Villa Baviera (Spanish: Bavaria Village), formerly known as Colonia Dignidad (Spanish: Dignidad Colony) is a Chilean hamlet in Parral Commune, Linares Province, Maule Region. It is located in an isolated area of central Chile, 35 km southeast of the city of Parral, on the north bank of the Perquilauquén River. It was founded by a group of German immigrants led by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer in 1961. The full name of the colony was Sociedad Benefactora y Educacional Dignidad (English: Dignity Charitable and Educational Society), like its precursor, which the immigrants 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 square miles). 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 has been described as a cult, though some considered the colony simply a group of harmless eccentrics. In recent years, however, some facts have emerged about the disturbing history of the colony. With Villa Grimaldi, it is considered as one of the most important detention and torture centers of Augusto Pinochet's era, and links with DINA have been alleged.citation needed
Accusations of abuse
Some defectors from the colony have portrayed the 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 and telephones 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. 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 is also wanted for questioning about the disappearance in 1985 of Boris Weisfeiler, an American Jewish mathematics professor of Russian birth.citation needed)
Twenty-two other members of Colonia Dignidad, including Dr. Hartmut Hopp, the second-in-command, have been found guilty of aiding the child molestation.
Torture
Investigations by Amnesty International and the Chilean National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation have verified that Colonia Dignidad was used by DINA, the Chilean secret police, as a concentration camp for the detention of political prisoners during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorial rule of Chile. Most accounts date this use of the colony the period between 1973 and 1977, but precise dates are not known.citation needed
The son of DINA head Manuel Contreras claims that his father and Pinochet visited Colonia Dignidad in 1974 and that his father and Schäfer were good friends. The current leader of Villa Baviera admits that torture took place within the old colony but says that Villa Baviera is a new entity.citation needed
In March of 2005, former DINA and CIA agent Michael Townley acknowledged links between Colonia Dignidad and DINA as well as relations with the Bacteriological War Army Laboratory. He would have spoken about biological experiments imposed on detainees, with the help of the aforementioned laboratory and another one, that was situated on Vía Naranja de Lo Curro hill [1].
In 2005, German-born Gisela Seewald, who had arrived in Colonia Dignidad in 1963, confessed before to Judge Jorge Zepeda that she had applied psychiatric treatment to children because Schäfer assured her they were possessed.
Weapons caches
In June and July of 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 much 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 of 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 proofs of biological experiments, related to the two aforementioned laboratories, on political prisoners at Colonia Dignidad [2].
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 of 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 children.
References
- Levenda, Peter (2nd ed., 2002). Unholy Alliance: History of the Nazi Involvement With the Occult. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8264-1409-5.
External links
Coordinates: 36°23′15″S, 71°35′15″W
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