Günzburg

Günzburg is the hometown and family stronghold that draws Josef Mengele back after years in hiding, but familiarity offers no real refuge. The town holds his childhood home, family memories, and the industrial power of the Mengele firm; for the fugitive, those same connections make it a place where recognition seems dangerously close. His brief return turns Günzburg into a test of whether family authority can make a wanted man feel at home again.

Family Home and Childhood Landscape

Mengele’s history in Günzburg is rooted in the large grey house where he grew up. Its narrow windows had seemed like embrasures to him as a child, and his memories of the household include the unequal treatment he associated with his younger brother, Karl Thaddeus. Karl once took his mechanical train, but when their mother returned, Josef was the one punished: she beat him and locked him in the cellar. At supper, Karl received more generous portions; he also accompanied their mother to the pastry shops in the Marktplatz. These recollections make the house more than a backdrop. It is the setting in which Mengele’s childhood jealousy and sense of grievance took shape.

The town’s landscape also survives in his memory. He remembers throwing pebbles into the Danube as he turned over his resentment of Karl, while the river and nearby woods frame those private childhood thoughts. The city’s recognizable approach later becomes a source of alarm: returning after a long absence, he identifies the loop of the Danube at the entrance to town, followed by the Renaissance castle and Baroque church. These landmarks announce not simply that he has reached home, but that he has come back into a world whose details he still knows intimately.

Hiding Near Home

Günzburg was also the point of reference for Mengele’s years of concealment in Bavaria. After his release from an American prisoner-of-war camp under false papers in the name of Fritz Ullmann, he spent three years hiding on a farm near his hometown. Under the name Fritz Hollmann, he cut hay and sorted potatoes. The disguise and rural work placed him close to the town while keeping him out of public view; the account does not describe him returning openly to his family during that period.

His escape from the area came at Easter, two months before his arrival in Buenos Aires. He crossed the Dolomites by forest paths into South Tyrol and took another assumed identity, Helmut Gregor, before reaching Genoa. The sequence gives Günzburg a double significance: it is not only the home left behind, but also the geographic center around which a substantial period of hiding was organized. His later return therefore reverses the direction of escape without restoring the life he had abandoned.

Return and Fear of Recognition

Years later, Mengele reaches the family house with Hans Sedlmeier after a winter-sports holiday. The journey through snow-covered passes has already made him tense; when darkness falls and the familiar Danube bend comes into view, he asks Sedlmeier to be quiet because he is anxious. Inside the house, the arrangement seems almost untouched by time. He recognizes the dark wood panelling, Biedermeier console, and dining-room gramophone. A painting remains in the entrance hall, while urns containing his mother and brother stand on a mantelpiece. The objects make the return feel immediate, but they also mark the absences that have accumulated during his years away.

The household gathers around the dining table: Mengele, Sedlmeier, his brother, and his father, Karl Mengele. At his insistence, the governess and cook have been given time off. He is pleased with the hotel, the health of the boys, and Martha’s appearance, and believes that his plan to marry her will proceed willingly. Yet the domestic welcome cannot quiet his fear. Josef Mengele has been missing since the end of the war, and he imagines that people will recognize him if he walks down Augsburger Strasse or appears in front of the factory. Günzburg is not a large place, he thinks, and gossip could spread; to remain there seems an intolerable risk.

A Powerful Town, an Unsafe Refuge

Karl Mengele argues that the family’s standing protects his son. The firm is described as a small empire and the town’s largest employer; its influence, Karl believes, makes denunciation unlikely. He also insists that no arrest warrant has been issued for Josef in Germany. Alois reinforces the family’s local authority by pointing to its support for social housing, a hospital, and a swimming pool. Karl is expected to become an honorary citizen, and plans to distribute sausages to children for his seventy-fifth birthday. In this account, Günzburg’s civic life and the family business are closely linked: the family’s economic power is presented as a source of public loyalty and personal security.

But Mengele does not accept his father’s reassurance. He believes that no one can be trusted and that his name remains on a list of war criminals. The contrast is central to the place’s meaning: his family sees Günzburg as a domain they can control, while he sees a small town where anonymity is impossible. He decides to leave for Munich, where the larger city offers more anonymity, and plans to discuss business with the family concerning Argentina, Paraguay, and possibly Chile. Günzburg can shelter him through family influence, but it cannot make him feel safe enough to stay.

The town remains present even after his departure. When Karl Mengele later dies, his portrait is displayed across the façade of the town hall while Josef, thousands of kilometres away in Asunción, grieves for the father he calls an irreplaceable ally and shield. The portrait gives the absent patriarch a public presence in the town he had helped shape. For Josef, Günzburg is consequently both a lost home and a continuing source of protection, memory, and fear: the place he returns to, recognizes, and then cannot bear to inhabit.