Olivier Guez: "The life of Mengele in South America was a form of punishment"

The death of the Auschwitz doctor, the Black Angel, the great myth of the Second World War, that of experiments with children and twins, Josef Mengele, arrived in Argentina under a false name in 1949. Covered by Juan Domingo Perón, in his "Argentine Sanctuary" was the big life here, with another group of high officials with blood-stained hands. His journey continued in Paraguay and Brazil, where his track disappears after his death. Nobody was looking for him, he was never arrested or tried, despite the fact that justice has come near him.

His last thirty years are another film story, as the journalist and writer Olivier Guez rebuilt in his pbadionate novel The disappearance of Josef Mengele. Winner of the 2017 Renaudot Prize, a great success in sales in France and translated into 30 languages, it is presented by Guez around the world. With remarkable historical accuracy and a taste for detail, write this story with the tools of the novel, 40 years after the death of the Nazi hierarchy.

"It's the true story of Josef Mengele, but written as a novel," he said, "I wanted to write a story, a trip, a criminal and not just a criminal: the criminal of the idea of ​​Europe. It is a trajectory that is an almost biblical parable of the criminal after his crimes. And it's a fiction, but written like a novel because it reads better, I did not want to write a journalistic book and I'm not a historian. The journalist enters the scene, describes where he is going and who he is with. The most important thing was Mengele's trip to South America, and we followed it for those 30 years in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. "

Why were you involved with Mengele, nothing less?

It's a form of punishment (laughs). I started working on the theme of the second war many years ago. I wrote a book about Jews in Germany and at that time I wanted to write a book about a criminal after the war, but I did not know then that I did not find it. Then I worked in The Fritz Bauer case, the film I wrote the script, with the director of the film, and tells the story of the German prosecutor who found Eichmann in Argentina and who went to work with Mossad. To prepare this scenario, I read a lot about Argentina in the 1950s. And reading I found Mengele several times. So it was the criminal, because Mengele is a black myth of history in Europe and his career matched exactly what he was looking for: how lived a criminal like him, 30 years after the war. At first, I wondered how this life had been and if this life had not been a punishment, a form of punishment.

Because of what your novel reveals, your life in South America was a kind of punishment, loneliness, paranoia and isolation.

Yes, for Mengele, it was harder to live free in Paraguay and Brazil in the last twenty years than to live in prison in Germany. Because for 20 years, he lived with the thought of uncertainty, thinking every day that it was his last day. Let's not forget that he was a bourgeois and that living in the jungle in Brazil was a daily chastisement with the temperature, the humidity, the insects and especially the fear that the Mossad arrives. someone is killing him. Can not get out of there. Life has turned into a big prison. I think it was a punishment and certainly a very interesting literary subject, to describe her as a writer rather than a journalist or historian. People believe that he lived 30 years in South America without being punished and, it is true that the first ten years in Argentina were very pleasant for him, along with the other Nazi commanders who live here quietly, protected by Perón. But the last 20 were terrible, convinced that everyone was looking for him when, during his last 15 or 20 years, nobody was looking for him. It's another very interesting story.

For many, the role of Perón and Evita is still indigestible, which you relentlessly describe, in this protection and asylum for the Nazis.

Many Argentines have written about this help to the Nazis. I have nothing to say about Peronism, I am not Argentinian, but I am clear that helping the Nazis for so long was not a big need for Argentina. They did not have to do it. Argentina is no better for having helped Eichmann for ten years, or for Mengele.

The fact that Mengele disappeared without being tried and punished has it remained in history a great failure of justice?

The idea of ​​justice and the idea of ​​war have evolved a lot over time. And until the sixties, until Eichmann in Jerusalem, we do not talk about it, nor the Jews, because the important thing at that time was to look to the future. We must go out, have a new life, look forward, forget what has happened.