Villa Baviera

"Colonia Dignidad" redirects here. For the movie, see Colonia (film).
Villa Baviera

Villa Baviera (English: Bavaria Village) is the current organization occupying the location of the infamous and disgraced Colonia Dignidad (English: Colony Dignity), in Parral Commune, Linares Province,[1] in the Maule Region of central Chile. Located in an isolated area, Colonia Dignidad was ~35 km southeast of the city of Parral, on the north bank of the Perquilauquén River. Colonia Dignidad was founded by emigrant Germans in the mid-1950s, to which were added a group led by its eventual leader, Paul Schäfer, in 1961.[2] The full name of the colony from the 1950s was Sociedad Benefactora y Educacional Dignidad (English: Dignity Charitable and Educational Society). At its largest, Colonia Dignidad was home to some three hundred German and Chilean residents, and covered 137 square kilometers (53 sq mi).[3] The main legal economic activity of the colony was agriculture; at various periods it also was home to a school, a hospital, two airstrips, a restaurant, and a power station.

Protesters asking for justice in 2015

Colonia Dignidad's longest continuous leader, Schäfer, was a fugitive, accused of child molestation charges in the former West Germany. The organization he led in Chile was described, alternately, as a cult or as a group of "harmless eccentrics". The organization was secretive, and the Colonia was surrounded by barbed wire fences, and featured a watchtower and searchlights, and was later reported to contain secret weapon caches. In recent decades, external investigations, including efforts by the Chilean government, uncovered a history of criminal activity in the enclave, including child sexual abuse.[4] As well, the findings include that its legal activities were supplemented by income related to weapons sales and money laundering. Bruce Falconer, writing in a piece entitled "The Torture Colony" (in The American Scholar), and referencing Chile’s National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, has reported that a small set of the individuals taken by Pinochet's Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional during his rule were held as prisoners at Colonia Dignidad, some of whom were subjected to torture, and that some Colonia residents of the time were participants in the atrocities.

The population of this location was 198 in the census of 2002. As of 2005, a colony remains on the site, using the site, with its leaders insisting that it is a different, changed organization. Its current leaders have attempted to modernize the colony, allowing residents to leave to study at university, and opening the colony to tourism.

History

The first inhabitants of Colonia Dignidad arrived in 1961, brought by German citizen Paul Schaefer, who was born in 1921, in the town of Siegburg near Bonn. Schäfer is a controversial figure. His first employment in Germany was as a social worker for children in an institution of the local church, a post from which he was fired at the end of the 1940s; he then faced accusations of sexual abuse against children in his care. While these first reports led to his dismissal, no judicial proceedings were initiated. He worked next as an independent preacher. Forming a community in Gronau, an organization dedicated to working with children at risk. He quickly acquired great influence over his members, who had to perform hard farm work without pay. Shortly thereafter, stories reemerged relating to the earlier allegations of pedophilia against him. As a result Schäfer organized in 1961 the emigration of several hundred members of their community to Chile.

Problem observed

The main intention of the colony was to project, to the outside world an image of harmony, order and an inclusive system of communal work (collectivism/socialism directly in line with Nazi socialist policy). This was emphasised by the work of its own press operations who were recording and broadcasting videos showing their happy residents, amid celebrations and commemorations; men dedicated to farm work, women and girls embroidering or preparing butter.

However, Schäfer propaganda efforts were again and again overshadowed by allegations of people escaping from the colony and obtaining asylum in Germany. The first, Wolfgang Muller fled in 1966 and first exposed the atrocities that occurred within the colony. Muller obtained German citizenship and worked in a newspaper, soon becoming an activist in Germany against the leaders of colonia dignidad and finally became president of a foundation dedicated to the support of victims in Chile.

The following year, he freed another inhabitant of the colony, Heinz Kuhn, who confirmed the allegations previously made by Müller, and provided more information on abuses. However, these first allegations were rejected by conservative politicians and emphatically denied by the Chilean extreme left, whose ties were with the management of the Colony in their preparation of the military coup of September 11, 1973, as demonstrated later in chilean courts cases.

Secret detention camp

See also: Human rights violations in Pinochet's Chile The Rettig Commission noted a wealth of information supporting the accusations of the use of the laundry owned by Colonia Dignidad for detention and torture of political detainees during the period covered by this chapter ( Chilean Military Governement 1973 onwards). This farm, commonly known as Colonia Dignidad, is within Parral, on the banks of river Perquilauquén, near Catillo. The Commission has also noted that other sources, including ' '; ';l

l[pl[l];[]; from abroad, had also concluded that Colonia Dignidad was used, at least, as a detention center for political prisoners. Among these sources are spokesmen for the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Working Group on Forced Disappearance of Persons of the United Nations. The Rettig Commission ultimately based its conclusions on evidence that it examined directly.

"Bundesnachrichtendienst" assistance

Journalist John Dinges has reported that there was some degree of cooperation between the Bundesnachrichtendienst (German Intelligence Service) and Colonia Dignidad, including creation of bunkers, tunnels, a hospital, and runways for the decentralized production of armaments in modules (part produced in one place, others elsewhere in another). This subject was proactively hidden, because of the problems experienced at the time associated with Argentina.

Democratic Transition

Chile took a turn to democracy in 1990 after 17 years of dictatorship, but Colonia Dignidad remained unchanged. Allegations of abuses and humiliations that occured inside the colony increased. National and international pressure intensified, but each time the police tried to conduct investigations at the site they were greeted with a wall of silence. Colonia Dignidad authorities remained powerful and also had allies in the army and the Chilean far leftist socialists, who would warn them in advance when the police were preparing a site visit.

Slowly Chilean public opinion began to change, creating a growing feeling of resentment towards the place, which many began to perceive as an independent state within Chile, an enclave.

Life under Shäfer leadership

The inhabitants lived under a strange authoritarian system, where in addition to minimal contact with the outside, Schäfer ordered the division of families (parents did not talk to their children, or did not know their siblings), it prohibited all kinds of relations sentimental or conjugal, among adult women and men, and enacted the residence of each sex in isolated areas. Schäfer sexually abused children and some were tortured, as is clear from the statements of the German Dr. Gisela Seewald, who admitted the use of electroshock therapy and sedatives, that her boss had claimed were placebos.

In stark contrast however the colony had a school and hospital in the enclave which offered support to rural families through free education and health services. This would, ultimately, have a support in case the colony was attacked. However, there are many cases uncovered in recent years that refer to illegal adoptions of children from families residing in the surrounding areas by the Germans hierarchy in order to deliver on the promise of free education.

Accusations of atrocities

Child molestation

Paul Schäfer, a former Luftwaffe 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 20 May 1997, he fled Chile, pursued by authorities investigating charges that he had molested 26 children of the colony. Schäfer was also wanted for questioning about the disappearance in 1985 of Boris Weisfeiler.[5] In March, 2005, he was arrested in Argentina and extradited to Chile. Twenty-two other members of Colonia Dignidad, including Hartmut Hopp] the second-in-command, have been found guilty of aiding the child molestation. Schäfer was convicted, and died of heart disease in prison, on 24 April 2010, while serving a 33-year sentence at the national penitentiary in Santiago.[6]

Torture

Families of disappeared people

During the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet the Colonia Dignidad served as a special torture center. In 1991, Chile’s National Commission for 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.”[7] The March 1977 Amnesty International report, "Disappeared Prisoners in Chile", referencing a U.N. report, refers to the evidence in this way:

Another… detention center described in the [U.N.] document, in which it is alleged that experiments in torture are carried out, is Colonia Dignidad, near the town of Parral…[1]

Member 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 sex. Television, telephones and calendars were banned. Residents worked wearing Bavarian 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.

There are more than 1,100 desaparecidos (disappeared persons) in Chile, many taken to the Colony where they were tortured and killed, and one of them is a U.S. citizen – Boris Weisfeiler - a Russian-born mathematics professor at Pennsylvania State University, Weisfeiler vanished while on a hiking trip near the border between Chile and Argentina in the early part of January 1985. It is presumed that Weisfeiler was kidnapped and taken to the Colony where he was tortured and killed.[8] In 2012, a judge in Chile ordered the arrest of eight former police and army officials over the kidnapping of Weisfeiler during the Pinochet years, citing evidence from declassified US files.[9]

Weapons violations

In June and July 2005, Chilean police found two illegal arms caches in or around the colony. The first, within the colony itself, included three containers with machine guns, automatic rifles, rocket launchers, and large quantities of ammunition, 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 grenades.

In January 2005, Michael Townley, then living in the United States under a witness-protection program, acknowledged to agents of Interpol 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. Townley also gave proof of biological experiments, related to the two aforementioned laboratories, on political prisoners at Colonia Dignidad.[10]

Nazi ties

Both the Central Intelligence Agency and Simon Wiesenthal have presented evidence of the presence at the colony of the infamous Nazi concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death" for his lethal experiments on human subjects during the Holocaust.[11]

Legal Proceedings

On 6 August 2005, Chilean authorities entered the enclave to take control of its assets as part of an investigation into its former leaders, and control of the community was assigned to a state-appointed lawyer.

On 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, 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.

On 25 May 2011, journalist Amanda Reynoso-Palley reported in The Santiago Times that Hartmutt Hopp, an authority in the colony, fled Chile on board a helicopter and was believed to be in Germany. Hopp, under house arrest in Chile while awaiting trial for human rights crimes, was the "right-hand-man to Paul Schäfer, the former Nazi and founder of the Colonia Dignidad (Colony of Dignity)."[12]

On 28 January 2013, six former leaders of the colony were sentenced to prison by Chile’s Supreme Court, but the case, which prosecuted Chilean and German citizens for crimes committed in the 1990s, was not over yet, according to a story appearing the following day in The Santiago Times filed by staff reporters.[13]

Lawyer and former settler of the Colonia Dignidad, Winfried Hempel, announced to the Santiago newspaper the filing of a US $120 million lawsuit against the Chilean and German governments, for negligence of alleged knowledge of structured torture and human rights violations. “These convictions are the basis for us to pursue the indirect liability of the state of Chile, because the Chilean state had perfect knowledge they were committing such crimes for 50 years,” Hempel told the publication El Dinamo, according to the Times article. The lawyer had spent 20 years in the colony before escaping in 1997. Laina Roberts of the Times further reported that legal professionals expected the lawsuit to go to court in mid-year in Chile and early 2014 in Germany.

Villa Baviera era

School
Laguna
Hotel
Restaurant

As of 2005, there is still a colony on the site, but its current leaders insist that changes have taken place. Current leaders have attempted to modernize the colony, allowing residents to leave to study at university and opening the colony to tourism.

Also see

References

  1. 1 2 Amnesty Staff (1977-03-01). "Disappeared Prisoners in Chile". Amnesty International. Retrieved 21 April 2016. Another DINA detention center described in the same document, in which it is alleged that experiments in torture are carried out, is Colonia Dignidad, near the town of Parral, in Linares Province,
  2. ↑ Infield, Glenn, Secrets of the SS, 1981, p. 206.
  3. ↑ "BBC NEWS - Americas - Secrets of ex-Nazi's Chilean fiefdom". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
  4. ↑ "The Colony: Chile's dark past uncovered". AlJazeera. December 15, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014..
  5. ↑ Harding, Luke (2005-03-12). "Fugitive Nazi cult leader arrested". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  6. ↑ "Ex-Nazi Paul Schaefer dead in Chile, age 88". Agence France-Presse. 25 April 2010. Retrieved April 24, 2010.
  7. ↑ Falconer, Bruce (2008-09-01). "The Torture Colony". The American Scholar. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
  8. ↑ "Professor Boris Weisfeiler: Missing in Chile since 1985". weisfeiler.com. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
  9. ↑ "Judge in Chile orders arrests over missing US hiker". BBC News. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
  10. ↑ "Michael Townley fue interrogado por muerte de Frei Montalva". Cooperativa.cl. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
  11. ↑ Infield, Secrets, p. 207.
  12. ↑ "Human Rights & Law News: "Colonia Dignidad Cult’s Second-In-Command Flees Chile"". The Santiago Times. May 25, 2011. Retrieved February 28, 2015.
  13. ↑ "Chile Abroad: Colonia Dignidad victims file US $120 million lawsuit against Chile". The Santiago Times. 2 January 2013. Retrieved 28 February 2015.

Bibliography

Further reading

The following citations are presented in inverse date order, newest published to oldest. They are offered for improvement of the article, and to allow readers further information on the subject.

External links

Coordinates: 36°23′15″S 71°35′15″W / 36.38750°S 71.58750°W / -36.38750; -71.58750

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