The Disappearance of Josef Mengele

Journalist Guez makes his English-language debut with a staid portrait of a monstrous man. After WWII, Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death” at Auschwitz, secures a series of false identities and eventually relocates from rural Bavaria to South America in 1949. For the next 30 years, he hides out in Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, all while ingratiating himself with powerful figures including Adolf Eichmann and Juan Perón. As time passes and the world acknowledges more of the horrors of the Holocaust, Israeli Mossad agents and everyday people are more and more consumed by the hunt for Mengele, who, like many concentration camp administrators and high-ranking Nazis, has avoided any punishment for his role in crimes against humanity. The tone changes as the years pass: there are moments of cold-blooded terror, scenes re-created from eyewitness accounts at Auschwitz and afterward, as well as understated passages involving Josef in hiding. Guez hews closely to the historical record, re-creating much of Mengele’s life from the letters, journals, and biographies of his subject and those around him, but the narrative is remarkably humdrum and slack. This is more for history buffs than fiction fans. (Aug.)