Hohenau Journal; Sure, Mengele Was at Home Here, but Bormann? (original) (raw)
World|Hohenau Journal; Sure, Mengele Was at Home Here, but Bormann?
Advertisement
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
- June 1, 1993
Credit...The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from
June 1, 1993
,
Section A, Page
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
Using the early morning light to help her fading vision, Michline Reynaers sat recently in a sunny corner of the Hotel Tirol here, knitting socks for a grandchild.
"Everyone in town talked about how well he played the piano," the 72-year-old hotel keeper recalled, speaking in German of the courteous, mustachioed visitor who patronized her restaurant in 1959. "I was introduced to him as Mr. Mengele."
One year after genetic testing conclusively confirmed that Josef Mengele died in Brazil in 1979, memories seem to be sharpening here about the Auschwitz doctor. An international fugitive after Nazi Germany collapsed in 1945, Mr. Mengele lived openly in this German-speaking enclave before moving to Brazil.
Of the 37 German farming colonies in Paraguay, there was more to make a Nazi fugitive feel at home in Hohenau than the Hotel Tirol, a nostalgic Alpine transplant built with low eaves and peaked roofs to shed a snow that never fell in this remote corner of South America. 'A Proud German Colony'
"Around 1936 and later, the boys and young men began wearing the brown shirts," Ottmar Krug, now 72 years old, recalled over a stein of cold beer at a main street cafe. "We marched to the goosestep, we sang the party's songs, we used the swastika as a symbol, we were a proud German colony."
Even today, Hohenau's dusty main street is dominated by a statue of a shirtless, muscular young man holding an ax, executed in a heroic style reminiscent of 1930's Germany.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Advertisement