Finding help to flee from Europe
The Soviet Army arrived at Auschwitz in late January 1945. About three weeks later Mengele was on the move again, fleeing the Gross-Rosen camp where he had arrived after Auschwitz and traveling westward across Germany. Mengele adopted the guise of an officer of the Wehrmacht, (the German military, not yet associated with the atrocities being unveiled by the Russians) and after leaving his notes and other documents with a friend, made for the advancing American Army. He was captured by the Americans in June 1945, after Germany’s surrender.
Mengele took advantage of the immediate post-war confusion and the lack of coordination between the allies to avoid being placed on a suspected war criminals list. Most of the documents which incriminated him in the crimes at Auschwitz-Birkenau had not yet come to light, and he was regarded by the Americans as a simple prisoner of war. Released in 1945 he obtained false identity documents using the name Fritz Hollmann.
Under that name, he wandered across post-war Europe, never staying long in one place and always wary of being identified. By then the stories of his activities in the camps were becoming known. Mengele eventually fled to the Soviet zone, in part because of an attempt on his part to reclaim his personal records of his activities in Auschwitz.
Mengele eventually found work and temporary hiding at an isolated farm near Rosenheim, remaining in hiding there until the spring of 1949. As the international pursuit of Nazi war criminals intensified, Mengele contacted former members of the SS who had established underground escape routes out of Europe, used to reach Argentina. There a large German community was known to harbor former officers and officials of the Third Reich.