Asunción

Asunción became a crucial refuge and point of political and legal maneuvering in Josef Mengele’s flight from justice. He took up residence there after leaving Argentina, relying on a network of allies while Paraguay’s authorities granted him citizenship despite an extradition effort. The city’s significance lies not simply in hiding him: it was where his flight intersected with business, family grief, diplomatic conflict, and competing accounts of his whereabouts.

Refuge and a new base

After fleeing north from Argentina, Mengele settled in Asunción. His arrival brought him into the reach of people prepared to help: Alejandro von Eckstein and Jung welcomed him, while Sedlmeier and Alois came to see him. The group sought advice from Uli Rudel, who had privileged access to Paraguay’s military and a relationship with President Stroessner. Rudel reassured them that Paraguay offered a political refuge resembling the one Mengele had enjoyed in Perón’s Argentina, and that land and protection could be secured there. Alois and Sedlmeier urged Mengele not to panic over the complaints against him, arguing that many such complaints did not lead to prosecutions.

Asunción was also a base for practical work, rather than only a hiding place. While in Paraguay, Mengele was entrusted with selling a fertilizer spreader that had been successful in Europe. His work took him through the country’s countryside, including the Chaco, but he had lost confidence in the future. Friends noticed a change in him: the sociable intellectual they had admired had become taciturn and irritable. He kept apart at gatherings, and an afternoon spent with Jung’s son ended in an insult when the boy recited a biology lesson. His unease contrasts with the outward appearance of a man whose allies were arranging a new life for him.

Citizenship and the threat of extradition

Mengele’s position in Paraguay remained precarious while Germany sought his extradition. The request from Bonn had been sent to Buenos Aires, and another was expected in Asunción as rumors spread that he had fled to Paraguay. In Argentina, the application moved through a chain of ministries, officials, courts, and police departments. In Paraguay, the authorities already knew of the coming request: Interpol had asked for a copy of Mengele’s naturalization file. Rudel intervened with the interior minister, presenting Mengele as a politically persecuted doctor whose presence would benefit the country.

The naturalization process was unlawful on its own terms. Applicants needed five years of residence in Paraguay, a condition Mengele had not met. Even so, in November 1959 the Supreme Court of Paraguay granted him citizenship, a residence permit, a certificate of good behavior, and an identity card. The documents offered more than a new address: they gave his protectors an argument based on Paraguayan sovereignty. Rudel maintained that Paraguay would not hand one of its citizens over to a foreign power, and President Stroessner later refused to cooperate with extradition efforts.

Mengele’s stay in Asunción was marked by personal loss as well as legal maneuvering. At a small gathering celebrating his new citizenship, he arrived close to collapse and told his companions that his father had died. He described his father as an irreplaceable ally and shield, then recalled climbing the Hirschberg mountain with him as a young man and the Latin prayer his father had recited after Josef nearly drowned as a child. He wanted to return to Germany for the funeral, but Rudel warned that doing so would expose him to arrest. Mengele stayed in Paraguay; an anonymous wreath message at the funeral conveyed his salute from afar.

A refuge under international scrutiny

The citizenship that strengthened Mengele’s position also drew attention to Paraguay. After the West German authorities obtained documents showing that he had become a Paraguayan citizen, they focused their search on Asunción and the Alto Paraná region. In 1962, West Germany requested his extradition. Stroessner refused to cooperate, saying that Mengele had left the country while insisting that Paraguay would not extradite him if he were found on its territory. The following year, Chancellor Adenauer offered ten million US dollars in aid if Paraguay delivered him; Stroessner rejected the offer.

In 1964, West Germany made public that Mengele was a Paraguayan citizen, lived in the tri-border region, and often traveled to Brazil. Its ambassador asked Stroessner to revoke the citizenship on the grounds that it had been obtained by fraud. Stroessner treated the request as an unacceptable challenge to Paraguayan sovereignty and again claimed that Mengele had already left. At a press conference a few months later, prosecutor Fritz Bauer announced a reward of 50,000 marks and said that Mengele was living freely under his real identity in Paraguay, with money and influential protectors. Paraguay’s interior minister countered that the fugitive was hiding in Brazil or Peru. These contradictory public claims show how Asunción could be both the diplomatic focus of the search and a place from which officials disputed that Mengele was still in the country.

The pursuit weakened as geopolitical priorities shifted. In 1965, West Germany appointed a new ambassador to improve relations with Paraguay, a country regarded as important to Western policy in South America. The Federal Republic eased pressure in its hunt for Mengele. His possible presence in or around Paraguay thus became entangled with broader calculations between states, while the protection afforded by citizenship and local political allies obstructed efforts to bring him to trial.

Asunción in the stories of the fugitive

The city also appears in accounts that blurred confirmed movements with rumor and invention. Isser Harel hoped to add Mengele to Mossad’s operation against Adolf Eichmann. Harel’s information was dated and incomplete: it placed Mengele in Buenos Aires under the name Gregor, supposedly running a furniture factory. The plan was to capture him after Eichmann’s arrest and transport him on the same plane to Israel. That plan reflects how intelligence about Mengele’s location could lag behind his movements and his acquisition of Paraguayan citizenship.

Later reports made Asunción part of a more elaborate fugitive legend. In stories attributed to Simon Wiesenthal, Mengele was said to dine in the city’s finest restaurants, travel widely, and escape repeated attempts to capture him. Such accounts contributed to his public image as a wealthy, almost untouchable figure, but the book distinguishes this image from the limits of what could be established. A report that he dined in Asunción does not itself confirm where he was living, just as claims placing him elsewhere do not settle the question. Asunción’s role is consequently double: it was a real center of refuge, connections, and state-level dispute, and a recurring place-name in narratives that turned uncertainty about Mengele into part of his notoriety.