With its pristine swimming pool, manicured lawns and lush forest backdrop, Villa Baviera, a German-themed settlement of 122 people in southern Chile, looks like the perfect holiday getaway.
However, Colonia Dignidad, as it was previously known, is a byword for horror, as the former home of a brutal cult that was used for torturing and killing dissidents under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
Twenty years after the cult leader, former Nazi German soldier Paul Schaefer, was jailed for the sexual abuse and torture of children at the colony, the Chilean state wants to turn it into a memorial for the victims of the country’s 1973 to 1990 dictatorship.
Photo: AFP
Chilean President Gabriel Boric in June last year ordered 116 hectares of the 4,800-hectare site, an area including the residents’ homes, a hotel, a restaurant and several food processing factories, be expropriated to make way for a center of remembrance.
Some of the inhabitants, who were separated from their families as children, subjected to forced labor, and in some cases sexually abused, say they are being victimized all over again.
Schaefer founded Colonia Dignidad in 1961 as an idyllic German family village — but instead abused, drugged and indoctrinated the few hundred residents and kept them as virtual slaves.
Photo: AFP
The boundaries between abuser and abused were blurred, with the children of Schaefer’s sidekicks counting themselves among his victims.
Anna Schnellenkamp, the 48-year-old manager of the colony’s hotel and restaurant, said she “worked completely free of charge until 2005,” the year of Schaefer’s arrest. “So much work I broke my back.”
Several years ago, Schnellenkamp, whose late father, Kurt Schnellenkamp, was jailed for five years for being an accomplice to Schaefer’s abuse, finally found happiness.
She got married, had a daughter and started to create new, happier memories in the colony, where everyone still communicates in German, despite being conversant in Spanish.
“The settlers know every detail, every building, every tree, including where they once suffered and were forced to work,” she said.
About 3,200 people were killed and more than 38,000 people tortured during Chile’s brutal dictatorship. An estimated 26 people disappeared in Colonia Dignidad, where a potato shed, now a national monument, was used to torture dozens of kidnapped regime opponents.
Schaefer was captured in 2005 on charges of sexually abusing dozens of minors over nearly half a century. He died in prison five years later while in preventive custody. His arrest, and those of 20 other accomplices, marked a turning point for the colony, which had been rebranded Villa Baviera a decade previously.
Suddenly, residents were free to marry, live with their children, send them to school and earn a paycheck. Some of the settlers returned to Germany, while others stayed and built a thriving agribusiness and resort, where tourists can sample traditional German fare, such as sauerkraut.
Some residents say that Chile, which for decades turned a blind eye to the fate of the enclave’s children, wants to make them pay for the sins of their fathers.
“One feels a kind of revenge against us,” said Markus Blanck, one of the colony’s business directors, whose father was charged as an accomplice of Schaefer’s abuse, but died before being sentenced.
The government said the expropriations are in the public interest.
“There is a national interest here in preserving our country’s historical heritage,” Chilean Minister of Justice and Human Rights Jaime Gajardo said, adding that those expropriated would be properly compensated.
While several sites of torture under the Chilean dictatorship have been turned into memorial sites, Gajardo said the memorial at Villa Baviera would be the biggest yet, similar to those created at former Nazi concentration camps in Europe.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
A South Korean judge who last week more than doubled former South Korean first lady Kim Keon-hee’s prison sentence was found dead yesterday, police said. Shin Jong-o was found unconscious at about 1am at the Seoul High Court building, an investigator at the Seocho District Police Station in Seoul said. Shin was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead, he said. “There is no sign of foul play in the death,” the investigator added. Local media reported that Shin had left a suicide note, but the investigator said there was none. On Tuesday last week, Shin presided over 53-year-old Kim’s appeal trial, finding her guilty
RSS