Mengele's suitcase

Abstract

On January 9, 2014, I received a call at my home in the small town of Alfeld (Leine), Central Germany. On the phone was Barbara Riepl, an acquaintance from Munich, and she had a truly exciting story waiting for me.11This story has been described in great detail in my book “Mengels Koffer. Eine Spurensuche” (Osburg Verlag, Hamburg, 2019) as well as in the documentary “Abgezockt! Die Auschwitz-Tagebücher”, which was broadcast on the German TV channel ZDFinfo Doku on the December 3, 2020. The grandfather of her best friend Nicole had been a prominent Hungarian Jew who had been deported to Auschwitz during World War II. There, he became a prisoner doctor forced to assist the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in his infamous human experiments. Several years after the war, he deposited a slew of documents in a Swiss safe. That safe had remained untouched for decades, but it was to be unsealed soon. Riepl went on to claim that her friend had entrusted her personally with these documents and asked if I, as a historian, would be interested in examining the documents and—if need arose—help to publish them.