Paul Schaefer, German Guilty of Chile Child Abuse, Dies at 89

[Judi Lynn]

Source: New York Times

Paul Schaefer, German Guilty of Chile Child Abuse, Dies at 89
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: April 24, 2010

http://graphics8.nytimes.com.nyud.net:8090/images/2010/04/25/world/25schaefer_CA0/25schaefer_CA0-articleInline.jpg

European Pressphoto Agency
Paul Schaefer in 2005.

RIO DE JANEIRO — A former Nazi-era German soldier who founded a secretive German cult in southern Chile, where he sexually abused about 25 children, died of heart failure at a prison hospital early Saturday, Chilean officials said. He was 89. The former soldier, Paul Schaefer, was serving a 20-year sentence for the sexual abuse of minors, but he was also under investigation for the 1985 disappearance of Boris Weisfeiler, an American citizen who vanished while on a hiking trip.

The Chilean government said officially that Mr. Weisfeiler, then 43 years old, drowned while trying to ford a river. But State Department and C.I.A. reports that were later declassified indicated that he was probably kidnapped by Chilean state security forces, who then handed him over to Mr. Schaefer’s heavily armed Colonia Dignidad religious sect based nearby. Dozens of opponents of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship were tortured at Colonia Dignidad, according to human rights groups.

One military informant said that Mr. Weisfeiler, a Russian-born Jew, was held captive there, and that he was later tortured and executed.

A former nurse from the Luftwaffe, Mr. Schaefer was forced to leave Germany after he was charged with sexually abusing young boys in an orphanage he ran there. In 1961 he founded Colonia Dignidad, an anti-Semitic apocalyptic religious sect about 225 miles south of Santiago. Early last decade it still had about 300 inhabitants, and it still exists but is referred to as Villa Baviera.

Mr. Schaefer ran the sect with a heavy hand, banning almost all contact with the outside world, separating women from men and children from their parents, and controlling intimate contact. While he was never a hunted Nazi, Mr. Schaefer opened Colonia Dignidad for fugitive Nazis to hide out for periods of time.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/world/25schaefer.html?ref=world

[ck4829]

1. Nobody will be mourning the death of this monster

He's roasting with Pinochet now.

K&R.

[Judi Lynn]

2. The Torture Colony

Autumn 2008
The Torture Colony
In a remote part of Chile, an evil German evangelist built a utopia whose members helped the Pinochet regime perform its foulest deeds

By Bruce Falconer

~snip~
Few outsiders ever gained access to the Colonia while its reclusive leader remained in power. An old Chilean newsreel, however, filmed at Schaefer’s invitation in 1981, provides a rare picture of life inside the community, a utopia in full and happy bloom. The footage shows a bucolic paradise of sunshine and verdant fields set among clean, fast-flowing rivers and snowy peaks. Its German inhabitants improve the land and work their trades. A carpenter assembles a new chair for the Colonia’s school. A woman in a white apron bakes German-style torts and pastries in the kitchen. Teenaged boys clear a new field for planting. Children laugh and splash in a lake. Schaefer himself, wearing a white suit and brown aviator sunglasses, takes the camera crew on a tour. Standing next to the Colonia’s flour mill, he extols the quality of German machinery. “We bought this mill in Europe,” he says in broken Spanish. “It is 60 years old, but we have not had to do any repairs on it.” Even today, this remains one of the only known recordings of his voice. It is crisp and baritone. Back outside, Schaefer leads the television crew to a petting zoo, where the reporter feeds chunks of bread to baby deer and plays with the colonos’ collection of pet owls. The newsreel concludes with a performance by a 15-piece chamber orchestra composed of young, female colonos in flowing white skirts and colorful blouses. The music is beautiful and expertly played.

These images were a reflection of Colonia Dignidad as Schaefer wanted it to be seen. Today, a quarter century later, with Schaefer gone and his utopia open to visitors for the first time, it looks much the same. On a recent trip to Chile, I made the four-hour drive south from Santiago. The village remains an oasis of German tidiness, with blooming flower gardens and perfectly tended copses of willows and pines. As I walked through it, there were very few people on the streets, and those I encountered smiled politely, then quickly retreated indoors. They did not invite conversation. I was reminded of what a Chilean friend, a journalist, had told me as I prepared for my visit. “You will get the uneasy feeling of crossing into some sort of twilight zone,” he had said. “You will see the way they dress, their haircuts. It’s like going back in time to Germany in the 1940s. Even though it is easier to talk to the colonos than it was a few years ago, things are still a long way from being ‘normal.’ Most of them are still quite afraid of speaking openly.”

The truth, so unlikely in this setting, is that Colonia Dignidad was founded on fear, and it is fear that still binds it together. Investigations by Amnesty International and the governments of Chile, Germany, and France, as well as the testimony of former colonos who, over the years, managed to escape the colony, have revealed evidence of terrible crimes: child molestation, forced labor, weapons trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, torture, and murder. Orchestrated by Paul Schaefer and his inner circle of trusted lieutenants, much of the abuse was initially directed inward as a means of conditioning the colonos to obey Schaefer’s commands. Later, after General Augusto Pinochet’s military junta seized power in Chile, the violence spilled onto the national stage. Schaefer, through an informal alliance with the Pinochet regime, allowed Colonia Dignidad to serve as a torture and execution center for the disposal of enemies of the state. The investigations continue. In the months preceding my visit, police found two large caches of military-grade weapons buried inside the compound. Parts of cars had also been unearthed, their vehicle identification numbers traced back to missing political dissidents. Even as I stood in Schaefer’s house drinking apple juice, elsewhere on the property a police forensics unit was excavating a mass grave thought to contain the decomposed remains of dozens of political prisoners.

More:
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-torture-colony/

[Judi Lynn]

3. Boris Weisfeiler, U.S. American victim of this ugly little dragon.

Boris Weisfeiler, who disappeared in the vacinity of former Nazi Paul Schaeffer's "Villa Bavaria" (formerly "Colonia Dignidad"):

Boris Weisfeiler is a Russian-born mathematician who lived in the United States before going missing in Chile in 1985, aged 43.<1> The Chilean government claimed that he drowned, but his family believes he was forced to disappear near Colonia Dignidad, an enclave led by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer.

Biography
Weisfeiler was born in the Soviet Union. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1970 from the Steklov Institute of Mathematics Leningrad Department, as a student of E. B. Vinberg<2>. In the early 1970s Weisfeiler was asked to sign a letter against a colleague, and for his refusal was branded "anti-Soviet". Like other Russian Jews he also experienced discrimination. In 1975, Weisfeiler left the USSR in order to freely practice his career and religion. After a short time under Armand Borel at the Institute for Advanced Study near Princeton University, Weisfeiler settled in as a professor at Penn State University. In 1981, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Weisfeiler's research spanned twenty years, and he published three dozen research papers. According to his colleague Alexander Lubotzky, Weisfeiler was studying "the more difficult questions" of algebraic groups in "the case when the field is not algebraically closed and the groups do not split or — even worse — are nonisotropic".<3> He is known for the Weisfeiler-Leman Algorithm, the Kac-Weisfeiler conjectures, the Weisfeiler filtration, and work on strong approximation and on finite linear groups.<4>

Weisfeiler, an experienced outdoorsman, went on a solo hiking trip over Christmas of 1984 to the Chilean Andes.

Disappearance
Chile was an ally of the United States, and was then controlled by staunch anti-Communist dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Under Pinochet, Chile is alleged to have committed widespread human rights abuses. Before his death in 2006, the former head of state had been prosecuted for his role in Operation Colombo and indicted in absentia in other countries. As well, the modern democratic government of Chile took steps to investigate other activities under his regime.

According to Chilean government reports, Boris Weisfeiler was hiking near the border of the Colonia at the time of his disappearance. Conflicting stories of various eyewitnesses make it impossible to conclude what really happened. Officially, the Chilean government ruled that Weisfeiler had entered the confluence of two swift-moving rivers and drowned, his body never to be recovered. Local fishermen say they camped with Boris, and gave him directions north toward a bridge that happened to be in proximity of the Colonia. Some claim to have seen his footprints near the river, finding his backpack and other items. These items appear to have been sold or destroyed by the Chilean government in the late 1990s, as documented by Chilean government documents and published news articles.

Although no conclusive proof connects the disappearance of Weisfeiler to any entity, there is one group under suspicion by both U.S. and Chilean officials. Unbeknownst to most of the outside world, a place called Colonia Dignidad sat on a large land tract close to the Argentinian border. Appearing idyllic, the enclave was run by German expatriates, some of whom were alleged to be Nazi war criminals from WWII, others believed to be Nazi sympathizers. The leader of the Colonia for most of its existence was Nazi Paul Schäfer. The Colonia had a cult-like atmosphere, in which many children were allegedly molested, a crime which its leaders face prosecution for. Schafer was convicted in May 2006 in connection with the allegations of child abuse at the Colonia. It is suspected, and has been reported by the BBC (as well as suggested in Chilean government documents<5>), that Chilean DINA military police brought suspected anti-government prisoners there for interrogation.

According to U.S. State Department reports, other witnesses claim they saw Boris Weisfeiler in the Colonia, several years after his disappearance. At least one claims he was alive some three years later; another claims he was assassinated as a Soviet or Jewish spy. Weisfeiler's whereabouts remain unknown, and his sister Olga has emigrated to the United States and continues to petition numerous authorities to determine his fate. In early 2006 a Joint bipartisan Congressional letter signed by 27 Senators and Congressmen was delivered to Chilean President Michele Bachelet in the hopes of hurrying up the investigation into his fate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Weisfeiler

http://boris.weisfeiler.com.nyud.net:8090/boris-hiking-4.jpg http://weisfeiler.com.nyud.net:8090/albums/Boris-Weisfeiler/BORIS1.sized.jpg

SEARCHING FOR BORIS WEISFEILER
On September 11, 2009, the 36th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 1973 military coup, the Chilean Congress approved the bill that would reopen two former Human Rights Commissions: Rettig and Valech. According to Chilean law, the only way to classify a case as being a human rights violation, officially, was through the Commission, which could not be restarted after it finished its work in 1991.

In its 1991 report, the National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, commonly known as Rettig Commission, did not include the Weisfeiler case into human right violation category because there was not enough evidence to support such: all of the information gathered by the U.S. Embassy during 5 years of the investigation was regarded as "classified" and therefore not available to the Chilean investigators for evaluation.

In 2000, the US has declassified over 500 documents related to the Weisfeiler’s case. Since 2000, there is an ongoing criminal investigation in Chile, and the case has at times been treated as a de facto human rights case – but not always, and never officially.

The Rettig Commission should re-start its work in November 2009. There would be only a few months to reapply. By establishing that Boris’ murder was a human rights violation in which agents of the State - Carabineros and/or members of an Army patrol - were involved, the Government of Chile would finally acknowledge its role in the fate of Boris Weisfeiler.

September 2009

http://boris.weisfeiler.com /

[struggle4progress]

4. Kicking in memory of Boris Weisfeiler,

a Jewish-Russian mathematician who immigrated to the US and was probably murdered by a Nazi cult in Pinochet's Chile during the Reagan era

From the beginning, the US showed little official interest in his case

I think his sister would still like to know for sure what happened to him

[hunter]

5. Say hello to Ronald Reagan for me, Mr. Schaefer.

What's it like to be a celebrity in hell?

[byronius]

12. No shit. Your reference is strangely compelling.

I would never have thought of that. But you're absolutely correct.

[Judi Lynn]

6. CNN's Spanish coverage of Paul Schaefer's death, google translation:

21:38 |
The former senator from the region of Maule Jaime Naranjo was one of the parliamentarians who first denounced the crimes committed by Paul Schaefer. CNN talked with him in Chile on the day of the death of former chief of its former Colonia Dignidad.

In 1997 when paralmentarias Naranjo won the election, received in December Paul Schaefer card showing irony and hubris of German, in the two lines to machine that had written: "Congratulations on seeking election and follow me."

In the attached video Naranjo tells how he armed himself with impunity Colonia Dignidad and how important judges and parliamentarians of the time staunchly defended the German enclave.

"Tonight there are many people who go to sleep peacefully, because he expects all the secrets of Paul Schaefer, where they are accessories, accomplices or associates of Colonia Dignidad, will be buried with him," said Naranjo.

http://www.cnnchile.com/nacional/2010/04/24/hubo-empresarios-y-politicos-que-defendieron-colonia-dignidad/

[hyphenate]

7. This is the kind of man

that many of our own religious extremists want to emulate. Damned if I can see a difference between him, the fundies or even even many of the Catholic priests whose actions were covered up by the Vatican.

[Oregone]

8. I never liked him on Letterman anyway

[hunter]

9. It's a bummer when you share a name with a first class sociopath.

Fortunately all the sociopaths I share a name with are steerage class sociopaths.

Does anyone have the last name "Hitler" anymore who doesn't want it?

[winstars]

11. AMAZING!!!

How he hid from the law all these years on TeeVee. It does not say much for Letterman's ratings... LOL (Sorry if I offend anyone, I know the real Paul and it's just----funny to see this. I know that it is not a funny thing but....)

[Judi Lynn]

10. Cult leader, ex-Nazi Schaefer dies in Chile

Cult leader, ex-Nazi Schaefer dies in Chile
By the CNN Wire Staff
April 25, 2010 -- Updated 0109 GMT (0909 HKT)

(CNN) -- Paul Schaefer, a former Nazi who fled Germany in 1961 and founded a cult-like commune in Chile, died Saturday in a prison hospital.

He was 88.

Schaefer was serving a 20-year sentence at the national penitentiary in Santiago for sexually abusing children at the notorious commune known as Colonia Dignidad (The Dignity Colony).

The commune in southern Chile, also called Villa Baviera, was created as a place to safeguard Germanic traditions. Under Schaefer's rule, contact with outsiders was largely forbidden.

Some of Schaefer's crimes date to the 1970s and 1980s, during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who had visited the commune.

Former members of the colony have admitted that human rights violations and sexual abuse of children occurred there, saying in a 2006 letter published in a leading Chilean newspaper that they were led by Schaefer's influence.

More:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/04/24/chile.schaefer/index.html

[Turbineguy]

13. It's a sound reason for

having Hell.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Paul Schaefer, notorious preacher, dies in prison at 89

Paul Schaefer, notorious preacher, dies in prison at 89
By Emma Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 26, 2010

Paul Schaefer, 89, a German-born evangelical preacher who started one of the world's most notorious anti-Semitic and apocalyptic sects, died April 24 of a heart ailment at a prison hospital in Chile.

He was serving a 20-year prison sentence for sexually abusing 25 children at his enclave in southern Chile, "Colonia Dignidad," a place that human rights groups say doubled during the 1970s and '80s as a detention and torture center for opponents of right-wing dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

At the time of his death, Mr. Schaefer was still under investigation for the 1985 disappearance of mathematician Boris Weisfeiler, an American citizen who went missing while hiking near Colonia Dignidad.

At the time, the Chilean government concluded that Weisfeiler, an experienced outdoorsman, drowned while attempting to cross a river. Years later, news reports said declassified U.S. State Department and CIA documents indicated that Weisfeiler, a Russian-born Jew, was likely kidnapped by government security forces and then taken to Mr. Schaefer's self-sufficient commune.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/25/AR2010042503221.html