History of the Jews in Paraguay 1939, between 15,000 and 20,000 Jews from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia took advantage of Paraguay's liberal immigration laws to escape from Nazi-occupied Europe. After World War II, most Jews that arrived in Paraguay were survivors of concentration camps. Simultaneously, in the 1960s roughly 40,000 Germans and their descendants, a great many of whom were Nazi supporters and some of whom were prominent Nazi figures, were living in Paraguay. Infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele also temporary lived in the country. Today, there are 10,000 Jews mostly living in Paraguay's capital city of Asunción. The majority of the Paraguayan Jewry is of
History of Paraguay (to 1811) those of the Jesuits. Tensions between the natives and the Europeans grew steadily during the last years of the 18th century. Almost no archaeological research has been done in Paraguay, and the pre-Columbian history of the country is amazingly documented. What is certain is that the eastern part of the country was occupied by Guaraní Indians for at least 2 years before the Spanish conquest. Evidence indicates that those indigenous inhabitants developed a fairly sophisticated level of political autonomy, with quasi-sedentary, multivillage chiefdoms. The recorded history of Paraguay began indirectly in 1516 with the failed expedition of Juan Díaz de