The lost ‘Aryan’ utopia of Nueva Germania

Published in The Tico Times on 27th of February, 2016

NUEVA GERMANIA, Paraguay – To open the museum, señora Kück needs a hammer. She has lost the key, and the neighbor who should have a spare isn’t home today. But with a little olive oil and a few good knocks with the hammer, the lock springs open easily. She has done this more than once, Kück explains with a smile.

Inside the dusty building is a display of a few old pictures and artifacts of the German colonists who came here in 1886 to start an “Aryan colony” far away from the mainland of Europe, which they believed had been overrun by Jews. It’s not much of a museum, and Kück, who doesn’t look German, doesn’t know much about her ancestors, either.

Read on in The Tico Times