Review:: Mengele: Unmasking the "Angel of Death" by David G. Marwell

Mengele: Unmasking the "Angel of Death" by David G. Marwell
(released 1/28/20 from W. W. Norton)

**I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review**

January 27, 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a place where Josef Mengele determined the fate of countless innocents and selected thousands more for his “scientific” pursuits. In “Mengele: Unmasking the ‘Angel of Death’” (released today) former chief of investigative research at the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), David G. Marwell chronicles Mengele’s life and career, from his “university studies, which led to two PhDs and a promising career as a scientist; his wartime service, in combat and at Auschwitz, and his postwar refuge in Germany and South America.”

In 1985, Marwell was assigned to the international investigation to locate the infamous Nazi doctor and bring him before a court of law. Name changes, Red Cross passports, document trails, letter interceptions, spy missions, handwriting analysis, and details such as ink comparisons (using the standard ink library of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms—who knew?!) were all employed to trace Mengele’s route of escape. Overwhelming forensic evidence supported the fact that the bones which were eventually found in a cemetery in Sao Paulo, Brazil did, in fact, belong to Josef Mengele, but that did not convince those who most wanted to see him dead and/or brought to justice.

On October 1, 1992, OSI’s full report was forwarded to assistant attorney general for the criminal division and future FBI director Robert S. Mueller III. One week later Mueller forwarded the report to his boss, Attorney General William Barr, formally ending the United States’ eight-year investigation.


Goodreads Summary:
A gripping account of the infamous Nazi doctor, from a former Justice Department official tasked with uncovering his fate.

One of the most notorious war criminals of all time, Dr. Josef Mengele has come to symbolize both the evil of the Nazi regime and the failure of justice in the postwar world. Drawing on new scholarship and sources, historian David G. Marwell examines Mengele’s life and career, chronicling his university studies, which led to two PhDs and a promising career as a scientist; his wartime service, in combat and at Auschwitz, where his “selections” determined the fate of countless innocents and his “scientific” pursuits resulted in the traumatization and death of thousands more; and his postwar refuge in Germany and South America.

Mengele describes the international search in 1985, which ended in a cemetery in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the dogged forensic investigation that produced overwhelming evidence that Mengele had died―but failed to convince those who, arguably, most wanted him dead. This is a story of science without limits, escape without freedom, and resolution without justice.