The liberation of Auschwitz, marked on January 27, 1945, is a turning point in the book’s account of the camp and a recurring date in the struggle to preserve evidence of its crimes. The narrative gives little description of the liberation itself; instead, it traces what the date comes to signify through survivor testimony, postwar investigations, and delayed efforts to bring Josef Mengele to justice.

The Camp and Its Crimes

In 1944, physician Miklós Nyiszli, himself a Jewish prisoner and one of the Sonderkommando prisoners, was forced to assist Mengele with examinations and research on prisoners. Nyiszli later recorded his experience in Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, first published in Hungary in 1946 and in France in 1961. His account describes Mengele’s presence at selections of deported Hungarians and his involvement in experiments on twins and other prisoners. It also records how camp medical work and killing were bound together, rather than separate activities.

Nyiszli’s testimony depicts Mengele continuing his work in the dissection room in autumn 1944, even as Germany was losing the war. Mengele’s attention to the organization of research files stands in stark contrast to the violence and death surrounding the work. The book uses this contrast to show how scientific procedure and meticulous record-keeping could operate within, and serve, a system of persecution and murder.

The later fate of the research materials further connects individual crimes to institutions beyond the camp: organs were sent to the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Dahlem, Berlin, directed by Professor Otmar von Verschuer. This evidence complicates any account that treats the camp’s crimes as the acts of an isolated individual. Mengele’s conduct belonged to a wider network of research and institutional interests, even though the account identifies his own decisions and actions within that system.

Liberation and the Struggle to Establish Responsibility

Liberation did not, in the narrative, bring an immediate end to the struggle over accountability. Nyiszli’s book carried testimony across national borders and into the postwar period, while investigations into Mengele proceeded slowly. Hermann Langbein, an Auschwitz survivor who had served as personal secretary to the camp’s chief doctor, Eduard Wirths, pursued evidence that Mengele had survived and was living in Buenos Aires. Langbein’s investigation led to an arrest warrant issued in Freiburg im Breisgau on February 25, 1959, on multiple counts of premeditated murder and attempted murder.

The pursuit was also impeded by jurisdictional delays and political hesitation. After the warrant, the West German authorities sought extradition through Argentina, while Mengele’s associates helped him flee to Paraguay. In November 1959, Paraguay granted him citizenship and related documents. The book presents these developments as a stark contrast to the demand for justice raised by survivors: the passage of time and the crossing of borders made prosecution more difficult, while Mengele continued to rely on assistance and protection.

Anniversary, Testimony, and Public Memory

On January 27, 1962, the seventeenth anniversary of the liberation, a newspaper photograph of Mengele drew Gitta Stammer’s attention to the resemblance between the fugitive and the man living under an assumed identity in her household. The anniversary thus appears not only as a date of remembrance but also as the circumstance in which his identity was recognized. The discovery led to his confession to the Stammers that he was Mengele, though he denied the crimes reported in the press.

The fortieth anniversary, on January 27, 1985, brought survivors back to Auschwitz. Among them were people who had been subjected to Mengele’s experiments, including twins, dwarves, and people with disabilities. They appealed publicly for governments to capture him. In February, a mock trial at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem heard testimony over three days. The testimony described the treatment of prisoners and the harm inflicted on mothers and children; it transformed individual recollections into a public record before an international audience.

The mock trial had immediate consequences for the renewed pursuit. The United States attorney general called for the case file to be reviewed, and the Israeli authorities announced that they would resume the hunt and offer a reward. The Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Washington Times also offered rewards, while West Germany added one of its own. A declassified American memorandum claiming that the United States had held Mengele in 1947 was incorrect, but its circulation provoked renewed scrutiny of how Nazi fugitives had escaped accountability.

Significance

The book presents liberation as both a historical event and a continuing reference point for testimony. January 27 links the end of the camp’s operation to later acts of recognition, commemoration, and public accusation, without suggesting that remembrance by itself secured justice. Nyiszli’s postwar account, Langbein’s investigation, the survivors’ 1985 testimony, and the international response show how evidence had to be preserved and repeatedly brought before institutions capable of acting on it.

The contrast between the survivors’ demands and the prolonged protection and evasion surrounding Mengele gives the anniversary its particular force. The date marks liberation, but the narrative’s account of its later commemorations also measures the distance between the defeat of the camp system and the pursuit of those responsible.