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Related: About this forumGermany opens files on Nazi paedophile sect in Chile
Germany opens files on Nazi paedophile sect in Chile
April 26, 2016
Berlin (AFP) - Germany is declassifying its files on Colonia Dignidad, a sect in Chile run by a Nazi paedophile, Germany's foreign minister said Tuesday, admitting the diplomatic service's failure to stop the abuses.
Colonia Dignidad was a German commune founded in 1961 by convicted paedophile Paul Schaefer and a group of fellow German immigrants in a remote part of Chile, where residents were indoctrinated and kept as virtual slaves over three decades.
Schaefer also collaborated with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, whose secret police used the colony -- which lies some 350 kilometres (215 miles) south of the capital Santiago -- as a place to torture opponents.
"The handling of Colonia Dignidad was not a glorious chapter of the history of the foreign ministry," said Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
More:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/germany-opens-files-nazi-paedophile-sect-chile-203629334.html?nhp=1
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141428788
d_r
(6,907 posts)Like the villains in a novel
Judi Lynn
(160,545 posts)Paul Schäfer: Nazi colonel who established an anti-Semitic colony in Chile after the war
Phil Davison |
Sunday 23 May 2010
Paul Schäfer was a former colonel in Hitler's army who survived the post-war years under the cover of being a Lutheran pastor and running an orphanage near what was then the West German capital, Bonn.
After he was charged with sexually abusing two orphan boys he fled to Chile in 1961, taking many orphans and loyal followers with him, aided by an underground Nazi network in South America and the pro-Nazi Chilean military.
There, near the town of Parral, 220 miles south of the capital, Santiago, he purchased 70 square miles of lush forested land which he called Colonia Dignidad [Dignity Colony]. Behind barbed wire and protected by armed guards and Alsatian dogs andeventually with the support and protection of his friend, the Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet he established a secretive anti-Semitic and anti-communist cult which became something of a state-within-a-state, effectively a forced labour camp for the orphans who worked the land from sunrise to sunset, unpaid and barred from leaving. Schäfer built a power plant, a television station and two airstrips within his land, ostensibly to export timber, wheat, corn and German specialities such as pastries and bratwurst.
After Pinochet came to power in a 1973 coup, their friendship meant he could import and export freely without paying taxes. He was aided by support from local farmers who benefited from mutual trade as well as a school and a state-of-the-art hospital just inside the colony's gates, which offered treatment to farmers' children partly to encourage the local farmers to support the colony and help guard it against intruders. When I tried to interview Schäfer for The Independent in the 1990s I was kept at bay and intimidated by local farmers with machetes, armed German guards with walkie-talkies and Alsatian dogs.
More:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/paul-sch-fer-nazi-colonel-who-established-an-anti-semitic-colony-in-chile-after-the-war-1981014.html
Judi Lynn
(160,545 posts)Last Updated: Friday, 11 March, 2005, 20:16 GMT
Secrets of ex-Nazi's Chilean fiefdom
By Becky Branford
BBC News
Paul Schaefer - a former Nazi medic, Baptist preacher and alleged cult leader - has finally been captured in Argentina after eight years on the run.
His arrest means he may face trial on outstanding charges of the sexual abuse of young boys in Chile.
Mr Schaefer, who is in his 80s, has also been denounced by former followers and by human rights campaigners.
For them, his capture signals the end to decades of impunity for what they allege are his strange and terrible crimes.
Paul Schaefer was a medic in Hitler's army during World War II. After the war, he set up an evangelical ministry and a youth home, purportedly to care for war orphans.
More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4340591.stm
Judi Lynn
(160,545 posts)'Colonia': Film broaches atrocities of German-run sect in Chile
Florian Gallenberger's film "Colonia," premiering at the Toronto Film Festival, revisits the dark history of the Colonia Dignidad, a secretive German-founded colony in Chile. The enclave's legacy remains controversial.
14.09.2015
Although Paul Schäfer was the founder of Colonia Dignidad, an isolated settlement in Chile 400 kilometers south of Santiago, he wasn't the only one who made its creation possible. Established in 1961 by German emigrants with strong Nazi ties, the enclave, which became known for its widespread cases of torture and child abuse, had several supporters in Germany and Chile.
In his book "Colonia Dignidad" (1998), the journalist Gero Gemballa wrote that the media's portrayal of the settlement remained surprisingly factual - practically no exaggerations or creepy legends were added to the descriptions.
"Reality was probably hard to beat," he noted.
Through his research, Gemballa uncovered a network of German, Chilean and international secret services and economic interests. He claims that the settlement was involved in the torture and murder of opponents of the Pinochet regime. This complicity protected Colonia Dignidad (which translates as "dignity colony" from the Chilean state.
. . .
Paul Schäfer and his colleagues had political support in Germany, too. The conservative German party CSU was particularly impressed by the way the colony transposed Bavarian traditions in the distant Andes.
More:
http://www.dw.com/en/colonia-film-broaches-atrocities-of-german-run-sect-in-chile/a-18712816
Judi Lynn
(160,545 posts)Victims of unspeakable abuse by one-eyed Nazi pedophile sue Germany and Chile
1:30pm April 27, 2016
By ninemsn
Germans are bracing themselves for horrifying revelations about a one-eyed Nazi pedophile who fled to Chile and led a sect where barbaric sexual abuse was commonplace over three decades.
Colonia Dignidad - which lies some 350 kilometres south of the capital Santiago - was a German commune founded in 1961 by convicted pedophile Paul Schaefer, who had served as a corporal in Hitler's army.
On Wednesday, the German government announced it was declassifying files on Colonia Dignidad, where residents were indoctrinated, kept as virtual slaves and systematically physically, mentally and sexually abused.
Schaefer also collaborated with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, whose secret police used the colony as a place to torture opponents.
Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/afp/2016/04/27/03/57/germany-opens-files-on-nazi-paedophile-sect-in-chile#hVAA5QSLdt0tBxjw.99
Judi Lynn
(160,545 posts)Germany Expresses Regret Over Failure to Stop Child Abuse at Nazi Nurse's Commune
by Andy Eckardt
Apr 27 2016, 9:32 am ET
MAINZ, Germany Germany's foreign ministry acknowledged Tuesday that its diplomats "looked away" and failed to prevent child abuse at a commune founded by a Nazi pedophile in Chile.
Paul Schaefer a Nazi nurse who became a preacher set up the secretive Colonia Dignidad commune in Chile after fleeing Germany for South America in 1961. He died in a Chilean prison in 2010 at the age of 89 while serving a 20-year sentence for child abuse, arms possession and human-rights violations.
Children who lived at the Colonia Dignidad commune testified at trials of colony leaders about being sexually abused, enslaved and separated from their parents.
. . .
They have opened up their German-style enclave to tourists, leaving many former victims appalled.
"It is something of a tourism center with aspects of the 60s, where a strange mix of Chilean famers, German migrants, victims and culprits, exist," former Colonia Dignidad resident and victim Winfried Hempel told German's Deutschlandfunk radio. "This is as if you had put a McDonald's into (former concentration camp) Buchenwald."
More:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/germany-expresses-regret-over-failure-stop-child-abuse-nazi-nurse-n563381