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Altogether, by Wiesenthal's estimate, some 5,000 former Nazis found refuge in South America after the war. Protected and organized by a loosely knit network known as Kameradenwerk (Comrades' Enterprise), some of them have been living under their own names, and in considerable prosperity. Roughly 300 reportedly went to Paraguay. Eichmann and others lived in Argentina. Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon," made his home in Bolivia before he was extradited to France in 1983. Two major catches of former Nazi bigwigs occurred in Brazil. In 1967 Sao Paulo police seized Franz Stangl, who was allegedly responsible for the deaths of some 400,000 victims at the Treblinka and Sobibor concentration camps. Stangl had been living under his own name, and was working at a local Volkswagen plant when he was arrested. Eleven years later, Stangl's assistant, Gustav Franz Wagner, accused of involvement in the killing of more than 250,000 at Treblinka and Sobibor, was discovered following a police raid on a party of former Nazis celebrating Hitler's birthday. The Brazilian Supreme Court refused, in turn, bids by West Germany, Poland, Austria and Israel to extradite him. Wagner, the "Human Beast," was a free man when he committed suicide in 1980.
That background supported the instinct of more and more observers last week that Mengele might have found refuge in Brazil between 1961 and 1979. Even some of the most skeptical of Nazi hunters were beginning to entertain the possibility that the exhumed body might be Mengele's. Wiesenthal, who had initially said there was a 99% chance that the affair was a hoax, had lowered his estimate to 40%. "The testimony of witnesses," said the confident Tuma, "gives certainty to the fact that we are dealing with the body of Josef Mengele."
Perhaps so, but many problems still remained. West German investigators were careful to note that the identification of the body and the matching of documents were not necessarily related to each other -- or to the elusive doctor. The body might be Mengele's, but that would not prove that he had died six years ago or in Brazil. The letters might be his, but that did not prove that Pedro was Mengele, or that the Auschwitz doctor had ever lived among the Bosserts and the Stammers.
Even if the Mengele puzzle is solved, other questions will surely arise. Were there more Nazi guardian angels like Gerhard? Might other expatriates in South America be sheltering Nazi fugitives? And was the Nazi network even more extensive than has generally been supposed?
Few were ready to close the lid on the case of the Angel of Death forever. "When you imagine how Mengele himself would organize his own death," suggested West German Mengele-Hunter Katz, "this is the way he would do it. I can imagine him, a lone wolf sitting in his den and laughing at how the whole world believes it." However fanciful, the point was well taken. Even a positive identification of the Embu bones and a categorical verification of Mengele's presence in Brazil would not resolve all the uncertainties. Nor would the laying to rest of the body bury memories of the deaths Mengele had caused or the evil he embodied.