Mengele friends charged

Press, 9 July 1986, Page 10

Mengele friends charged

NZPA-AP Sao Paulo The police in Brazil have filed criminal charges against two couples who sheltered the Nazi war criminal, Josef Mengele, during the 18 years he lived in the country. A Federal police press spokesman in Sao Paulo said that two Hungarian immigrants, Geza and Gita Stammer and two Austrian immigrants, Wolfram and Liselotte Bossert, had been charged with lying to authorities and with harbouring an illegal alien.

The case was now before the Federal prosecutor, who would have to decide whether the couples would be tried. Remains of a body identified by experts as that of Mengele were exhumed on June 6, 1985, from a grave in the cemetery at Embu, 27km from Sao Paulo.

Local residents say the man subsequently identified as Mengele had drowned on February 7, 1979, while swimming at the Bertioga resort, near Sao Paulo.

The main charge against the Bosserts is that they lied to authorities when they identified Mengele’s body as being that of Wolfgang Gerhard, the war criminal’s first benefactor in Brazil. Before returning to Austria, where he died in 1978, Gerhard gave Mengele his Brazilian identification papers.

The main charge against the Stammers is that they knowingly hid an illegal alien under their roof.