Volume XXXVII No. 4 April 1982 INFORMATION ISSUED BY THE ASSOOAJiai Of JBHSV AGnKCSf K GOAT uarAH C. C. Aronsfeld which has a German population of approximately 800,000 (out of a total of 2.5 million). In fact the German Meimonite settlement dates back to 1900. Only about 1,000 have been counted in the capital Asunci6n. The majority, including German settlers from the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul appear PARADISE IN PARAGUAY to be concentrated in a colony called Hohenau in Southern Paraguay, north of the Parana port of South America has long iseen a cherished refuge for with their minerals and highly developed industries, Encamacion, with an area of roughly 75,000 acres. European, especially German, Nazis. Immediately are entirely under the control of international high This colony, with others called Altos, Obligado, Bella after the Hitler war, many of them levanted to finance. We would therefore have jumped from the Vista and Fordii, was steadily enlarged by arrivals, in Argentina and Brazil where the old spirit was soon frying pan into the fire. We were looking for a land 1907, 1920, 1931-34 and 1946-47, of Germans from spread in books (published by the Diirer Verlag, with neither big industries nor prospecting of gold, countries other than Germany, mainly U.S.A. and Buenos Aires) and journals (e.g. Der Weg and Die diamonds and other minerals, in other words a land Canada. Many of their descendants are playing a Briicke). A number then found it sufficiently safe to outside the interests of high finance". Schmidt goes on notable part in national life. The present head of return, e.g. Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the Luftwaffe ace, now to describe the attractions of Paraguay (e.g. no income State, for example. General Alfredo Stroessner, now the patron of Dr. Gerhard Prey's German People's tax). To this information, the Nazi editor is pleased to 70, is the son of a German immigrant. There are some Union. More recently, however, some have again add: "German settlers are in demand once again. 100 Gern\an .schools in the country. thought of settlement in South America, this time not Land in Paraguay has already been acquired". to run away from danger but to live in a more con­ In another neo-Nazi paper "honest advice" on invest­ genial enviromnent. The country chosen by them is ment and the purchase of real estate in Paraguay is RENT AND RATE Paraguay. regularly advertised by "a reliable expert who also REBATE APPLICATIONS For some time past advertisements in neo-Nazi pub­ administers estates". Actually, "fertile wooded and German and Austrian Pensions lications, both German and Austrian, have aslced for grazing land under German administration" was for In our issue of November, 1981 we informed our "patriots" prepared to join a "patriotic settlement several years canvassed by a Paraguayan Estates Com­ readers that the City of Westminster had agreed to community". Both "active worlcers" and "passive pany in the neo-Nazi weekly Deutsche National make the rebate calculations "by reference to the tax­ investors" were wanted. The "activists" should "wish Zeitung. These adverts ceased to appear some time ago able element of the benefits received from the German to withdraw from this racketeering society" and and have now surfaced in the general German press. and Austrian authorities." We are now advised that on engage in "agriculture, cattle breeding and other ways So did others, e.g. Communal and Economic Advisers further examination of the Guidelines issued by the of making a living". Candidates are promised, by the offer agricultural land (up to 2,500 acres), suitable for Department of the Environment and of the position of Hesse advertiser Gerd Lucka, "profitable capital cattle breeding, at approximately £200 per acre. the pensioners who, in many cases, were in receipt of returns and security" as Paraguay is considered "a several 'Renten' and pensions, the Westminster autho­ politically stable zone of South America". Prominent Antisemites rities felt that this concession went beyond the dis­ More specific statements were published by Thies Paraguay has in fact a long association with cretion allowed to them by the Department of the Christophersen, author of the Holocaust-denying Germans. One of the earliest settlers was the promi­ Envirorunent. pamphlet Die Auschwitz Liige, in his magazine Die nent antisemite of Imperial Germany, Dr. Bernhard The disregard or partial disregard of the German Bauernschaft ("The Farmer") which under its innoc­ Fdrster, and his wife Elizaijeth, the sister of Friedrich or Austrian payments in line with the taxation treat­ uous title unrepentantly upholds the Nazi cause. There Nietzsche. They established in 1886, on the upper ment has been withdrawn. A former disregard of £4 interest, in "our paradise off the beaten track" reaches of the Parana, a colony called Nueva Germania, per week will also no longer be operative. (Paraguay) was solicited by one Rudolf Schmidt, of 130 miles Northeast of the capital Asuncion. He This withdrawal of the concessions previously in the Anglo-Afrikaner Bond, Bellville, South Africa. A received some financial aid from the Paraguayan force will be applied in future rebate calculations. former member of the Hitler Youth which he joined Government, and his ambition was to live in accor­ There will be no re-assessment of rebates already paid. "not because 1 had to but laecause I wanted to", he dance with Richard Wagner's teachings, especially his All applicants will be informed that from the renewal left Germany in 1965 to find his Promised Land antisemitism, which the two had in common. Forster onwards, the full pension(s) (including compensation among the champions of Apartheid, but he has now had been disillusioned by the apparent failure of the 'Renten') will be used in rebate calculations and will become sadly disillusioned. He has discovered that the antisemitic movement in Germany. The old world, he therefore have to be stated in the applications. South African right-wing movement, even the diehard thought, "shows the clearest symptoms of decrepitude, As far as we know the position in Camden and other Anglo-Afrikaner Bond, must be written off as "lost". of senile impotence, of incipient dissolution . What boroughs has not changed. In Camden, the first 25% His daughter said the "lonely and bitter man did is flawed and rotten in our modern society is just what or £4 per week, whichever is the higher, of German/ everything in his power to fight for the cause of the society calls 'educated, liberal and humane'". Austrian "restitution pensions" will be disregarded for White Man in South Africa but he received very little However, Neu-Germanien did not prosper. The rent rebates or allowances, but not for rate rebates. support. The Afrikaner proved to be more concerned pioneer who expected to redeem the Teutonic race in In 1977 we took this matter up with the Department about status and making money than his own future. South American forests turned out to l)e, literally, a of the Environment, which at that time had issued Many people paid lip-service to my father's efforts but crier in the wilderness. The few who followed him fell Guidelines for local authorities on which the Camden shied away when they were asked to make sacrifices. out among themselves. F6rster's foibles, compounded treatment for the calculation of rent reliefs is based. In the end my father fought a lonely battle. As a result, by the antics of his wife, reduced the colonising effort We have again written to the Department of the he decided to pack up and start a new life somewhere such as it was to farce, and when the financial basis Environment in order to secure more beneficial Guide­ else". Incidentally, his pessimism is not shared by was lost through no very creditable manipulations, the lines and a more uniform treatment by local autho­ other Europeans with a Nazi record. Only recently unhappy man committed suicide in an earlier German rities for rent and rate rebate purposes. We will inform South Africa admitted a high-ranking Dutch SS officer. colony, called, ironically enough, San Bernardino. our readers of the outcome of our representations. Schmidt chose Paraguay "for very special reasons" The year was 1889, a few weeks after Hitler was born. In the meantime, we repeat our previous recom­ which he explained to German friends back home: At present Paraguay has a German population of mendation that any recipient of compensation 'We wanted to liberate ourselves from the fangs of about 20,000, though prominent Germans living there "Renten" or social insurance pensions from Germany 'nternational high finance and so, outside Europe, we have put the figure nearer 50,000. Most of them, or Austria, as a Nazi victim, should clearly state the Could hope to settle neither in North America, Canada, largely Mennonites, live in a part of the country close nature of such payments in the income section of his nor Australia or New Zealand, as these countries. to the Southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina or her application. F.E.F. Pa«e2 AJR INFORMATION AprU 1982 Richard Grunberger BLANKS IN fflSTORY This is a small book* on a big and important subject. Mrs. Dawidowicz is well-known as the author of "The War Against the Jews" and "A Holocaust Reader", excellent and valuable treatments of their ROOTS OF HATRED subjects. In the course of working on them she was struck by the extent to which this central phenomenon of twentieth century history was either wholly over­ The Holocaust was a calamity of such dimension Chimeric antisemitism is best exemplified by the looked, or dealt with inadequately in so many his­ that intervening time has in no way diminished its notion of the profanation of the consecrated host.