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The local attitude toward family and firm remains largely protective. "Leave them alone," a Gunzburg pensioner told TIME Bonn Bureau Chief William McWhirter last week. "What do they know about their uncle? You can't sue them for Josef." Said Mayor Rudolf Koppler: "There has been guilt, but this is the guilt of a whole people. Collective guilt pointed only at a small town isn't fair and doesn't make sense."
Prosecutors are less charitable in their assessment of the Mengeles. "We can never be sure that there has been an active family conspiracy," says one of the probers. "The Mengeles may not be guilty of any crimes, but they have not behaved like innocents either." Nonetheless, even after last week's admissions that some among the family frustrated the international manhunt for at least the past six years, it was unlikely that any of the clan's members would be prosecuted.