Villa Baviera

Villa Baviera (English: Bavaria Village), formerly known as Colonia Dignidad (English: Dignity Colony) is a hamlet in Parral Commune, Linares Province, Maule Region, Chile. Located in an isolated area of central Chile, it lies 35 km southeast of the city of Parral, on the north bank of the Perquilauquén River. It was founded by a group of German emigrants led by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer in 1961.^[1] The full name of the colony was Sociedad Benefactora y Educacional Dignidad (English: 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 kilometers (53 sq mi).^{[citation needed]} The main economic activity of the colony was agriculture, but it also contained a school, a free hospital, two airstrips, a restaurant, and even a power station. The colony was secretive, surrounded by barbed wire fences, searchlights, and a watchtower, and contained secret weapon caches (including a tank). It was described alternately as a cult, 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.

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.^[2]

Tortures

During the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet the Colonia Dignidad served as a special torture 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.”^[3]

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 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.^{[citation needed]}

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 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 and extradited to Chile. (Schäfer was also wanted for questioning about the disappearance in 1985 of Boris Weisfeiler, an American Jewish mathematics professor of Russian birth. ^[4]) Schäfer died in prison while serving a 20-year sentence at the national penitentiary in Santiago April 24, 2010, of heart disease. ^[5]

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 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 [1].

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 and opening the colony to tourism.

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, 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.

References

1. ^ (Infield, Glenn. Secrets of the SS, Stein and Day, 1981, p.206)
2. ^ Infield, p.207
3. ^ http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-torture-colony/
4. ^ Harding, Luke (2005-03-12). "Fugitive Nazi cult leader arrested". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/mar/12/warcrimes.chile. Retrieved 2008-04-02. 
5. ^ "Ex-Nazi Paul Schaefer dead in Chile age 88: prison," Agence France-Presse, April 25, 2010, retrieved April 24, 2010 at http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100425/twl-chile-germany-nazi-schaefer-6b0205e.html

External links

• Infield, Glenn. Secrets of the SS. Stein and Day, 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.
• Falconer, Bruce (Autumn 2008). "The Torture Colony". The American Scholar 77 (4): 33–53. http://theamericanscholar.org/the-torture-colony/. Retrieved 2011-09-03. 
• 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

Coordinates: 36°23′15″S 71°35′15″W / 36.3875°S 71.5875°W / -36.3875; -71.5875