Switzerland’s Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) has announced it will grant access to files about Josef Mengele, after years of turning down historians who sought to see if the notorious Nazi death camp doctor spent time in Zurich when there was an international arrest warrant against him.

The announcement followed a crowdfunded appeal by historian Gérard Wettstein against the intelligence service’s most recent refusal, in February, of a request to review the documents.

Without naming Wettstein, the FIS said in a May 4 statement that it would grant the appellant access to the files under still-undetermined conditions that will remain in place for future requests. The statement did not specify when access would be granted, and a report published by the BBC on Saturday indicated Wettstein had not yet gained access to the files.

The FIS has until now refused such a request under Swiss declassification laws. It said it reversed course after the Swiss federal archive determined the documents were within the scope of a 2001 government decision requiring “liberal access” to files reviewed by the Bergier Commission, which Switzerland established in 1996 to review Swiss banks’ withholding of assets that belonged to Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Wettstein, who made his request in 2025, told the BBC that the Mengele........

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