Jozefa Mengeles pazušana / Исчезновение Йозефа Менгеле

 

 

"You who wronged a simple man,
who laughed at the sight of suffering,
Bursting into laughter at the crime...
 Do not feel safe…"
(Czesław Miłosz)

 

Why tell the story of a man who deserves no compassion?
Evil exists because some among us allow it to.
In 1938, upon joining the SS, Josef Mengele refused to tattoo his identification number as regulations required. When the Americans arrested him after the war, they mistook him for an ordinary soldier and released him within weeks. That small omission saved his life.
Dr. Mengele, the man known as the "Angel of Death" for his inhuman experiments in Auschwitz, fled to South America after the war. With the help of high-ranking connections, forged documents, and the apathy of those around him, one of the most monstrous criminals of the 20th century evaded justice for three decades – in Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil.

 

Mengele escaped judgment – but did he escape punishment?
How did he survive, rejected, cursed, and exiled from the world of the living?
What allowed him to slip past Mossad agents as he wandered from country to country?
And how did the path of the wicked finally end – the one who descended into a hell of his own making?
This is not merely a reconstruction of the fate of a monstrous figure in human guise – it is a bold, provocative meditation, a disquieting parable about how easily evil dissolves into indifference, how ideology can outlive its time, and how impunity is not the end of a crime, but its continuation.

 

A powerful and piercing work, the film became one of the most striking and widely discussed highlights of the Cannes Film Festival.
Critics are unanimous: this is one of Kirill Serebrennikov’s most important films – a work where not a single frame is accidental, not a single word superfluous. Only artistic clarity and moral courage remain.
Once again, Serebrennikov turns his lens on the fragile foundations of democratic societies – on how terrifyingly easily fascism takes root and spreads, weaving itself through comfort, tradition, and apathy.
The film’s message is clear: evil exists only because some allow it to.