Posted on 03/12/2005 2:06:32 AM PST by kingsurfer
Paul Schaefer - a former Nazi medic, Baptist preacher and alleged cult leader - has finally been captured in Argentina after eight years on the run.
His arrest means Schaefer is likely to face jail for the sexual abuse of young boys, for which he was convicted in absentia in November last year after fleeing Chile.
But Schaefer also faces charges of child sex abuse in Germany that go back to the late 1950s.
Schaefer, who is in his 80s, has been denounced by former followers and by human rights campaigners.
For them, his capture signals the end to decades of impunity for what they allege are his strange and terrible crimes.
Paul Schaefer was a medic in Hitler's army during World War II. After the war, he set up an evangelical ministry and a youth home, purportedly to care for war orphans.
But he was charged with sexually abusing two boys - and in 1961 he fled to Chile, reportedly accompanied by some 70 followers.
There, in a lush valley in the Andean foothills, he set up Colonia Dignidad - now renamed Villa Baviera.
Small empire
The colony near the city of Parral, some 350km (220 miles) south of Santiago, grew to about 300 members - mostly German immigrants, or their descendants, but including some Chilean followers.
The 137-sq-km (53-sq-mile) Colonia Dignidad boasted a school, a hospital, two airstrips, a restaurant, and a power station, and reportedly made millions of dollars through a diversified range of businesses, including agriculture, mining and real estate.
It won over local people by offering jobs and free schooling and hospital care.
Details of life in the colony are hard to verify. Some visitors have described a scene from 1930s Germany, with women wearing aprons, with their hair in pigtails, and men in lederhosen.
Defenders say the members of the colony may be eccentric, but they are harmless, and in fact do good.
"I know them, and I like them," Otto Dorr Zegers, a prominent Chilean psychiatrist who has worked in the Colonia Dignidad hospital, told the New York Times.
"Their ideology is a little bit old-fashioned, like that of the Mennonites who went to the United States, but nothing justifies the co-ordinated, synchronised lies and distortions that have been invented about them."
The names of centres such as Colonia Dignidad... continue to evoke chilling memories in Chile
Amnesty International
But "defectors" from the camp paint a more sinister picture. His accusers say Colonia Dignidad was Schaefer's fiefdom, where he was worshipped as a god.
They say residents, who are never allowed beyond the gates of the camp, are kept strictly segregated into genders - so much so that the birth rate of the camp is extremely low.
Residents are taught to shun sexual desires - with electric shocks administered to the genitals of young boys, former residents say.
And they accuse Schaeffer of the almost daily sexual abuse of young boys. Horror stories have emerged of the young sons of poor local families "disappearing" within the barriers of the compound.
Torture house
But the story of Paul Schaefer is not confined to the perimeter fence of the colony - topped with barbed wire, studded with searchlights, and overlooked by a watchtower.
It goes right to the heart of the Chilean state during the iron rule of Gen Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s and 1980s - a period with which Chileans are still struggling to come to terms today.
Dissidents say they were tortured in bunkers at Colonia Dignidad
The son of Manuel Contreras - the head of Dina, Chile's now-disbanded notorious secret police - has told the Los Angeles Times his father first visited Colonia Dignidad with Gen Pinochet in 1974.
He has spoken of the warm relationship that grew between his father and Schaefer.
Former political prisoners of Gen Pinochet have testified to a warren of stone-walled tunnels under the colony, where they were taken to be tortured with electric shocks to the strains of Wagner and Mozart.
The Truth and Justice Commission, which investigated human rights abuses during Gen Pinochet's rule, backs such allegations.
And despite decades of allegations concerning the sexual abuse of boys within the compound, charges were not filed against Schaefer until 1996 - six years after Chile began its return to democracy.
Thanks to Schaefer's close links with Chile's ruling elite, the colony was able to operate with impunity as a "state within a state", said a Chilean congressional report.
Critics say elements within Chile's ruling establishment would still prefer to keep details of his involvement with Gen Pinochet's government concealed.
They say Chile must confront such allegations if it is to complete the process of coming to terms with its past.
That doesn't sound like any Baptist I know.
Tell me about it!
Whats wrong with these cult leaders? Why do they always have to go loopy and torture and rape people?
He doesn't even sound like much of a Nazi.
They finally caught up with him!
Just kidding. Horrible story about a horrible monster. Glad he had to endure eight years on the run, but it's not enough punishment.
Too bad the BTK types don't go after these aminals.
http://www.rickross.com/groups/schafer.html
I am surprised this is the first time it has been in the news. Seems like this guy was one nutjob. Nobody wwas allowed to have children for 25 years there!
I was going to mention Ol Paul but I didn't have the Cajones.
You're right though. It is hard to resist.
Bingo! However, I think this story will be buried quickly, as pedophiles in general, tend to shun the spotlight. And in the entertainment biz, they have lots of colleagues.
The reason for purging Rhoem was that high placed party officials were concerned that their sons were being initiated into a homosexual military cult run by Rhoem who was a heavy trade homosexual and quite public about it.
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I did hear something about this. Maybe this place in Chile was more influenced by the SA than the SS. Very interesting.
Yeah, it was a horrific story from a horrific period in human history.
The worst part was that this monster was allowed to continue beyond our defeat of that regime, not unlike what we're combating in Iraq and elsewhere.
I don't usually make light of recent disasters, but time is a great healer, plus I don't think any of his recent victims will ever read this.
Humor is the only thing that keeps me alive in this liberal hellhole and allows me to endure stories like these.
The name semblance was too hard to resist, although I think the Letterman Paul Shaffer is married and might be straight (but weird).
lol.
I wish I had fraction of his musical ability (had piano training at an early age, was deemed a "natural" music talent by my teacher, but never kept it up).
I can't speak to Mr. Shaffer's sexual peccadillo's, but his presentation on TV is strange. I believe in the 'ole "if it walks like a duck...."
Just because you're a breeder doesn't mean you're straight.
I'm straight, but haven't bred yet.
Being straight and not having bred, doesn't mean I'm a homo, it just means that I've been careful where I put my "self', and that I haven't met the woman that I want to breed with.
I'm a science/tech guy and in all my years, only met one woman who had the brain/body combination that I was willing to breed with (I gave her a big ring, proposed and she said yes).
All the others were just temporary pleasure centers and (unlike most of the lounge lizard scum) I always had the balls to tell them so before we hit the sack (it's always amazed me that despite when you tell a woman the truth, they think they can change your mind).
No wonder I'm still single.
I'm in a singular group. I havent't had a bad marriage and gotten divorced, nor have I produced disturbed, split-parent children.
Gawd, I wish the old days were still here.
Albert Speer did not write "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"; it was William Schirer. Speer wrote "Inside the Third Reich".
Please don't use the term "breeder" to refer to people who bear children ; it's insulting in the extreme. Any faggot/dyke who uses it in my presence will regret it. (I am not saying you are one of the above.)
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