During the war, Paraguayan passports were used to escape from Europe. With the favorable change in Paraguayan immigration policy in 1944, Jewish immigrants kept on arriving in the South American country and reuniting with the Jewish diaspora that had settled there. Thus, when the war ended, Holocaust survivors arrived in Paraguay, were reunited with their families, and hoped to start their lives over again, leaving the catastrophic war behind.

However, painting a black stain on Paraguayan history, Holocaust survivors were not the only ones to arrive. Escaping trials after the defeat of Nazism and the Allies’ discovery of concentration camps and mass graves, Nazi officials also found in South America a safe haven. Taking advantage of predominantly authoritarian regimes in South American countries, some of which had Nazi tendencies themselves, high-ranking Nazi officials like Adolf Eichmann, Klaus Barbie, and Josef Mengele escaped to Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay/Brazil respectively. In the Argentinian case, Eichmann lived a comfortable life in the South American country under the protection of the dictator Juan Domingo Perón, until he was discovered by a Holocaust survivor, kidnapped (not extradited) by Mossad, and taken back to Israel where he faced trial and was hanged for his countless crimes against humanity.

Similarly, Josef Mengele lived a relatively peaceful life in the countryside of Paraguay by assisting farmers with his medical skills. He was known as the “Angel of Death” for his macabre experiments in Auschwitz, and for being responsible for the death of approximately 400.000 Jews. Mengele first escaped and lived in Argentina for a few years until finally relocating to its neighbor country, where a clandestine branch of the Nazi party was still functioning.[1] At the time of his first visit to Paraguay in 1951, Alfredo Stroessner was not yet the all-powerful dictator who would rule the South American country for 35 years. However, when Mengele finally decided to settle in Paraguay and apply to Paraguayan citizenship in 1959, Stroessner had already consolidated his uncontested supremacy in politics. As the supreme dictator, Stroessner had power over everyone and everything, and whoever dared to contradict him would have faced terrible consequences that ranged from exile, to torture, to death.