Tanner served on the 1990s Bergier Commission examining neutral Switzerland’s relations with Nazi Germany, in particular the role of Swiss banks.
He is very familiar with Swiss sensitivity, and shame, over its role in World War Two, when Jewish refugees were turned away at the border, while Swiss banks kept the money of Jewish families who later died in Nazi concentration camps. “It is a problem for a democratic state that these files are still closed,” Tanner argues.
Still, he thinks it is plausible Mengele was in Switzerland in 1961.
Wanted Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann had been arrested by Mossad in Argentina in 1960, and there is evidence that other Nazis who fled to South America thought they too were at risk there, and that Europe, where friends and relatives remained, might be safer.
Tanner points out that Walter Rauff, another wanted Nazi war criminal who fled to Chile, spent time in Germany in 1960.
One historian on the Bergier Commission was permitted, briefly, to look at some of the Mengele files in 1999, and concluded that it was impossible to prove or disprove his presence on Swiss territory. But that was just a few lines in a 24-volume report about the entire war. The files were sealed again; the historian died seven years ago.
