When Paraguay was fighting the Chaco War, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party were gaining more and more political power in Germany. In January of 1933, he became the Chancellor of Germany. In less than two months later, Hitler passed the Enabling Act Law, a law that gave him emergency powers to rule without the need to consult the German Parliament or Reichstag. In 1935, he issued the Nuremberg Laws as the first legal step towards what would become the genocide of the European Jewry. These Nazi laws sought to protect German blood and to limit interactions with Jewish citizens.[1] In the upcoming years, more laws to alienate Jewish individuals from the larger community would be enacted. As such, on November 9 of 1938, a violent outburst of hatred resulted in the death of 91 Jews, and in the destruction of Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues, and schools, in what came to be known as Kristallnacht, or “The Night of the Broken Glass.”[2]

In 1938, the Evian Conference took place to address the topic of Jewish emigration as conditions worsened in Europe, and South American countries, including Paraguay, participated. However, no great commitment was made to attempt to aid the European Jewish community in the eve of WWII and the Holocaust; only quotas per country were established.[3] As the war grew closer and closer and, in this atmosphere full of hatred and fear of what could come next, Jews started to emigrate to Latin America, the United States, and any other country far away from Nazism. Nevertheless, before even boarding a transatlantic ocean liner to start a new life, Jewish emigrants concerned themselves with getting access to the passports that would ensure a smooth transition in their departure from Europe.