The Brazilian ranch where Nazis kept slaves

[Judi Lynn]

20 January 2014 Last updated at 20:10 ET
The Brazilian ranch where Nazis kept slaves
By Gibby Zobel
BBC World Service, Campino do Monte Alegre, Brazil



On a farm deep in the countryside 100 miles (160km) west from Sao Paulo, a football team has lined up for a commemorative photograph. What makes the image extraordinary is the symbol on the team's flag - a swastika.

The picture probably dates from some time in the 1930s, after the Nazi Party's rise to power in Germany - but this was on the other side of the world.

"Nothing explained the presence of a swastika here," says Jose Ricardo Rosa Maciel, former rancher at the remote Cruzeiro do Sul farm near Campina do Monte Alegre, who stumbled across the photograph one day. But this was actually his second puzzling discovery. The first occurred in the pigsty.

"One day the pigs broke a wall and escaped into the field," he says. "I noticed the bricks that had fallen. I thought I was hallucinating."



More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25815796

[MADem]

1. Horrific!

That whole hidden and forgotten history would make one helluva Hollywood movie, though.

[azurnoir]

2. very shadowy dark piece of history and a stain on Brazil

thanks for posting

[shenmue]

3. Good grief

Very sad.

[Coyotl]

4. History of German settlers in America has a lot of horrible chapters, including genocide.

And the European colonial legacy of slavery was still prevalent in Peru until 1970 and the Agrarian Reform liberation of haciendas and chattel workers.