Alto Paraná enters the account as both a possible hiding place for Josef Mengele and a destination he hoped to make his own. Its significance lies less in a documented residence than in the uncertainty surrounding his whereabouts: German authorities repeatedly focused on the region, while his movements and Paraguay’s refusal to cooperate frustrated efforts to locate and extradite him.

A suspected refuge in Paraguay

After a West German arrest warrant was issued for Mengele in February 1959, the possibility that he would be extradited from Argentina drove him to seek refuge in Paraguay. As reports circulated that he had fled there, a second extradition request was also headed to Asunción. By 1960, after obtaining Paraguayan citizenship, Mengele was able to move more freely. He later showed Hans Sedlmeier photographs of a property he wanted to buy in Alto Paraná, suggesting that he imagined a more settled life in the region. The account does not establish that he bought the property or lived there.

The focus of an uncertain manhunt

West German officials struggled to determine where Mengele was. Although their investigators believed he might be in Asunción or the Alto Paraná region, their efforts were hampered by procedural delays and limited commitment to the search. Paraguay’s government knew of the extradition effort, but Hans-Ulrich Rudel intervened on Mengele’s behalf, and President Stroessner resisted cooperation. In 1962, Paraguay refused a West German extradition request; the account describes the country’s defense of its citizens as a central obstacle to the pursuit.

Conflicting claims and diplomatic resistance

In 1964, the West German Foreign Ministry publicly identified Mengele as a Paraguayan citizen who resided in the tri-border area and often travelled to Brazil. The German ambassador in Asunción pressed Stroessner to strip him of citizenship, arguing that he had obtained it through false claims. Stroessner answered that Mengele had already left Paraguay and rejected what he called an unacceptable interference with Paraguayan sovereignty. The Paraguayan interior minister likewise claimed that Mengele was hiding in Brazil or Peru. These denials did not settle the question of his location; they exposed how uncertain information and diplomatic obstruction could reinforce one another.

A regional search without resolution

The West German government offered Paraguay ten million US dollars in aid if it delivered Mengele, but Stroessner refused. A year later, after a former SS officer arrested in Paraguay said he had encountered Mengele there several times, the country’s denials appeared less credible to observers. Even so, in 1965 West Germany eased pressure as it sought better relations with Paraguay, a country considered important to Western policy in South America. Alto Paraná thus remained part of a shifting map of suspected refuge: a place officials named, Mengele considered for a property, and the pursuit never conclusively resolved.