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'Altos' is a town in the Altos district of the Cordillera Department of Paraguay. The town contains a German clubhouse, a church, a cemetery, and a statue of José Félix Estigarribia, the President of Paraguay (August 15 1939 - September 7 1940) who died in a plane crash above the town.
It is most notable as the temporary hiding place of Joseph Mengele, the notorious Nazi scientist who experimented on concentration camp inmates. Mengele and his wife Martha fled to Altos in 1959, after the West German government discovered his address in Buenos Aires, Argentina and issued a warrant for his arrest. His wife failed to adjust to their new life and left him. In 1960, panicked at the increased interest in his whereabouts by Nazi hunters and the recent capture of Adolf Eichmann, Mengele left Altos for Hohenau in southern Paraguay.