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
Geography of Paraguay Paraná; the mountain chain has an average height of . Separated from the Eastern region by the Paraguay River, the Chaco region is a vast plain with elevations reaching no higher than and averaging . Covering more than 60 percent of Paraguay's total land area, the Chaco plain slopes gently eastward to the Río Paraguay. The Paraguayan Chaco is subdivided into two parts. The "Alto Chaco" (Upper Chaco), also called "Chaco Seco" (Dry Chaco) is the western three-quarters of the region, bordering on Bolivia, while the "Bajo Chaco" (Lower Chaco) or "Chaco Húmedo" (Humid Chaco) borders on the Paraguay River.