Germany opens files on Nazi pedophile sect in Chile

Germany is declassifying its files on Colonia Dignidad, a sect in Chile run by a Nazi pedophile, Germany’s foreign minister says, admitting the diplomatic service’s failure to stop the abuses.

Colonia Dignidad was a German commune founded in 1961 by convicted pedophile Paul Schaefer and a group of fellow German immigrants in a remote part of Chile, where residents were indoctrinated and kept as virtual slaves over three decades.

Schaefer also collaborated with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, whose secret police used the colony — which lies some 350 kilometers (215 miles) south of the capital Santiago — as a place to torture opponents.

“The handling of Colonia Dignidad was not a glorious chapter of the history of the foreign ministry,” says German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

“For many years, from the 60s to the 80s, German diplomats looked the other way, and did too little to protect their citizens in this commune,” he says as the ministry screened a movie about the case starring Emma Watson and Daniel Bruehl.

— AFP