Mengele's novel: in the footsteps of the great Nazi criminal in Argentina

"I am a happy pessimist," he says. Olivier Guez When the interview ends, it's the first time that he's laughing. It's a smile that appears spontaneously, almost maliciously, in his face wrapped in seriousness. We are sitting in a cafe in front of the Recoleta cemetery, surrounded by books. Dress shirt with rolled up sleeves, jeans, slippers. He is a pbader-by in this slightly Europeanized Latin-American Buenos Aires. However, in the celestial eyes, one can guess its strangeness. And even more so when he speaks: his Spanish is clear, but his French accent predominates. For this reason, the interview begins next to his translator, but after five minutes it becomes a dialogue in Spanish.

Half an hour before, when you meet us, please greet and support your book on the table. He reads Roberto Arlt. He wears a black pencil to mark the pbadages which, according to him, bring back the Arltian literature of the early twentieth century to France at the end of the nineteenth century. The modernity that arrives, in some places before, in others later, but always happens. Overwhelming and scary.

The reason for this brief conversation is his latest book. The disappearance of Josef Mengele This is the title of the story that tells in an original way the flight of the doctor and German officer of the SS – one of the most important figures of Nazism – in South America. Mengele was much more than a Nazi criminal, although this label already says a lot. Mengele experimented with the prisoners of Auschwitz and made the foreign body a territory allowing him to play to be God. Because of that, he was more than a criminal. It was, writes Guez in his book, "the guardian of the purity of the race and the alchemist of the new man".

– Why the decision that history is a fiction?

-I had three options. As a historian, but I am not a historian and the archives are not yet all open. The second option is as a journalist. I have worked a lot as a journalist. When a reporter is working on a story, he also explains how it works: I read, I discovered, I found and blah blah blah. I did not want that because the rhythm changes with this kind of narration. I wanted to tell this story very directly, without showing that I read, on which I investigated. Not only is it the true story of Josef Mengele in South America, but it was also a metaphor for the second life of a criminal, who for me is "the" criminal. The criminal of the idea of ​​Europe. And this metaphor was impossible to say in a way that is not a novel. I think he reads better, and that there is also the rhythm, which is very important for me. I had two models. The first is In cold blood of Truman Capote, the life of the criminals of Kansas which, moreover, is a literary work. The second is the movie Aguirre, the wrath of God by Werner Herzog. The book could also be called Mengele, the idea of ​​God. It's the same idea: a mad conqueror who gets lost in the jungles of South America.

-In Argentina, I suppose that something similar must happen in France, there is a tendency that is the self-literature where the author goes into the story. Here, and perhaps against the clock, decides otherwise.

– Yes, in Europe, that happens too. I like it little, except for writers who go very very deeply into their lives, which is not a narration technique easier to read and write. No, it was not interesting to me. But something else: it is the story of Mengele. I love Argentina a lot: wine, football, women … but I will not write about the fact that I like going to the River Plate stadium when I write a book about Mengele. He has a border. I think this type of literature can work on other problems.

-Is it a concern for you that the reader understands Mengele?

-Empathie never. The difference between fiction and non-fiction lies in the fact that fiction creates emotions. Each reader has another emotion. For me, there is never, never empathy. I tried to write it very dry. It's Mengele's point of view, but it's very dry. If someone said to me "you have empathy with Mengele", I said "there is no empathy, you have empathy. ". On the contrary, I liked to write his downfall.

In 2005, Olivier Guez He went to live in Berlin. He was involved in an investigation into the history of Jews in Germany between the postwar and the 2000s. He wanted to know how the victims were still living in the country of criminals. "My work, my books, my film scripts, etc., are interspersed with the interest of seeing how individuals and societies have been able to overcome this trauma that has devastated Europe, not only since the Second World War. World War, but also since 1914, "he says in his native French, sitting on a velvet chair. That was his initial interest, until the day an idea appeared to him: why was he ever interested in the criminals' point of view?

Years later, when he presented the presentation of this investigation, a director called Lars Kraume. He approached and suggested that he write the screenplay for his film. So was born The Fritz Bauer case, who was finally released in 2015. While investigating Bauer, a 50s and 60s attorney who helped judge and condemn many Nazi hierarchies, a world opened up to him: the escape by many of America South of these criminals. One of them was Josef Mengele, arrived in Argentina in the late 1940s. "Then there was evidence, I said: yes, he is the criminal," he recalls.

In this not so conscious process, he held many meetings with Saskia Sbadenwho, in addition to being an outstanding sociologist, is the daughter of Willem Sbaden, best friend of Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele in Argentina. All decided to think about the relationship between Nazism and South America which, even if we regret it, exists. Then here in Argentina at that time, Peronism was. When we talk about meetings that Juan Domingo Perón He had with many fugitives and collaborators of the Nazism, but also with Italian fascists, Belgian Rexists, Spanish Falangists and interguistas Catholics, among others, defines Buenos Aires as a "fantasy of the Fourth Reich".

"Peronism was very interesting to me," he says, "because in Europe we know very little, we only have the idea of To avoid in the musical of Madonna There you go. Then I read a lot about Peronism. I have little to say: it's a very interesting move, it's a mix of all 20th century ideologies. I'm not Argentinian, I'm not going to say that Peronism is this or that, but it was not necessary that Peronism help Eichmann, Mengele and all the others because they did not nothing done for Argentina. In short, what interested me was the history of Peronism but also its aesthetic ".

And although his reading of Argentina in the forties and fifties is very clever, it also allows us to observe the international context, something very difficult to see of the endemic myopia of local nationalism. "It is impossible to understand the demise of Mengele in South America without all the geopolitical context, the cold war, the role of South America and Israel, for example, which were very important to this respect, "he said.

Do you think that it is possible that a glimpse of everything that has happened will reappear in the current context, especially given the rise of right wing movements and protofascist movements?

Not the same, because fascism, Nazism and Stalinism will not come back in the same way. These movements took place with the technology of the twentieth century: bureaucratism, industry … These are totalitarianisms of the second industrial revolution. We are now in a totally different era, of course, a century later. But that can come back, the story is full of these movements. But the technology is changing. We now see the effects of Facebook or Twitter and how they create an atmosphere of struggle, hatred, which is seen in Europe. In France it looks, it is horrible. Millions of people will no longer be transported on trains from Greece, Poland or France, but the nature of man will not change. I have a vision very close to that of the painter El Bosco. His triptych The garden of delights He has everything: paradise, normal man in the middle and hell. The man has the ability to do everything. It will not change. It's the technology that changes.

And what can literature do in this context that we live?

There is not a single answer. For example, Mengele had a clbadical culture. He had read a lot, he was very fond of German clbadical music. A nationalist man, but of culture. But he has been working at Auschwitz for 18 months without problems. Culture can help but it is not the solution. And literature can help distance oneself from social networks, which are becoming more and more of a danger. How does this danger work? Previously, people spent four or five hours in front of the television, but it was not dangerous. Now, because these hours on Facebook work in a closed circuit. If I believe that September 11th did not take place, the algorithm only shows me people who think like me, who believe that September 11th did not happen. It is a closed circuit, which does not have an opening. Literature can help, but not more than that.