As discussed before, Stroessner´s dictatorship was one of the main factors that enabled Nazi criminals to stay and settle down in Paraguay without fear of retribution. With the fear of retaliation, no one dared to question the dictator´s decision, and foreign diplomats and activists could only do so much. As a result, an atmosphere of fear surrounding the dictator´s Nazi friends governed the country. However, this was not the only type of fear that existed at the time. Some Paraguayans equally feared these Nazi officials themselves. This is why, even decades after Mengele´s death was made public, and decades after the fall of Stroessner´s regime, some people living in the countryside where Mengele had settled, were still afraid to talk about the topic.

At the same time, because many of the colonies in the countryside were predominantly German, and in fact some of them even had Nazi tendencies in the 1930s,[1] the leaders of these colonies kept the secrets within their own community. Whenever foreigners wanted to know about Mengele´s stay in Paraguay, the locals quickly became uncomfortable and secretive about the topic. As expressed by the journalist Andrés Colmán Gutiérrez, “…his dark shadow – and everything it meant – was still roaming the streets of the industrious colony of German immigrants, causing fear in the old residents, keepers of the secret…”[2] Under this pretense, many people kept the secret, and Mengele was able to live for years in Hohenau before moving to Brazil.

Similarly, when Emilio Wolff, a Holocaust survivor, claimed to have recognized Rochsmann after his death at the public hospital in Asunción, he also became a victim of attacks. A day after publicly declaring that the man who had died at the Hospital de Clínicas was the butcher of Riga, his business was attacked with gunshots by two men in the early hours of the morning. Wolff´s declarations were not only about Rochsmann, but also about concentration camps during the Nazi regime.[3] This led the media to believe that the attack could have been an act of retaliation for speaking out about a Nazi criminal and about Nazi crimes against humanity.[4] In this tense atmosphere, and perhaps with an intentional message sent by the people who performed the attacks, Holocaust survivors were silenced. At the same time, these attacks and this pressure for silence coincides with the movement that surged in the second half of the 20^th century known as the denial of the Holocaust. While in other places of the world the Holocaust was being denied by academics and people in important places, in Paraguay, the victims of the Shoa were being silenced by the authoritarian regime and terrorized by people who did not want their stories to be told. But if they were not able to tell their story, then who would?