Germany opens files on Nazi paedophile sect in Chile

[Judi Lynn]

13. Germany Expresses Regret Over Failure to Stop Child Abuse at Nazi Nurse's Commune

Germany Expresses Regret Over Failure to Stop Child Abuse at Nazi Nurse's Commune

by Andy Eckardt
Apr 27 2016, 9:32 am ET

MAINZ, Germany — Germany's foreign ministry acknowledged Tuesday that its diplomats "looked away" and failed to prevent child abuse at a commune founded by a Nazi pedophile in Chile.

Paul Schaefer — a Nazi nurse who became a preacher — set up the secretive Colonia Dignidad commune in Chile after fleeing Germany for South America in 1961. He died in a Chilean prison in 2010 at the age of 89 while serving a 20-year sentence for child abuse, arms possession and human-rights violations.

Children who lived at the Colonia Dignidad commune testified at trials of colony leaders about being sexually abused, enslaved and separated from their parents.

. . .

They have opened up their German-style enclave to tourists, leaving many former victims appalled.

"It is something of a tourism center with aspects of the 60s, where a strange mix of Chilean famers, German migrants, victims and culprits, exist," former Colonia Dignidad resident and victim Winfried Hempel told German's Deutschlandfunk radio. "This is as if you had put a McDonald's into (former concentration camp) Buchenwald."

More:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/germany-expresses-regret-over-failure-stop-child-abuse-nazi-nurse-n563381