Colonia Dignidad
Encyclopedia
Villa Baviera formerly known as Colonia Dignidad (Dignity Colony) is a hamlet
Hamlet (place)
A hamlet is usually a rural settlement which is too small to be considered a village, though sometimes the word is used for a different sort of community. Historically, when a hamlet became large enough to justify building a church, it was then classified as a village...

 in Parral
Parral, Chile
Parral is a city and commune and in the Linares Province of central Chile's seventh region of Maule.-History:Parral was founded in 1795 by the Viceroy of Peru, Ambrosio O'Higgins...

 Commune, Linares Province
Linares Province
Linares is one of four provinces of the central Chilean region of Maule . The provincial capital and most populous center is the city of Linares.-Administration:...

, Maule Region
Maule Region
The VII Maule Region is one of Chile's 15 first order administrative divisions. Its capital is Talca. The region takes its name from the Maule River which, running westward from the Andes, bisects the region and spans a basin of about 20,600 km2...

, Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

. Located in an isolated area of central Chile, it lies 35 km southeast of the city of Parral
Parral, Chile
Parral is a city and commune and in the Linares Province of central Chile's seventh region of Maule.-History:Parral was founded in 1795 by the Viceroy of Peru, Ambrosio O'Higgins...

, on the north bank of the Perquilauquén River. It was founded by a group of German emigrants led by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer
Paul Schäfer
Paul Schäfer Schneider was the founder and former leader of a sect and agricultural commune of German immigrants called Colonia Dignidad —later renamed Villa Baviera—located in the south of Chile, about 340 km south of Santiago...

 in 1961. The full name of the colony was Sociedad Benefactora y Educacional Dignidad (Dignity Charitable and Educational Society), like its precursor, which the emigrants started in the mid-1950s. The population of the place was 198 in the census of 2002.

At its greatest extent, Villa Baviera was home to some three hundred German and Chilean residents and covered 137 square kilometres (52.9 sq mi). The main economic activity of the colony was agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

, but it also contained a school, a free hospital, two airstrips, a restaurant, and even a power station
Power station
A power station is an industrial facility for the generation of electric energy....

. The colony was secretive, surrounded by barbed wire
Barbed wire
Barbed wire, also known as barb wire , is a type of fencing wire constructed with sharp edges or points arranged at intervals along the strand. It is used to construct inexpensive fences and is used atop walls surrounding secured property...

 fences, searchlight
Searchlight
A searchlight is an apparatus that combines a bright light source with some form of curved reflector or other optics to project a powerful beam of light of approximately parallel rays in a particular direction, usually constructed so that it can be swiveled about.-Military use:The Royal Navy used...

s, and a watchtower
Watchtower
A watchtower is a type of fortification used in many parts of the world. It differs from a regular tower in that its primary use is military, and from a turret in that it is usually a freestanding structure. Its main purpose is to provide a high, safe place from which a sentinel or guard may...

, and contained secret weapon caches (including a tank
Tank
A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...

). It was described alternately as a cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...

, or as a group of "harmless eccentrics". In recent decades, however, external investigations, including efforts by the Chilean government, uncovered a history of criminal activity in the enclave, include child sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include asking or pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities , indecent exposure with intent to gratify their own sexual desires or to...

.

Nazi ties

Both the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

 and Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter....

 have presented evidence of the presence at the colony of the infamous Nazi concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele
Josef Rudolf Mengele , also known as the Angel of Death was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He earned doctorates in anthropology from Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University...

, known as the "Angel of Death" for his lethal experiments on human subjects
Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners by the Nazi German regime in its concentration camps mainly in the early 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Prisoners were coerced into participating: they did not willingly volunteer and there...

 during the Holocaust.

Tortures

During the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...

 the Colonia Dignidad served as a special torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

 center. In 1991, Chile’s National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation concluded “that a certain number of people apprehended by the DINA were really taken to Colonia Dignidad, held prisoner there for some time, and that some of them were subjected to torture, and that besides DINA agents, some of the residents there were involved in these actions.”

Accusations of abuse

Some defectors from the colony have portrayed it as a cult in which leader Paul Schäfer held ultimate power. They claim that the residents were never allowed to leave the colony, and that they were strictly segregated by gender. Television, telephones and calendars were banned. Residents worked wearing Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

n peasant garb and sang German folk songs. Sex was banned, with some residents forced to take drugs to reduce their desires. Drugs were also administered as a form of sedation, mostly to young girls, but to males as well. Severe discipline in the forms of beatings and torture was commonplace: Schäfer insisted that discipline was spiritually enriching.

Child molestation

Paul Schäfer
Paul Schäfer
Paul Schäfer Schneider was the founder and former leader of a sect and agricultural commune of German immigrants called Colonia Dignidad —later renamed Villa Baviera—located in the south of Chile, about 340 km south of Santiago...

, a former Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....

 paramedic, was the founder and first leader ("Permanent Uncle") of Colonia Dignidad. He had left Germany in 1961, after being accused of sexually abusing two boys. On May 20, 1997, he fled Chile, pursued by authorities investigating charges that he had molested 26 children of the colony. In March, 2005, he was arrested in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 and extradited to Chile. (Schäfer was also wanted for questioning about the disappearance in 1985 of Boris Weisfeiler
Boris Weisfeiler
Boris Weisfeiler is a Russian-born mathematician who lived in the United States before going missing in Chile in 1985, aged 43. The Chilean government claimed that he drowned, but his family believes he was forced to disappear near Colonia Dignidad, an enclave led by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer.-...

, an American Jewish mathematics professor of Russian birth. ) Schäfer died in prison while serving a 20-year sentence at the national penitentiary in Santiago April 24, 2010, of heart disease.

Twenty-two other members of Colonia Dignidad, including Dr. Hartmut Hopp, the second-in-command, have been found guilty of aiding the child molestation.

Weapons caches

In June and July 2005, Chilean police found two arms
Weapon
A weapon, arm, or armament is a tool or instrument used with the aim of causing damage or harm to living beings or artificial structures or systems...

 caches in or around the colony. The first, within the colony itself, included three containers with machine gun
Machine gun
A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire rounds in quick succession from an ammunition belt or large-capacity magazine, typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....

s, automatic rifle
Automatic rifle
Automatic rifle is a term generally used to describe a semi-automatic rifle chambered for a rifle cartridge, capable of delivering both semi- and full automatic fire...

s, rocket launcher
Shoulder-launched missile weapon
A shoulder-fired missile, shoulder-launched missile or man-portable missile is a projectile fired at a target, small enough to be carried by a single person, and fired while held on one's shoulder...

s, and large quantities of ammunition
Ammunition
Ammunition is a generic term derived from the French language la munition which embraced all material used for war , but which in time came to refer specifically to gunpowder and artillery. The collective term for all types of ammunition is munitions...

, some as many as forty years old; even a battle tank was found under the ground: this cache was described as the largest arsenal ever found in private hands in Chile. The second cache, outside a restaurant operated by the colony, included rocket launchers and grenade
Grenade
A grenade is a small explosive device that is projected a safe distance away by its user. Soldiers called grenadiers specialize in the use of grenades. The term hand grenade refers any grenade designed to be hand thrown. Grenade Launchers are firearms designed to fire explosive projectile grenades...

s.

In January 2005, Michael Townley
Michael Townley
Michael Vernon Townley is a US citizen currently living in the United States under terms of the federal witness protection program. A Central Intelligence Agency agent and operative of the Chilean secret police, DINA, Townley confessed, was convicted, and served 62 months in prison in the United...

, then living in the United States under a witness-protection program, acknowledged to agents of Interpol
Interpol
Interpol, whose full name is the International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL, is an organization facilitating international police cooperation...

 Chile links between DINA and Colonia Dignidad. Townley also revealed information about Colonia Dignidad and the Army's Laboratory on Bacteriological Warfare. This last laboratory would have replaced the old DINA's laboratory at Vía Naranja de Lo Curro hill, where Townley worked with the chemist Eugenio Berríos
Eugenio Berríos
Eugenio Berríos Sagredo was a Chilean biochemist who worked for the DINA intelligence agency.Berríos was charged with carrying outProyecto Andrea in which Pinochet ordered the production of sarin gas, a chemical weapon used by the DINA. Sarin gas leaves no trace and victims' deaths closely mimic...

. Townley also gave proof of biological experiments, related to the two aforementioned laboratories, on political prisoners at Colonia Dignidad http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/antialone.html?page=http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/site/artic/20050330/pags/20050330114755.html.

Villa Baviera era

As of 2005, there is still a colony on the site, but its current leaders insist that changes have taken place. The current leader is Peter Müller. He has attempted to modernize the colony, allowing residents to leave to study at university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...

 and opening the colony to tourism
Tourism
Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...

.

On August 26, 2005, Chilean authorities entered the enclave to take control of its assets as part of an investigation into its former leaders. Control of the community was assigned to a state-appointed lawyer.

In April 2006, former members of the colony issued a public apology and asked for forgiveness for forty years of sexual abuse of children and other abuses of human rights. In a full-page letter published in El Mercurio
El Mercurio
El Mercurio is a conservative Chilean newspaper with editions in Valparaíso and Santiago. Its Santiago edition is considered the country's paper-of-record and its Valparaíso edition is the oldest daily in the Spanish language currently in circulation. El Mercurio is owned by El Mercurio S.A.P...

, a leading Chilean newspaper, the former members said that their charismatic former leader Paul Schäfer dominated them in mind and body while he molested their own children.

External links

  • Infield, Glenn. Secrets of the SS. Stein and Day
    Stein and Day
    Stein and Day, Inc. was an American publishing company founded by Sol Stein and his wife Patricia Day in 1962. Stein was both the publisher and the editor-in-chief...

    , 1981. ISBN 0-8128-2790-2.
  • Levenda, Peter (1st ed., 1995). Unholy Alliance: History of the Nazi Involvement With the Occult. 406 pp. Avon Books. ISBN 0-380-77722-3.
  • Levenda, Peter (2nd ed., 2002). Unholy Alliance: History of the Nazi Involvement With the Occult. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8264-1409-5.
  • Fugitive Chile cult leader held – BBC News
  • Chile discovers huge weapons cache on cult grounds (Reuters)
  • Chile officials take over colony – BBC News
  • German held over 'Chile torture' – BBC News
  • Surviving contemporary witness
    Klaus Schnellenkamp
    Klaus Schnellenkamp is an established Chilean author. He gained worldwide fame after his spectacular escape from the Colonia Dignidad to Germany in December 2005. His book in German Geboren im Schatten der Angst; Ich überlebte die Colonia Dignidad...

     – Klaus Schnellenkamp
    Klaus Schnellenkamp
    Klaus Schnellenkamp is an established Chilean author. He gained worldwide fame after his spectacular escape from the Colonia Dignidad to Germany in December 2005. His book in German Geboren im Schatten der Angst; Ich überlebte die Colonia Dignidad...

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