Bolivia is presented as a potential destination in Josef Mengele’s South American flight, rather than as one of his confirmed hiding places. The proposed refuge depended on Klaus Barbie’s protection in La Paz; Mengele refused it, and the alternative he rejected throws into relief how fear, distrust, and his attachment to his existing shelter narrowed his choices.

A Possible Refuge

In 1968, Hans-Ulrich Rudel told Gerhard that Klaus Barbie was prepared to host Mengele in Bolivia. Barbie, a former Gestapo chief twice sentenced to death in absentia by military tribunals in Lyon, was living in La Paz under the name Klaus Altmann. He had become a security consultant and trained Bolivian officers in interrogation methods after the military took power in 1964.

Barbie’s position rested on more than his Bolivian work. He had supplied information to United States military counter-intelligence about Communist activity in the Bolivian army and in the French Occupation Zone in Germany. Rudel and Barbie had also previously operated a company together, nominally a logging business with narcotics and arms dealings on the side. The proposed host was therefore an established associate with connections, but not someone Mengele knew or trusted.

The Offer and Its Refusal

Gerhard was attracted to the Bolivian option and imagined crossing borders and jungle with Mengele to meet Barbie. Mengele would not go. At nearly sixty, he did not want to change countries again, and the thought of travelling in Barbie’s small car frightened him. He was also certain he could not manipulate Barbie as he had the Stammers, whose farm at Serra Negra gave him a position of control.

His refusal was sharpened by distrust of Rudel. Mengele felt Rudel had disappointed him: he had not visited since the move to Brazil and had forgotten his birthday. The account also notes Rudel’s commissions from selling the Mengele family firm’s equipment in Paraguay. To Mengele, the offer thus came through an unreliable intermediary and required surrendering the security and authority he believed he had at Serra Negra.

Bolivia as an Unchosen Route

The Bolivian plan ended in rejection. Barbie was upset, and Rudel told Gerhard that he no longer wanted to hear Mengele’s name. Yet Mengele would not leave the Stammers and would not live alone. Since they needed his share from the sale of Serra Negra to buy another property, their plans and his dependence on them converged: he followed them to a house in Caieiras, about thirty kilometres from São Paulo, in early 1969.

Bolivia’s significance in this episode is therefore counterfactual. It offered a possible next refuge through a fellow fugitive whose political and military connections made him useful, but Mengele’s suspicion of both the host and the intermediary outweighed the prospect. The rejected move marks the limits of his flight: he sought concealment, yet resisted the risks and loss of control that each new refuge demanded.