Benz drivers and swimming-pool owners. You only talk the simple life, but I live it. I hope you are prepared for the consequences of such recommendations. If not, it is only pure jealousy, which I consider human and understandable but unproductive and the product of a second-rate mind.”12
It was Mengele’s second “son,” Karl Heinz, who continued to be the apple of his eye. It was rare that a letter to Rolf did not mention his cousin’s name and always in the most praiseworthy terms. Directly after Alois’s death, Karl Heinz took over the family firm, a job which had “rapidly matured him,” wrote Mengele. Again, he urged Rolf to draw closer to his cousin. “In your letter I was looking in vain for a few personal words about him and his visit on your birthday.”13
Mengele constantly harangued Rolf by comparing his failures with Karl Heinz’s successes and by taunting him for his lack of academic ambition. Mengele somehow always managed to make Rolf feel he was second best. When Mengele received news that his son’s first marriage had broken up after only a year, it was Rolfs decision not to pursue a doctorate that preoccupied Mengele. He was convinced Rolf’s laziness was the root of the problem, and he castigated Rolf for letting him down on the only thing “I asked of you in my whole life.” He further chided Rolf:
I doubt that being an attorney would satisfy me. If I compare it to being a medical doctor or any kind of PhD, then I must draw a negative conclusion.14
In this same letter Mengele had only harsh words for Rolf on the failure of his marriage:
When it finally finished it did not of course surprise me. The speed with which you ruined your marriage can only be considered in a favorable light in that the liquidation of a marriage without children is much less complicated than one with children. But at the same time one gets the impression of a vicious circle because one could imagine, at least, that the split was encouraged by the fact that you have no children. . . . (The fact that it took longer for me to find out my daughter-in-law’s name than the marriage lasted is a long-standing joke in our family.). . . . I do personally lose a mail partner with Irmi, who connected me indirectly with you. It wasn’t so much, but one who has so little suffers any loss.15
Their relationship worsened when Rolf responded by telling his father that he would be unable to support him financially. Mengele retorted: “I can relieve you of your worries about myself. Let us keep things as they are. In any case I haven’t been a financial burden to you up to now. I am sure however you will manage one or two letters a year.”16 Although Rolf had by now qualified as a lawyer, Mengele continued to remind his son that his greatest wish was for him to become a doctor of law. Rolf had just lost his job as a lawyer with a construction company, which had gone bankrupt. Mengele advised:
I would like to express—apart from any regret—the suggestion that, when looking for a new engagement, you should look for one with a more pronounced use as a lawyer—considering that you have already thrown yourself into the arms of jurisprudentia. I suppose this would be very appropriate with regard to becoming more proficient on the subject, whereby I am also thinking about doing your doctorate! Between you and me, this [doctorate] is also part of the family prestige.
Meanwhile, Rolf concentrated on setting the agenda for their meeting. He criticized his father for his racist views. At first Mengele said he felt compelled to respond to what he called Rolf’s “didactic explanations about the lack of racial differences among the human species. I had worked out a long exposé on the subject for you.” But Mengele changed his mind because, he said, “It seems to me rather silly that I of all people should have to enlighten my son about something the Jews have known for 4000 years.”
But in early 1974 the plans for the visit were interrupted by a more pressing problem. Relations between Mengele and the Stammers had finally and irretrievably broken down. What flicker of attraction was left between Mengele and Gitta Stammer had finally died. Mengele had so intruded into their lives that Gitta and her husband Geza were spending more and more time apart. Geza was camping in the Rosario hotel in São Paulo’s red-light district, vowing not to return until Mengele had gone. “The situation,” Bossert warned Hans Sedlmeier, “is explosive.” Gitta said, “We decided we couldn’t stand the situation any longer. I told Peter ‘It’s all over, it’s all over.’ ”17 An eleventh-hour, peacemaking attempt by Sedlmeier, who hurriedly flew in from Günzburg, failed completely. He arrived with 5,000 for Mengele that was also enticingly waved before the Stammers. But three days of efforts by Sedlmeier were all to no avail. With Wolfgang Gerhard back in Europe, all avenues had been exhausted.
When Bossert realized that the Stammers and Mengele were about to split up, he attempted to place Mengele in a new home with a new protector. His choice was Erich Lissmann, the owner of the textile factory where Wolfgang Gerhard had worked when he lived in Brazil. Lissmann had emigrated from Germany after the war, had been a good friend of Gerhard’s, but knew Mengele only as “Peter.” Bossert went to Lissmann and told him of “Peter’s” true identity. For the next two weeks, Lissmann literally trembled with fear. He became acutely paranoid, thinking that cars and people were following him around São Paulo. One dawn at 4:00 a.m. he knocked on the door of the Bossert home and pleaded to be allowed to sleep in the closet of their bedroom, as he was sure he was being followed. Bossert discarded the possibility of placing Mengele with Lissmann, and Lissmann, out of sheer fright, never told anyone of “Peter’s” true identity. Even today he denies he knew “Peter” was Mengele.
As the Stammer/Mengele relationship fell apart, Rolf offered to intervene. But his father told him not to bother:
I acknowledge your good intentions of wanting to help me in this way but you must realize that it is not possible like that. The information you receive about my situation is not accurate enough for you to make a proper judgment. The facts are these: my alleged attempts to influence are strictly within the limits of what is “suitable to my station” and necessary for life; my behavior has remained unchanged for all these many years; and I also have identified with the family’s lot in every respect. For logical reasons alone one can be convinced of my tireless efforts to keep the domestic atmosphere as pleasant as possible. It is not always possible. The fault is not just mine!18
The Stammers decided to make the final break with Mengele by selling their Caieiras farm and moving to São Paulo—they did not take Mengele with them. In November 1974, the Stammers sold their house at Caieiras to Laerte de Freitas, a Brazilian millionaire, and bought a large 10,000-square-foot villa on the outskirts of São Paulo. They moved to their new home in December, and Mengele stayed at Caieiras until February 1975. He felt the Stammers had deserted him, and he bitterly complained and moped in self-pity. Despite the extent of the problems between them, Mengele, until the final breakup, thought that he and the Stammers had decided to buy one large house and live together once again. “But they tailed off on their own. That is their malicious cunning,” he wrote in his diary. “Again it is not so much to be alone but to be left in the lurch that hurts so much.”
Mengele grew anxious about where he would live. “Now it is naturally much more difficult for me to find suitable housing,” he wrote in his diary. He did not want to move into his center-city apartment because he needed the monthly income from its tenant. He did not ask the Bosserts if he could move in with them because they and their two children lived in a small two-bedroom house that had no room for another boarder. Moreover, it is doubtful the Bosserts would have agreed to let Mengele move in. They had witnessed firsthand the destruction of the Stammer household by the authoritarian and domineering Mengele. They realized that he would use them. Wolfram Bossert said, “We weren’t his only true and bosom friends. We knew that he had a selfish personality and he used us as an essential tool. Although there was a certain human bond on his part, there was not real fondness.” The Bosserts differed from the fanatically dedicated Gerhard. Wolfram Bossert recalls:
We didn’t indulge him [Mengele] in all his wishes and moods, because we had our own life. That was the difference between us and Gerhard. Gerhard placed Mengele’s fate above that of his family. He would leave his family, even if they didn’t have anything to eat, he didn’t care. He would go away for days to do something for Mengele if he thought that was necessary. We always said, “Our family comes first, and then comes Mengele.” That was the difference, you see.19
Yet before the end of January 1975, Mengele’s housing worries were solved. The Stammers, who had given a Christmas promise to help him, used his 25,000 share of the Caieiras sale proceeds to buy a small bungalow, which they then decided to rent back to him. It was little more than a shack, a yellow stucco bungalow with one gloomy bedroom, an antiquated bathroom, and a tiny kitchen. It was in one of the poorer parts of town, at 5555 Alvarenga Road in the Eldorado suburb of São Paulo, but it was only a few miles from the Bosserts, the only people he could depend upon for regular visits and support.
The deed of the house was registered in the name of one of the Stammers’ sons, Miki. To the electric company, the new elderly and solitary inhabitant was “Peter Stammer”; to the legal authorities he was “Wolfgang Gerhard”; and to his neighbors and house employees, he became known as “Mr. Pedro.”
For the first time since becoming a fugitive, Josef Mengele was living completely alone. He was now deeply unhappy. His diary entry for April 7, 1975, shows the depth of his depression: “It has a wearing effect on me, to be left so very much isolated and excluded and all alone.”
* Although Mengele’s letters to his family began in the early 1950s, the family has saved only those letters from 1973 on. The earlier letters were handwritten, and the family feared that if they were discovered by the authorities, the writing could be identified as Mengele’s. The letters from 1973 on are typed. (The typewriter found in Mengele’s home by Brazilian police in 1985 matched the script in the letters sent to the family during the 1970s.) Mengele signed the letters with the code-name “Dein.” According to Rolf, once Mengele began typing his letters to the family, he sent many more than he had in the previous fifteen years.
* Mengele often referred to Karl Heinz as a son because he was his stepfather in Argentina, and, in theory at least, continued to be since he and Karl Heinz’s mother, Martha, were never divorced.