One of Betina Anton’s earliest memories growing up in Brazil in the 1980s is of her kindergarten teacher, the kindly ‘Tante’ Liselotte.
But the slim German woman with permed hair and a halting Portuguese accent - who she lovingly referred to as ‘aunt’ - was hiding a horrific secret, one that would take decades to unravel.
Liselotte Bossert and her husband Wolfram harbored the notorious ‘Angel of Death’ Josef Mengele - arguably the most wanted Nazi of all time.
Mengele lived with them and their two children - who called him 'Uncle Peter' - at their home in the Brooklin neighborhood of São Paulo for 10 years, enjoying barbecues and taking regular vacations to the beach, all while being hunted for his evil war crimes.
It was said that the doctor enjoyed his sadistic work - selecting which prisoners would die in the gas chambers and who might live another day - so much, he would even show up on his days off.
Josef Mengele with Nazi geneticist Hans Grebe. After the war, he escaped to Brazil and lived out his life in comfort, protected by a loyal group of followers
But his main source of interest was finding twins, people with dwarfism and other rare conditions, to use them as human guinea pigs in his perverse, often deadly, experiments.
After the war, he went on the run and eventually found refuge in Brazil, thanks to a loyal band of followers, including Liselotte.
'At least 18 of the 34 years that Mengele lived in hiding following the end of World War II, he spent in Brazil,' writes Anton in her blockbuster new book, Hiding Mengele, 'the last ten under protection of Liselotte and her husband.'
That all ended one sunny day in 1979, when Mengele died of a heart attack while swimming at the resort of Bertioga. He was 67. And, because he was already living in Brazil under an assumed name, with falsified papers, his burial had to be arranged quickly and quietly.
It was Liselotte's job to handle the paperwork and practicalities. The body was buried at a cemetery in Embu, using the name he'd been living with since 1971: Wolfgang Gerhard.
‘For more than six years, Liselotte had thought these events were behind her, literally buried,’ writes Anton. 'She went about her routine, teaching small children at the German school.
Mengele was portrayed by Gregory Peck in the 1978 film The Boys From Brazil
Dr Josef Mengele (center) with Richard Baer, the commandant of Auschwitz, and fellow SS officer Rudolf Hoss
Children survivors of Auschwitz - Mengele experimented on twins Miriam Mozes and Eva Mozes (right, wearing knitted hats)
'However, in June 1985, the secret was unexpectedly revealed and her life was turned upside down.’
Anton turned up for school to learn that Liselotte had been replaced by a new teacher. 'There was no farewell. It was a sudden disruption in the middle of the semester,' she writes
'I was only six years old, and I was shocked to lose my teacher all of a sudden.’
In the end, Liselotte was indicted for just one crime: ideological falsehood related to the forged burial documents. And when her lawyer appealed on the grounds that the statute of limitations had passed, she was free to go.
But for years many believed the story of his death was a fraud, and that the body in the coffin was actually that of someone else entirely.
‘The stories of Mengele’s cruel and bizarre experiments have always haunted me,’ writes Anton, ‘even more so knowing that, when hiding from justice, he received protection from my childhood teacher.
‘I’ve always wondered why Tante Liselotte had protected him and what had moved her to do it.’
Mengele was a beloved member of Liselotte's family, and was extremely close to her two children Sabine and Andreas
Mengele (center) joins a barbecue with friends in Sao Paulo
Mengele (center) with Liselotte (left) and her children on vacation in Bertioga
More than 30 years after she’d left the school, and unsure if her old teacher was even still alive, she decided to track her down.
‘The address where Liselotte lived at the time of the Mengele case - 1985, the year Mengele’s skeleton was found in the Embu cemetery and the case became a worldwide scandal, was available in various places,’ she writes.
It was a logical place to start.
‘I arrived at the house on a Sunday, just before 11am. A car was parked in front of the gate. From the sidewalk, I could see through the window someone in the living room reading the newspaper.
‘I rang the doorbell. The person on the sofa didn’t even move. I was about to ring again when a woman appeared at the second-floor window. My God, it was her!
‘It was like seeing a fictional character in the flesh.'
Liselotte eventually came down and the two chatted for a while.
It was clear she felt no guilt over her part in concealing the Nazi who had sent thousands of Jews to their deaths; that she had just been helping a friend.
Then she made an astonishing, though vague, outburst.
‘Look, it’s like this,’ she said to Anton. ‘We agreed that if I stayed quiet, the Jews will leave me alone. So I stayed quiet. Because I had a family, so I don’t talk about this subject.’
Anton was confused. ‘What Jews?’ she asked.
Mengele was known as 'Uncle Peter' to Liselotte's children, Sabine and Andreas
Josef Mengele with his son Rolf (far right), together with Liselotte Bossert and her children in 1977
Josef Mengele's foreign identity card, in a false name
‘It was Menachem Russak. He was the Nazijäger, the Nazi hunter.’
Menachem Russak was head of the special Israeli unit in charge of hunting down Nazi war criminals, and was in São Paulo when Mengele’s remains were exhumed.
Liselotte then implied that she had been forced to stay silent because of a danger to her children.
‘My childhood teacher was scaring me,’ writes Anton.’
‘Suddenly she asked, “Do you want to know something? Just from friend to friend, leave the case.”
‘My eyes widened. Was it a threat? “It’s better for you,” she continued. “There’s a lot, a lot that nobody knows yet. I know,” she said and laughed.
‘You’d better keep quiet about this. It’s a lot of money,’ the teacher said, enigmatically.
‘Look for something else that is not so dangerous to investigate. Because this case is dangerous, believe me.’s 'a lot of money' at stake.
Then, late at night while reading an obscure Mossad study that had only recently become available to the public, she ‘almost fell off my chair: there was a secret Mossad story involving Liselotte herself.
‘The story was related to Israel’s vigorous resistance to accept that the body buried in Embu was indeed Mengele’s,’ she writes. ‘Menachem Russak, the head of the Nazi-hunting unit, insisted that everything was just a fraud and that Liselotte had invented the story of the drowning.
‘Of course, a DNA test of the remains would have solved everything. However, at that time, it was not yet available. So, in July 1985, Mossad chief Nahum Admoni decided that the main witnesses to Mengele’s life in Brazil should undergo a polygraph test.’
However, Liselotte refused to take the test.
‘Almost four years passed before she changed her mind. But she imposed a hefty price on the Israelis: $100,000. After a long negotiation mediated by her lawyer, they agreed to $45,000.
Instead of being brought to justice for his crimes, Mengele lived out the remainder of his years enjoying family trips with Liselotte and her children
After Adolf Eichmann was hanged in 1962, Mengele was terrified of being captured, so built a 30-foot-tall observation tower at his home in Serra Negra, from which he had of a panoramic view of anyone approaching
Mengele's bones are placed in a box to be transported to the Forensic Medical Institute for testing
Daniel del Ponte played Josef Mengele in the Oscar-winning film Schindler's List
‘The result,’ she writes, ‘was unequivocal. Josef Mengele was, indeed, dead.’
But Liselotte had said that money was still rolling in today. What had she meant?
At the time she’d said: ‘I’m not going to talk. The deal I have with them… it’s serious.’
So, in 2022, Anton decided to get in touch with her former teacher once more.
After getting no answer on the phone, she again turned up at her home in Brooklin.
As soon as she arrived, she could tell something had changed. Unsurprisingly, the new owner told her Liselotte had died.
And so, ‘unless new secret documents appear, her knowledge about the Mengele case is ultimately buried with her,’ writes Anton.
‘And, while his victims suffered physical and mental torment throughout their lives, the “Angel of Death” ended his days with friends, writing, reading, walking his dogs, tending to his garden, barbecuing, bathing in waterfalls and in the sea of his "tropical Bavaria".’
Hiding Mengele: How a Nazi Network Harbored the Angel of Death by Betina Anton is published by Diversion Books
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