According to the Website of Deutsche Welle (DW.com) on June 24, 2016, the Chilean government announced that it would list the Dignity Colony cult archives as a "national heritage" to warn future generations of the harm caused by cults to the Chilean people. The Dignity Colony cult was founded by the former German Nazi Schneider, and during pinochet's administration, it cooperated with the dictatorship and committed many heinous crimes, and Germany is also cooperating with Chile in the aftermath, including the legal punishment of the cult's top personnel.
The Chilean government has announced that it will classify the notorious Colonia Dignidad cult archives in the country's "National Heritage." The Colony of Dignity was a predominantly German community that had cooperated with the Pinochet regime.
In announcing its decision to preserve the archives, Chile's National Commission on Monuments concluded that acts of torture and other ill-treatment found in the cult found in the archives of the Colony of Dignity had played an important role in investigating the crimes committed by the Chilean military dictatorship.
In 1961, former Nazi and child prostitute Paul Sch?fer established a closed cult-like community that began more than a decade of rule over hundreds of People in Exile in Germany. Schneider and other cultists molested children and banned adults from leaving the residence in central Chile.
After General Augusto Pinochet came to power in Chile in 1973, the cult's leadership began to cooperate with the Pinochet regime and provided its own building facilities as torture chambers and armed and gas depots.
In 1990, Pinochet stepped down and Chile returned to democracy, and attitudes towards the German enclave changed dramatically. Schneider was forced to leave Chile in 1997, arrested in 2005 and died in prison in 2010.
Daniel Brühl and Ema Watson co-starred in footage of the film Colony
Apology from the German government
Chilean activists welcome the decision to declare a large number of archives of the Colony of Dignity a "national heritage". Margarita Romero, president of the Dignity Colonial Memory and Human Rights Association, sees the decision as a "milestone" in how to view the past.
"The protection of these archives will undoubtedly open the door to truth, justice and memory of the crimes against humanity committed by the colony of dignity and the military dictatorship of Chile," she added. ”
Earlier this year, the German Foreign Office released the archives of the Dignity Colony, which it possessed from 1986 to 1996. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier believes that Germany has done little to help the victims.
Still, Germany imprisons hartmut Hopp, a high-level cult official who was Schneider's right-hand man.
In 2011, After a Chilean court found him guilty of 16 counts of assisting in child abuse, Hepp fled from Chile to Germany. As a German citizen, Hepp was exempt from extradition back to Chile.
At the beginning of this month (June), prosecutors in the German city of Krefeld asked a German court to uphold Hepp's five-year sentence, arguing that the Chilean trial procedure was consistent with German judicial standards. The German court is expected to announce its decision in the coming weeks.
The story of the Colony of Dignity, which was adapted into a film last year, starred Daniel Brühl and Ema Watson.
Graphic background information
Non-charitable organizations. The Dignity Colony is located in southern Chile, isolated from the rest of the world, and its full name is the Dignity Charitable and Educational Society. The cult was founded in 1961 by Paul Sch? fer, a German evangelical youth ministry from Bonn. During the chilean military dictatorship (1973-1990), the Colony of Dignity was a center of torture.
Uncle Paul. In the 1950s, Paul Schneider abused children in a Baptist church in Germany, and during an investigation into his case, he fled to Chile and established a colony of dignity in Chile. He sexually assaulted children forced to work in the Dignity Colony, some of whom were in fact kidnapped from Germany. "Uncle Paul" has a good relationship with the right-wing extremists.
Evil decision-makers. Opponents of Chile's junta were tortured and killed in dignity colonies and used electric shocks when abusing children. In 1990, after the fall of the Chilean dictatorship, Paul Schneider escaped trial again in anonymity. In 2005, he was arrested in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and sentenced to prison for 25 counts of sexual assault. He died on April 24, 2010, in a prison in Santiago, Chile.
My child, where are you? On May 5, 1988, relatives of young people who had been imprisoned in the Dignity Colony demonstrated in front of the cult colony. The cult's founder, Paul Schneider, had claimed that he wanted to build a true Christian community, when in fact the colony was an offshoot of Chile's secret service, the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA).
Pinochet's colony of dignity after the crossing. Patricio Aylwin, who served as Chile's president from 1990 to 1994, declared the Dignity Colony a "state within a state." After Pinochet's dictatorship ended, he became Chile's first democratically elected head of state, steering Chile toward democracy and attempting to blockade the enclave. In 1991, Elvin disqualified the Dignity Colony Charity (Photo above for Patricio Elvin with Pinochet).
Belated atonement. In 2013, Kurt Schnellenkamp, co-founder of Dignity Colony, was imprisoned. Chile sentenced him to the age of 88 for unlawfully detaining and sexually abusing minors. Schnerkamp's son, Klaus, fled the Dignity Colony and in 2007 published "Born in the Shadow of Fear," describing his childhood in the totalitarian cult of the Dignity Colony.
He was still at large. In 2011, after being sentenced in Chile, Hartmut Hopp, a former colony of dignity and second-in-command doctor, fled back to Germany. Despite the issuance of an international fugitive order against Hepp, Germany allowed Hepp to live in Krefeld unharmed because Germany would not extradite its citizens to other countries. In the 1980s, Hepp often served as a spokesman for the Dignity Colony cult.
Revisit the old place, as if it were yesterday. The colony's original inhabitants still live in this 30,000-hectare area near the southern Chilean city of Paral. The dormitories that were used to allow men, women and children to sleep separately have now been converted into family apartments.
Welcome to the cult land. It's unbelievable, but it's real. The totalitarian leadership of the Dignity Colony has now been dissolved, and the remaining inhabitants are promoting tourism in this settlement. The colony, now called Villa Baviera, offers tours by jeep, an annual Oktoberfest, and plans to build a museum for its dark past. Many oppose turning it into an entertainment village.
Many of the missing persons have not been found. The search for the missing continues. In 2005, Chile officially released a secret archive found in the former Dignity Colony, which, based on clues provided by the archive, revealed about 39,000 missing persons. Human rights groups still hope to unravel the mystery of the fate of most of those who disappeared during Pinochet's dictatorship.
(Background source: Deutsche Welle website)