Cult lead by former Nazi acted with impunity for decades in Chile

SANTIAGO: The settlement is still there today, four hours south from Santiago by car, tucked in the foothills of the snow-tipped Andes. The 13 00 agricultural hectares of wheat, maize and soybean fields are called by a different name now – Villa Baviera – but the place remains a post-war European time capsule airlifted onto the Chilean central valley. Recent footage shows that German, not Spanish, is still the dominant tongue; the structures are Bavarian-style; the signs are in gothic script.

For four decades 2.5m barbed wire fences and German shepherds kept outsiders away and insiders from leaving the settlement which was then called Colonia Dignidad and housed a bizarre cult of postwar German emigres. The commune was led by Paul Schaefer, a Colonel Kurtz-like figure who waged psychological warfare on his 300 or so followers as a means of total control.

The self- proclaimed holy man – a one- eyed, ex- Nazi serial child abuser who once reportedly faked the shooting of a cult member in a Santa Claus costume to scare the settlement’s children into obedience – acted with impunity for decades thanks to his close relationship with the government of General Augusto Pinochet, the military ruler of Chile from 1973 through 1990.

This week, Germany and Chile signed an agreement to work together on a commission on Colonia Dignidad.

According to a 2005 profile of the cult and its leader by Bruce Falconer in the American Scholar, Schaefer had worked as a youth minister at a German church, but was fired “when suspicion arose that he had somehow mistreated the boys in his care”.

Schaefer established a community for war widows and their children but allegations of molestation arose and Schaefer fled Germany.

In 1961, he arrived in Chile, buying a ranch with money donated by his followers back home. By 1963, 230 Germans followers were living at Colonia Dignidad.

Men and women were not allowed to live together and sex was prohibited. Children were not raised by their parents, but nurses at the settlement’s modern hospital.

Then, according to Falconer, Schaefer was raping the young boys each night. The abuse lasted years. And yet no one among the settlers complained due to fear. Residents remain at the site today, which markets itself as a Bavarian-themed retreat.

The deal will also establish a memorial for Schaefer’s victims. – Washington Post

PICTURE: REUTERS View of the entrance of Colonia Dignidad (dignity community) or Villa Baviera, a German community founded in 1961 in Parral town, south of Santiago, Chile.