Searches Hunting the "Angel of Death"

By Marguerite Johnson.

He performed gruesome medical experiments on Nazi victims at the Auschwitz- Birkenau concentration camp in Poland during World War II--and then he is said to have returned to his hometown of Gunzburg in Bavaria. He is said to have been arrested and released by U.S. counterintelligence agents in Vienna in 1947--and then to have made his way to a wealthy suburb of Buenos Aires. He is said to have narrowly eluded Israeli agents who kidnaped fellow Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires--and then taken up residence in neighboring Paraguay, where he is rumored to be living today. Now 74, Dr. Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death," has become not only a symbol of evil but the world's most hunted and elusive war criminal. He also carries the largest bounty ever placed on a human being: $3.4 million.

The reward money grew to that sum last week when the government of Israel and the World Zionist Organization offered $1 million to anyone not working in an official capacity who "causes Nazi Criminal Josef Mengele to be brought to trial in Israel for the terrible crimes and atrocities he perpetrated against ( the Jewish people and humanity." Among the previous rewards offered are $320,000 by the West German government, $1 million by the conservative U.S. daily the Washington Times, owned by the Unification Church, and $1 million by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

The pursuit of Mengele also intensified last week when U.S., West German and Israeli officials met in Frankfurt to coordinate their efforts to find him. West Germany and Israel have long-standing warrants out for his arrest. Last February the U.S. Justice Department opened its own investigation.

The son of a well-to-do family, Mengele studied medicine in Frankfurt, specializing in genetics. During the war, he was sent to do research at Auschwitz. His crimes there were prominently mentioned at the 1945-46 International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg and, more recently, at a hearing in Jerusalem when his victims gave awful witness to his experiments, particularly on twins. They included trying to turn children's eyes blue by injecting dye, exchanging blood between twins and exposing victims to severe radiation.

After disappearing from Germany in 1949, Mengele is believed to have gone through Italy to Argentina, where he took up residence in Buenos Aires and began to represent the family firm, Karl Mengele & Sons, a manufacturer of agricultural equipment (the firm is still run by Mengele's family in Gunzburg). Around this time, he is said to have met Alfredo Stroessner, the grandson of a Bavarian cavalry officer, who seized power in Paraguay in 1954. When a Frankfurt court issued an order for Mengele's arrest in 1959, he fled to Paraguay to avoid extradition.

In 1960, Hans Sedlmeier, a former manager for the family firm, was sent by Mengele's brother to Asuncion, Paraguay. Sedlmeier brought back a statement in which Mengele claimed that he had never "personally killed, injured or physically harmed" anyone or "selected any Jew for the gas chambers."

In recent years the trail has grown thinner. He may have left Paraguay; he may be dead. But his pursuers say the suspicion is strong that the many close- knit and remote German communities in the country would provide the aging doctor with his best protection. Stroessner denies any knowledge of Mengele's whereabouts, but in a rigid dictatorship such as his it seems unlikely that Mengele could be a resident without his knowledge. When Stroessner arrives in West Germany for a state visit in early July, German authorities intend to / press the Mengele issue once again.

With reporting by Marlin Levin/Jerusalem and Gavin Scott/Buenos Aires, with other bureaus