Colonia Dignidad

==Atrocities==
===Sexual abuse===
In 1996, Schäfer fled child sex abuse charges in Chile,<ref name=NaziCult/> escaping arrest until 2005.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4338825.stm |title=Fugitive Chile cult leader held |first=Clinton |last=Porteous |work=[[BBC News]] |date=2005-03-11 |access-date=2012-02-04}}</ref> The previous year, in his absence, a Chilean court had convicted him of child abuse, together with 26 other cult members.<ref name=27Convicted>{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/mar/12/warcrimes.chile |work=[[The Guardian]] |title=Fugitive Nazi cult leader arrested |date=2005-03-12 |access-date=2008-04-02 |first=Luke |last=Harding}}</ref> In 2006, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.<ref name=PaulSentence>{{cite news |url=http://www.dw.com/en/german-cult-leader-in-chile-gets-20-year-sentence/a-2031481 |title=German Cult Leader in Chile Gets 20-Year Sentence |last=Conway |first=Jane |work=[[Deutsche Welle]] |date=2006-05-25 |access-date=2016-09-07}}</ref> He died in prison of a heart ailment, on 24 April 2010, at the age of 88. At the time of his death, he was still under investigation for the 1985 disappearance of mathematician [[Boris Weisfeiler]], an American citizen who went missing while hiking near Colonia Dignidad.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/25/AR2010042503221.html |title=Paul Schaefer, 89, ex-Nazi preacher jailed for abuse, dies |first=Emma |last=Brown |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=2010-04-25 |access-date=2016-09-07}}</ref>

===Torture and murder===
[[File:Familiares de detenidos desaparecidos en Chile.jpg|thumb|Families of disappeared people]]
[[File:Fosa en Colonia Dignidad detenidos desaparecidos.jpg|thumb|The grave where the bodies of murdered detainees were buried and later exhumed from]]
During the military dictatorship of [[Augusto Pinochet]], from 1973 to 1990, Colonia Dignidad served as a special [[torture]] center. In 1991, Chile's [[National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation]] concluded that a number of people apprehended by the [[Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional|DINA]] were held at Colonia Dignidad, and that some of the colony's residents actively helped the DINA torture some of the captives.<ref name=":4"/> Colonia Dignidad's involvement came to light as early as an October 1976 report from the [[United Nations]] Ad Hoc Working Group on Chile, as referenced in a March 1977 [[Amnesty International]] report, "Disappeared Prisoners in Chile", with the latter report describing the evidence in this way:

{{quote| Another DINA detention center described in the [U.N.] document, in which it is alleged that experiments in torture are carried out, is Colonia Dignidad, near the town of Parral…<ref name = Amnesty77>{{cite web |author=Amnesty Staff |date=1977-03-01 |title=Disappeared Prisoners in Chile |publisher=[[Amnesty International|Amnesty International Publications]] |ref=AMR 22/034/1977 |url=https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr22/034/1977/en/ |access-date=2016-04-21 |quote = Another DINA detention center described in the same document, ... }}</ref>}} Prisoners being tortured in the tunnels under Colonia Dignidad were each interrogated to gain an understanding of their personality in order to gauge the appropriate torture technique. These techniques led to a number of afflictions lasting indeterminate periods of time.<ref name=":2" /> As many as 100 of the citizens taken to Colonia Dignidad by the DINA were murdered at the colony.<ref name=Hopp/>

There are more than 1,100 desaparecidos (disappeared people) in Chile, some taken to the Colony where they were tortured and killed.{{Citation needed|date=November 2019}} One of them is a U.S. citizen, [[Boris Weisfeiler]], a Soviet-born mathematics professor at [[Pennsylvania State University]]. Weisfeiler, then 43 years old, vanished while on a hiking trip near the border between Chile and Argentina in the early part of January 1985. It is presumed that Weisfeiler had been kidnapped and taken to the Colony where he was tortured and killed.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://weisfeiler.com/boris/ |title=Professor Boris Weisfeiler Has Been Missing in Chile since 1985 |first1=Olga |last1=Weisfeiler |first2=Lev |last2=Weisfeiler |website=weisfeiler.com |access-date=2016-04-21}}</ref> In 2012, a judge in Chile ordered the arrest of eight former police and army officials over the kidnapping of Weisfeiler during the [[Pinochet]] years, citing evidence from declassified US files.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-19340756 |title=Judge in Chile orders arrests over missing US hiker |author=Staff writers |work=[[BBC News]] |date=2012-08-22 |access-date=21 April 2016}}</ref> In 2016, the case was closed and the men were freed when a judge ruled that Weisfeiler had indeed been abducted, but that it was only a common crime, long past the [[statute of limitations]], instead of a human rights violation.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35980852 |title=Missing in Chile: What happened to Boris Weisfeiler? |first=Gideon |last=Long |work=[[BBC News]] |date= 2016-04-10 |access-date=2019-07-31}}</ref>

===Member abuse===
Some defectors from the colony have portrayed it as a cult in which the leader Paul Schäfer held the 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 [[Bavaria]]n 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|date=April 2008}}
One of the first instances of abuse allegations was in 1966 from escapee Wolfgang Müller, who had been sixteen when he came to the colony. He claimed that he was forced into slave labor, received regular harsh beatings, and was molested by Schäfer on multiple occasions. Müller said that former Nazis were part of the colony as well.<ref name=":2" />

===Weapons violations===

In June and July 2005, Chilean police found two large illegal [[weapon|arms]] caches in or around the colony. The first, within the colony itself, included three containers with [[machine gun]]s, [[automatic rifle]]s, [[Shoulder-launched missile weapon|rocket launcher]]s, and large quantities of [[ammunition]], some as many as forty years old but with evidence of recent maintenance.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.war2hobby.cl/noticias.php/id/53 |title=Arsenal encontrado en Colonia Dignidad |website=War2Hobby.cl |date=2005-06-16 |language=es |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090912121408/http://www.war2hobby.cl/noticias.php/id/53 |archive-date=2009-09-12 |access-date=2019-07-31}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.cooperativa.cl/policia-civil-encontro-dos-depositos-de-armas-en-ex-colonia-dignidad/prontus_nots/2005-06-14/232434.html |title=Policía civil encontró dos depósitos de armas en ex Colonia Dignidad |author=Staff writers |work=[[Radio Cooperativa]] |language=es |date=2005-06-14 |access-date=2012-02-04}}</ref> 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 [[grenade]]s.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10331060|title=Chile discovers weapons cache on cult grounds|date=16 June 2005|work=The New Zealand Herald|access-date=21 April 2016}}</ref>

In January 2005, former Chilean secret police operative [[Michael Townley]], then living in the United States under a witness-protection program, acknowledged to agents of [[Interpol]] Chile links between [[Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional|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 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.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/site/artic/20050330/pags/20050330114755.html |title=Michael Townley fue interrogado por muerte de Frei Montalva |author=Staff writers |work=[[Radio Cooperativa]] |language=es |date=2005-03-30 |access-date=2016-04-21 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120729162016/http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/site/artic/20050330/pags/20050330114755.html |archive-date=2012-07-29}}</ref>

===Nazi ties===
{{Disputed section|date=July 2022}}
The [[Central Intelligence Agency]] and [[Simon Wiesenthal]] claim that [[Josef Mengele]], the infamous Nazi [[concentration camp]] doctor, known as the "Angel of Death" for his lethal [[Nazi human experimentation|experiments on human subjects]] was present at the colony.<ref>Infield, ''Secrets'', p. 207.</ref> The colony itself rejected the accusation when Wiesenthal published it in 1997 in the Chilean press. The German government states that to this date, there is "no evidence to support or invalidate Wiesenthal's claim or the more general allegation that the Colonia Dignidad or its legal successors was a place of refuge for Nazi criminals.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Der Bundestag |title=Drucksache 14/7867 |url=https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/14/078/1407867.pdf |publication-date=2001-12-13}}</ref> 

The Nazi underground in South America was established some time before [[World War II]]. [[Juan Perón]] provided shelter to some escaped Nazi criminals. [[Nazi sympathiser|Nazi sympathy]] in South America decreased until [[Augusto Pinochet|Pinochet]] took power.<ref name=":2" /> It was suggested that part of the intense [[racism]], [[Antisemitism|anti-Semitism]], and [[Class discrimination|classism]] in Chile can be attributed to Nazi presence.{{cn|date=November 2021}}

The high concentration of Germans in Chile shaped the country's overall attitude towards subjects like education and military. A few of the Germans who immigrated to Chile in the 1960s were former Nazis led by Paul Schäfer.<ref name=":3" /> Colonia Dignidad was a “Nazi stronghold protected by the Chilean government[...].”<ref name=":1" /> Former members of the [[Schutzstaffel|SS]] and [[Gestapo]] had the job of demonstrating Nazi torture methods to the secret police of Chile. Many of Schäfer's followers who had Nazi pasts joined him to escape post-World War II [[war crime]] investigations.<ref name=":1" /> The presence of Colonia Dignidad had an effect on the general political opinion of the surrounding areas, and the government as well because of this, considering the political ties between Colonia Dignidad and the Chilean government.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Valades |first1=Adriana |last2=Garza Elizondo |first2=Humberto |date=Summer 1992 |title=Las Relaciones Políticas y Culturales Entre Alemania y América Latina |journal=Foro Internacional |volume=32 |issue=4 |pages=455–466 |via=JSTOR}}</ref>