Between the “present” of 1979 when the infamous Angel of Death was hiding out in South America and his death by drowning off the coast of São Paulo, a story of one of the most bizarre figures of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust comes to life. Josef Mengele:  winner of the Iron Cross, Nazi fanatic, Aryan scientist, husband, father, and mass murderer comes to life in a series of compelling flashbacks by those who knew him.   

SYNOPSIS:

In 1979 the most hunted man in the world, Josef Mengele, was living in exile at complete odds with his legend in the papers around the world and by those Nazi-hunters who most sought him. In his final exile in Brazil at 68 years old, depressed from the unhappy reunion with his 33-year-old lawyer son from Germany, he is ailing, alone, paranoid over the recent news stories from Europe about the infamous Angel of Death. Enticed to the beach by his two most loyal companions off the coast of São Paulo, Brazil, Wolfgang Gerhard and Wolfram Bossert open with a discussion of “Uncle” and his rapid decline. Mengele floats offshore recalling his earliest memory when, as boy of 6, he nearly drowned in a rain barrel. Then he suffers a stroke while swimming . . . The final scenes return to the opening. Mengele’s life ends with his earliest memory.

All the Auschwitz scenes are inserts just prior to the drowning, the first of which occurs just prior to his death by drowning. Mengele, 33, is obsessed by dreams of academic success, and has been encouraged by his mentor in Berlin to do anthropological studies. He is shown in various roles, all of which derive from the 1962 West Berlin indictment. He drives a child to the crematorium, he orders a kapo shot, he angrily confronts a colleague-nemesis, Dr. Werner Rhöde, in his barracks. At dawn he makes the life-or-death selections of inmates, always obsessed with seeking out more twins from the new arrivals for his experiments. The remaining Auschwitz flashbacks occur from a Berlin office in the early 1960s as three survivors detail their experiences with Josef Mengele for the indictment drawn up by the post-war German government. These scenes, also based on the record, include one of the longest inserts for Vera Kriegel, whose transfer to Mengele’s clinic reveals some of the most grotesque of Mengele’s crimes, such as a room with dozens of eyeballs tagged and dyed in fluorescent colors; at the termination of this scene, for example, she finds the doctor in his private hospital inducing births by standing on the stomachs of pregnant Gypsy women.

Auschwitz also opposes the humane Dr. Rhöde with the sadist Mengele. Mengele’s first wife Irene visits him in the camp in one of her scenes and finally comes to see her husband as the monster he is during a conflict between Rhöde and Mengele over one young woman, a “prostitute” for Nazi officers in the brothel, whom Rhöde has been attempting to protect.

Mengele’s life in hiding is depicted in scenes at the farm of Geza and Gitta Stammer, exiled Hungarians. Wolfram Bossert, acting for the powerful Mengele family back in Günzburg, engages with the Stammers for Mengele, using one of his aliases, to hide out. However, Mengele has seduced the wife and argues with the husband. Mengele’s comrades, including war hero Hans Rudel, attempt to comfort him in exile. A scene of drinking culminates in the rape of Gitta.

Vain, cruel, intellectually sophisticated, ever-complaining of his misery and suffering, querulous with friends, supported by a network of relatives in Germany, aloof toward Rolf from whom he demanded a father’s fealty–even while he steadfastly refused to acknowledge any guilt whatsoever for Auschwitz–Josef Mengele embodied an evil that is permanent and unchanging.