Intelligence service publishes Swiss dossier on Josef Mengele
Keystone-SDA
The Swiss Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) has published online the dossier held at the Federal Archives on Josef Mengele, the concentration camp doctor known as the “Angel of Death of Auschwitz”. This followed a legal dispute over access to the dossier, which had initially been refused.
The intelligence service had wrongly refused access to the dossierExternal link, as the FIS announced on Thursday. It stated that it had assumed the protection period, which had been extended under archiving law, would run until the end of 2071. It was only after a complaint was lodged against the most recent refusal of access, which took place in February 2026, that it became clear the FIS was in the wrong.
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The Swiss return of Nazi ‘Angel of Death’ Josef Mengele
In 2001, when the then police service of the Office of the Attorney General handed the 217-page dossier over to the Federal Archives, the government had in fact adopted a liberal access policy. The Independent Commission of Experts on Switzerland and the Second World War, known as the “Bergier Commission”, had already examined the dossier for its report. However, it is stated that it was not apparent to the FIS that the Mengele dossier had, in effect, already been declassified.
The dossier contains numerous newspaper reports, most of which focused on the suspicion that Mengele had stayed in Switzerland on several occasions – even while he was still the subject of an international arrest warrant.
It also contains police reports, parts of which have been redacted. These include entry bans and arrest warrants against Mengele, as well as police reports on investigations into suspects who may have provided Mengele with a hiding place.
Very few redactions
The FIS states that it has carried out “as few redactions as possible”. Personal data of federal administration employees with links to the FIS and its predecessor organisations, information subject to statutory source protection, and data relating to third parties – with the exception of public figures – are protected.
The FIS also states that it will carry out a general review of its access policy regarding archived documents. The historian Gérard Wettstein, who had lodged the complaint, expressed his delight back in May in a report on Swiss Public Television SRF’s Tagesschau news programme at this “important step”, which would make it possible to dispel myths about Mengele’s stays in Switzerland.
The doctor Josef Mengele (1911–1979) was responsible for cruel and often fatal medical experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was known as the “Angel of Death of Auschwitz”. After the war ended, he fled to South America. In 1979, he drowned in a swimming accident.
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Translated from German, reviewed by an English Department journalist.
