From Germany to Chile, the roots of suffering run deep. In 1961, a German Nazi fugitive, child molester, and preacher named Paul Schäfer established a German colony in Maule, Chile. To make matters even grimmer, the premises of Colonia Dignidad, as it was named, served as the site of detention, torture, and extermination after US-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet seized control of the country in September 1973.
In January 1979, according to a heavily redacted US Senate Subcommittee document, the German-Chilean connection on Operation Condor was established. The document also reveals that Washington was aware of Colonia Dignidad’s role during the Pinochet dictatorship. The document explains, in part, that the Chilean National Intelligence Directorate, or DINA, “maintains close liaison with the German Nazi colony of La Dignidad in Southern Chile.”
In recent months, though, Colonia Dignidad has made a dramatic reappearance in the news. In January, the renewed coverage led Haydee Oberreuter, director of the National Institute of Human Rights, to visit the colony, bringing its history and legacy back to the forefront of Chile’s collective memory.
Meanwhile, a joint project between the Free University of Berlin and the Santiago-based Museum of Memory and Human Rights will shed more light on the German-Chilean link against the backdrop of dictatorship, as well as record oral histories that the public can access permanently.
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Last June, Chilean President Gabriel Boric announced the start of an expropriation process that would, in his words, transform several “old space[s] of torture and horror” at Colonial Dignidad into a “place of memory and future.”
Rights groups and organizations dedicated to preserving those memories have urged the government to avoid disturbing sites that serve as graves. Luis Marchant, who survived detention at Colonia Dignidad, said that plan marked a necessary step forward and must take place within a broader, ongoing quest for “truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition.” Some rights groups, according to Chilean media, have worried that the expropriation process has excluded their input.
The process should finish by 2026, and then will follow a participatory effort to design the memorial site. Appropriation will focus on six sites: Schäfer’s house, the hospital, the porteria, the potato cellar, the restaurant, and the onsite hotel that still operates.
In 2017, Chile and Germany signed an agreement to create a joint commission with the specific aim to document the crimes that took place at Colonia Dignidad. Chilean human rights organizations have criticized the agreement — notably due to Germany’s role in maintaining impunity with regard to the state’s links with Colonia Dignidad, as well as the role Nazi officials played in disappearing Chile’s detainees
The German Embassy in Chile was aware of the abuse taking place at the colony at the time, but according to documents released by the German germany government, Schäfer boasted of his ability to manipulate diplomats and prevent investigations.
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Colonia Dignidad came into existence in Chile in 1961, but it traces its roots seven years back to Siesburg, Germany. There, Schäfer founded an organization called the Private Social Mission in 1954, a project that marked the former Nazis’ first experiment in manipulation. Schäfer had his followers work in a chain of supermarkets for no pay, exploiting the widespread poverty of post-war Germany.
Soon, Schäfer also found himself facing charges of sexually abusing children. When a warrant for his arrest came out, he fled Germany, stopping first in the Middle East and then making his way — along with his followers — to Chile.
Chile’s Ambassador to Germany, Arturo Maschke, helped Schäfer purchase land, which paved the way for the Dignidad Benefactory and Educational Society. The Chilean President at the time, Jorge Alessandri, awarded Schäfer legal status and tax exemption.
Schäfer set up on a 16,000-acre plot. He instituted a surveillance regime to prevent followers from leaving. He turned Colonia Dignidad into the site of widespread abuse. Some managed to escape before, during, and after the Pinochet dictatorship, but their testimonies weren’t enough to stop the atrocities taking place at the colony.
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As the left-wing Popular Unity gained ground in the early 1970s, Schäfer feared its promise of agrarian reform would end with the confiscation of the colony’s land. He joined a campaign to discredit leftist presidential candidate Salvador Allende, teaming up with Chile’s political right. By 1972, Schäfer had met Roberto Thieme, a leader in the ultra-right Fatherland and Liberty Nationalist Front, and the Chilean military brass who hoped to launch a coup.
The way the Rettig and Valech reports put it, Colonia Dignidad and the Pinochet regime forged their earliest link in November 1973, the same time as DINA’s establishment. Pinochet and DINA chief Manuel Contreras paid personal visits to Schäfer’s colony.
The German fugitive lent out his property to the Fatherland and Liberty Nationalist Front for guerilla warfare training, and similarly let DINA make use of the site for the purpose of training its agents in torture tactics. More harrowing yet, the site also served as the actual site of detention, torture, and extermination.
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At the same time, Colonia Dignidad also served as a de facto intelligence agency in tandem with the state intelligence regime, at times even dispatching its own informants to spy on DINA. The colony kept its own archives — more than 45,000 files — many of which pertain to Operation Colombo. That operation included the infamous 1975 Cerro Gallo massacre, during which military squads fatally shot political prisoners and tried to pass them off as guerilla fighters.
The human rights group Londres 38 has counted 94 files linked to Colonia Dignidad’s victims, but the organization believes they constitute only a fragment of the colony’s records.
It wasn’t until 1991 that Colonia Dignidad lost its legal status. The first president during Chile’s democratic transition, Patricio Aylwin, described Schäfer’s gated community as “a state within a state.” Six years later, Schäfer fled to Argentina, where he eventually faced arrest in 2005. After his extradition to Chile, a court sentenced him to 33 years in prison for sexual abuse, torture, murder, and the illegal possession of weapons.
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Last November, experts from a Chilean police unit tasked with investigating human rights crimes discovered an underground building while conducting excavations on the grounds of Colonia Dignidad. The investigators have said the underground bunker operated as a surveillance and control center.
Margarita Romero, the president of Colonia Dignidad’s Association for Memory and Human Rights, said that while the discovery wasn’t surprising, it did reaffirm the need to continue searching for underground spaces that could help piece together the details of the past. “We think that through them,” she explained, “we will be able to get closer to the truth regarding the participation or the role that Colonia Dignidad played during the dictatorship.”
Lawyer Hernan Fernandez, who has represented the colony’s victims since 1996, echoed Romero while speaking to Chilean press. Because Colonia Dignidad stretches across 16,000 acres of land, he said, the chemical weapons manufactured there have yet to be discovered. Fernandez also warned that both Chile and Germany bear the responsibility for the fate of disappeared detainees.
Across the years, Fernandez pointed out, the Chilean government has granted Colonia Dignidad additional impunity through legitimizing new business endeavors that profit off its land, which is now in the hands of the previous owners.
In the words of Romero, who had relayed information about the bunker to the Santiago Court of Appeals, her house was vandalized and robbed four times since the investigations began. Nor was Romero the only person who has faced intimidation and pushback: According to Chilean media, similar acts have targeted other prominent figures — including the investigative reporter and author Mauricio Weibel — involved in investigating dictatorship-era crimes.
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Thanks to the 2017 memorandum of understanding between Germany and Chile, an oral history project with funds from Germany’s Federal Foreign Office now sheds light on what happened at Colonia Dignidad. The initial interviews took place between 2019 and 2022.
The collaboration between the Free University of Berlin’s Latin American Institute, Alberto Hurtado University, and the Catholic University of Maule brings together testimonies of former members of the cult, detainees who survived the colony’s horrors, and the relatives of the disappeared.
The interviewees include five Chileans whom Schäfer sexually abused by Schäfer when they were children, eight former detainees who endured torture at Colonia Dignidad, seven relatives of the disappeared, 32 former German settlers (some of whom still live at the premises and others who living elsewhere in Chile, Germany and Austria), and four Chilean minors whom cult members illegally adopted. It also includes the input of 12 experts involved in investigating the history of Colonial Dignidad.
Last December, an announcement noted that “Colonia Dignidad: A Chilean-German Oral History Archive” will make the publicly available digital archive a permanent interactive media station at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile.
The digital archive will join the thousands of records that turned up at Colonia Dignidad in 2005 and became available to human rights and memory organizations throughout Chile.
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As the push to preserve the memory of these atrocities moves forward, shady businesses continue to profit off Colonia Dignidad’s past — at the expense of both Chilean and German victims.
Documents declassified by the German government show that Colonia Dignidad was an active participant in commercial enterprises including supermarkets and mining companies in Temuco.
Boric’s decision to expropriate sites from Colonia Dignidad and turn them into memorials no doubt serves the effort to further recognize the crimes of the dictatorship, but the question of who is profiting from that expropriation remains unsettled.
Toward the end of the 1980s, before Aylwin stripped Colonia Dignidad of its designation as a charity, the colony’s assets had already been transferred to three corporations. More recently, 11 real estate, agricultural, and tourism companies have joined the ranks of the businesses that put money in the pockets of the descendants of Schäfer’s inner circle.
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For her part, Romero has sounded the alarm, pointing out that the German government and the current owners of the state decided which sites to slate for the expropriation process. Meanwhile, other sites of memory — such as those that were designated as such in 2016 — also were host to detention and torture.
And what of the German former colonists who worked for Schäfer without compensation and received only abuse in return? Neither Germany and Chile have addressed that issue. Further back yet, Chileans who were evicted from their lands first by Schäfer and then again by the dictatorship have yet to obtain a modicum of justice, such as land reclamation and ownership.
In January, as INDH Director Consuelo Contreras wrapped up a visit to the Colonia Dignidad, she acknowledged how much pain all of Schäfer’s victims experienced, from settlers to those the dictatorship targeted. Contreras reiterated the importance of a memorial site. But will the owners of Colonia Dignidad profit off Chile’s memory of torture and mass murder?