Video: Beware, Nazism: The History of the Fascist Colony of Dignidad, Which Became a Popular Resort
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
On March 31, Russia will host the premiere of the film "Colony of Dignidad", based on real events that took place in the 1970s in the Chilean Nazi colony of Dignidad. On the eve of the release of the film, we decided to talk about a modern cult, which seems to transport people 70 years ago, to Nazi Germany, and urge you to think about what is happening today.
In 1961, former German Wehrmacht paramedic Paul Schaefer, who fled Germany to Chile after being charged with child abuse, founded a settlement he called the Dignidad Charitable and Educational Society.
In 1961, he founded in the Chilean foothills, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest city, a closed colony of 17 thousand hectares called "Dignidad", which until 1991 did not obey the local authorities. This paramilitary formation was surrounded by barbed wire, and observation towers with machine gunners were installed along the perimeter of the colony.
Surprisingly, this colony still exists (albeit under the name "Villa Bavaria"), and its current leaders are trying to open the colony for tourism. Today, in a place where just a couple of decades ago there was no money, people had no documents and lived as if in 1930s Germany, you can see an idyllic picture - people dressed in classic Lederhosen leather trousers, cafes with schnitzels and sausages, neat wooden cabins and outdoor hot tubs.
During the heyday of the neo-Nazi cult, Dignidad was home to approximately three hundred German and Chilean residents who were sexually segregated and never allowed to leave the colony. Adults and children were forced to work in the fields from dawn to dusk and endure severe beatings and torture for disobedience.
And then the kidnapping began. During the reign of Pinochet, more than 1,100 people disappeared in Chile. In 1977 Amnesty International reported that many of them were taken to the Dignidad Colony, which served as a special torture center for the military dictatorship.
Television, telephones, and calendars were banned, but the settlement had its own school, a free hospital, two runways, a restaurant, and even a power station. In 1997, Schaefer was arrested again on charges of molesting 26 children in the colony. On April 24, 2010, Paul Schaefer died in a prison hospital.
Interestingly, the colony's underground bunker and torture chamber were actually designed by a US citizen, CIA agent and professional assassin, Michael Townley. He moved to Chile after his father was appointed head of the Ford Motor Company (it is worth remembering that Henry Ford always expressed his sympathies for the Nazis). Townley is currently living under the US Witness Protection Program.
But back to Villa Bavaria. Today, life has changed in this former Nazi paradise. The colony employs (mainly in the fields and at the agricultural complex) 300 Germans. Tourists from Chile began to come to the colony, who can admire an idyllic German town in South America and relax in a hotel (superior double room with plasma and Wi-Fi costs from $ 65 per night).
The hotel also houses a family-run casino, a restaurant serving rich traditional German cuisine, and offers many leisure options including horse riding, cycling, hiking trails and more.
But the past hasn't gone anywhere. As soon as you go behind the playground, you will see a view of most of the infrastructure of the old colony - the dilapidated buildings that hide behind the modern resort remind of a cult whose members were forced to work for a crust of bread, essentially in captivity of their leader.
Along with the usual services, tourists are also provided with a so-called "colonial tour" for a fee, during which they will be shown the old secret bunkers of the colony, old spy equipment, terrible torture rooms, etc. However, only people with very strong nerves will be able to visit underground bunkers of the cult, while snacking on German sausage.
The Nazis left a terrible mark on the history of mankind, ruined millions of people and even discredited ancient symbols. This can be confirmed by 10 photographs of the place of the swastika in European society before Hitler took it over.
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