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FTR #839 Interview (#2) with Peter Levenda about “The Hitler Legacy”

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by 12/19/2014. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more) con­tains FTR #827.  (The pre­vi­ous flash dri­ve was cur­rent through the end of May of 2012 and con­tained FTR #748.)

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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment

Intro­duc­tion: The sec­ond of sev­er­al inter­views with Peter Lev­en­da, this pro­gram sets forth the his­tor­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion for the post­war per­pet­u­a­tion and oper­a­tion of Nazism–“The Hitler Lega­cy.”

The the­sis of this remark­able book might be summed up in an excerpt from page 307:

. . . . After World War II, the Amer­i­can peo­ple thought that Nazi Ger­many had been defeat­ed and the “war” was over; this book demon­strates that it nev­er was. Instead, we were told that Com­mu­nism was the new threat and we had to pull out all the stops to pre­vent a Com­mu­nist takeover of the coun­try. And so our mil­i­tary and our intel­li­gence agen­cies col­lab­o­rat­ed with sur­viv­ing Nazis to go after Com­mu­nists. We refused to pur­sue world­wide right wing ter­ror groups and assas­sins. After all, they were killing Com­mu­nists and left­ists; they were doing us a ser­vice. Like Hoover and the Mafia, the CIA refused to believe a Nazi Under­ground exist­ed even as they col­lab­o­rat­ed with it (via the Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion and the like).

The whole thrust of this book has been that Amer­i­can lead­ers in busi­ness, finance, media, and pol­i­tics col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nazis before, dur­ing, and after the war. The West­’s share in the ‘blame” for Al-Qae­da, et al, goes back a long way–before Eisenhower–to a cabal of extrem­ist US Army gen­er­als and emi­gre East­ern Euro­peans who did­n’t have much of a prob­lem with Nazism since they feared Com­mu­nism more. The Church, the Tibetans, the Japan­ese, the Ger­mans, the Croatians–and the Americans–all felt that Com­mu­nism was the greater dan­ger, long before WWII. We enlist­ed war crim­i­nals to fight on our side. We appro­pri­at­ed the idea of glob­al jihad from the Nazis and their WW I pre­de­ces­sors. We amped up their plan to weaponize reli­gion and con­vinced Mus­lims, who hat­ed each oth­er, to band togeth­er to fight Com­mu­nism. And when Afghanistan was lib­er­at­ed and the Sovi­et Union was defeat­ed?

Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. . . .

Peter calls the first sec­tion of his book “Ori­gins of 21st Cen­tu­ry Con­flict.” It begins with events that occurred dur­ing, and in the imme­di­ate after­math of, “The Great War.”

Promi­nent in Peter’s analy­sis of the “Ori­gins of 21st Cen­tu­ry Con­flict” is the gen­e­sis of “glob­al jihadism.” Iron­i­cal­ly, what is per­ceived in parts of the Mus­lim world as an anti-impe­r­i­al doc­tine had its gen­e­sis as a vehi­cle for colo­nial dom­i­na­tion.

Seek­ing proxy war­riors on behalf of the Kaiser, archael­o­gist Max von Oppen­heim con­vinced Sul­tan Mehmet the V of the Ottoman Empire to declare a glob­al jihad against Eng­land, France and Rus­sia in an unsuc­cess­ful attempt to oust those nations from their colo­nial hold­ings in the Mus­lim world.

Britain, too, sought to employ proxy war­riors against the Ottoman Empire, uti­liz­ing T.E. Lawrence’s Arab Legion and King Faisal. After the defeat of the Ottoman armies, the British vio­lat­ed their pledge of sup­port for Arab self-gov­er­nance, opt­ing instead for the Sykes-Picot treaty divid­ing the Mid­dle East between France and Eng­land.

Dur­ing the First World War, Britain also signed the Bal­four Del­ca­ra­tion, express­ing sup­port for a Jew­ish home­land in the Mid­dle East, in exchange for Jew­ish sup­port in the war. After the con­clu­sion of hos­til­i­ties, the British Empire vio­lat­ed its agree­ment with the Zion­ists as well.

It was in British-con­trolled Pales­tine that we see the rise of a very impor­tant fig­ure in the his­to­ry of the Mid­dle East, the grown of jihadism and the gen­e­sis of the col­lab­o­ra­tion between fas­cism and Islamism–Haj Amin al-Hus­sei­ni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Seek­ing to mozilize the feel­ing of betray­al on the part of many Mus­lims in the Mid­dle East and else­where in the colo­nial world, al-Hus­sei­ni ulti­mate­ly became a gen­er­al in the Waf­fen SS and the first leader of the Pales­tin­ian Nation­al move­ment.

Next, we high­light Peter’s analy­sis of what hap­pened when the Nazis came to pow­er, putting NSDAP ide­o­logues in posi­tions of influ­ence around the world–diplomats, mil­i­tary attach­es, spies etc. Net­work­ing with like mind­ed inter­ests in oth­er coun­tries, they worked with ele­ments in the U.S. dis­cussed in FTR #838. Fur­ther illu­mi­nat­ing some points of dis­cus­sion fea­tured in our first inter­view, the pro­gram sets forth infor­ma­tion about the Nazi-allied Ukrain­ian fas­cist milieu active in the U.S. pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II.

We then digress, to present an overview of the Ford Motor Com­pa­ny milieu and inter­na­tion­al fas­cism, from Ger­man-Amer­i­can Bund leader Fritz Kuhn to Michael Ver­non Town­ley, a per­pe­tra­tor of the assas­si­na­tion of Orlan­do Lete­lier, son of a Ford Motor Com­pa­ny employ­ee in Chile, mem­ber of the Chilean Nazi par­ty and one of the prin­ci­pals in the design and oper­a­tion of Colo­nia Dig­nidad. We sum­ma­rize Colo­nia Dig­nidad and Peter’s brave, fright­en­ing vis­it to that Nazi bas­tion dis­cussed in his book Unholy Alliance.

Peter vis­it­ed this Nazi out­post in Chile in 1979. Part of what we call “The Under­ground Reich,” it served as a tor­ture cen­ter for the Pinchet regime in Chile. Financed by the Nazi dias­po­ra, in was an epi­cen­ter for “Oper­a­tion Condor,”–an inter­na­tion­al assas­si­na­tion con­sor­tium of Latin Amer­i­can dic­ta­tor­ships assist­ed by ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence. (The assas­si­na­tion of Orlan­do Lete­lier was the best known of these killings.)

Peter vis­it­ed “The Colony,” as it was known, against the advice of the local con­stab­u­lary. Staffed by Ger­mans, it served as a tor­ture cen­ter for the Pinochet dic­ta­tor­ship. Michael Ver­non Town­ley, an elec­tron­ics engi­neer, who cre­at­ed remote con­trol tor­ture cen­ters, which per­mit­ted mul­ti­ple sus­pects to be “inter­ro­gat­ed” simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, by remote con­trol.

“The Colony” was fund­ed by the world­wide Nazi mon­ey machine and was revealed to have devel­oped weapons of mass destruc­tion, includ­ing sarin gas. It remains in exis­tence.

After being able to leave Colo­nia Dig­nidad, Peter was put on a plane back to the Unit­ed States, lost his job with the Ben­dix cor­po­ra­tion and was repeat­ed­ly sub­ject­ed to anti-Semit­ic death threats.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

  •  Dis­cus­sion of the Bal­four Agree­ment.
  • Eng­land and France’s betray­al of their promis­es to both the Arabs and the Jews. Sykes-Picot agree­ment and the replace­ment of the Hashemites as guardians of Mec­ca and Med­i­na.
  • Sim­i­lar­i­ty in the point of view of Post World War I Ger­mans and Post World War I Arabs: Belief in betray­al by a “Glob­al Con­spir­a­cy.” How this dove­tails with sim­i­lar glob­al con­spir­a­to­r­i­al para­noia on the part of U.S. and Euro­pean elites. Jews and both “Bol­she­viks” and col­o­niz­ers.
  • Review of the basics of “the Pelypenko affair.”
    John Koos and his work for Hen­ry Ford and net­work­ing with Father Cough­lin and Third Reich intel­li­gence.

1. Con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion intro­duced in the pre­vi­ous pro­gram, we fur­ther devel­op Peter’s analy­sis of the ori­gins of glob­al jihad.

Iron­i­cal­ly, what is per­ceived in parts of the Mus­lim world as an anti-impe­r­i­al doc­trine had its gen­e­sis as a vehi­cle for colo­nial dom­i­na­tion.

Seek­ing proxy war­riors on behalf of the Kaiser, archae­ol­o­gist Max von Oppen­heim con­vinced Sul­tan Mehmet the V of the Ottoman Empire to declare a glob­al jihad against Eng­land, France and Rus­sia in an unsuc­cess­ful attempt to oust those nations from their colo­nial hold­ings in the Mus­lim world.

Peter sums up a pro­found irony in this gam­bit on page 67:

. . . . In sum, glob­al jihad was orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived as a tool for West­ern, Euro­pean colo­nial­ists to (iron­i­cal­ly) manip­u­late anti-colo­nial sen­ti­ments by ele­vat­ing them to the sta­tus of divine ordi­nance, tak­ing what was a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic situation–colonialism–and inter­pret­ing it with­in a pure­ly reli­gious con­text. . . .

Britain, too, sought to employ proxy war­riors against the Ottoman Empire, uti­liz­ing T.E. Lawrence’s Arab Legion and King Faisal. After the defeat of the Ottoman armies, the British vio­lat­ed their pledge of sup­port for Arab self-gov­er­nance, opt­ing instead for the Sykes-Picot treaty divid­ing the Mid­dle East between France and Eng­land.

Dur­ing the First World War, Britain also signed the Bal­four Del­ca­ra­tion, express­ing sup­port for a Jew­ish home­land in the Mid­dle East, in exchange for Jew­ish sup­port in the war. After the con­clu­sion of hos­til­i­ties, the British Empire vio­lat­ed its agree­ment with the Zion­ists as well.

It was in British-con­trolled Pales­tine that we see the rise of a very impor­tant fig­ure in the his­to­ry of the Mid­dle East, the grown of jihadism and the gen­e­sis of the col­lab­o­ra­tion between fas­cism and islamism–Haj Amin al-Hus­sei­ni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Seek­ing to mobi­lize the feel­ing of betray­al on the part of many Mus­lims in the Mid­dle East and else­where in the colo­nial world, al-Hus­sei­ni ulti­mate­ly became a gen­er­al in the Waf­fen SS and the first leader of the Pales­tin­ian Nation­al move­ment.

Key ele­ments of this part of the analy­sis include:

  • The Bal­four Agree­ment.
  • Eng­land and France’s betray­al of their promis­es to both the Arabs and the Jews. Sykes-Picot agree­ment and the replace­ment of the Hashemites as guardians of Mec­ca and Med­i­na.
  • Sim­i­lar­i­ty in the point of view of Post World War I Ger­mans and Post World War I Arabs: Belief in betray­al by a “Glob­al Con­spir­a­cy.” How this dove­tails with sim­i­lar glob­al con­spir­a­to­r­i­al para­noia on the part of U.S. and Euro­pean elites. Jews and both “Bol­she­viks” and col­o­niz­ers.

The essence of the world view that devel­oped on “the Arab street” and that informed those sym­pa­thet­ic to the Grand Mufti and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is summed up by Peter on page 73 (note that von Oppen­heim and Luden­dorf for­mal­ized the jihadist tac­tic of tar­get­ing civil­ians and inno­cents as part of this jihadist oper­a­tional par­a­digm):

. . . . A new nar­ra­tive was about to be born, and it became the Grand Uni­fied The­o­ry of Islamist ter­ror­ism; anti-Zion­ism became equiv­a­lent to anti-Semi­tism; the Jews had cre­at­ed Bol­she­vism as a mech­a­nism for divid­ing and con­quer­ing all oth­er races; they were aid­ed and abet­ted in this pro­gram by the Euro­pean powers–the “Crusaders”–who coop­er­at­ed with the Jews in order to enslave the Mus­lims; and that the only way to defend Arab, i.e. Mus­lim, ter­ri­to­ries against the invaders was to pro­claim a jihad. Since the Arabs did not have the same access to mon­ey and mil­i­tary equip­ment as the Cru­saders and the Jews, the jihad would have to be waged “by any means nec­es­sary.” This includ­ed the reg­i­men sug­gest­ed by Oppen­heim of indi­vid­ual assas­si­na­tions, inde­pen­dent bands of jihadists, and guer­ril­la war­fare that includ­ed tar­get­ing civil­ian pop­u­la­tions. Once Jews were iden­ti­fied as the ene­my of Islam, the des­ig­na­tion of ene­my com­bat­ant could be extend­ed to include not only able-bod­ied men who car­ried arms and fought in pitched bat­tles, but any­one who was Jew­ish: women women, chil­dren, and all those pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered non-com­bat­ants. . . .

. . . . This new par­a­digm would become enshrined in the con­cept of “total war,” a phrase coined by for­mer Ger­man Gen­er­al Erich Luden­dorf (1865–1937) to des­ig­nate a state in which all the resources of a nation had to be mobi­lized in the war effort. When two such states are at war, then it is inevitable that civil­ian pop­u­la­tions on both sides would be slaugh­tered in an effort of each side to deprive the oth­er of the raw mate­r­i­al of conflict–to destroy logis­ti­cal sup­port, indus­try, agri­cul­ture and most of all every human who could grow food, make ammu­ni­tion, or fire a weapon. . . . .

2. Next, we high­light Peter’s analy­sis of what hap­pened when the Nazis came to pow­er, putting NSDAP ide­o­logues in posi­tions of influ­ence around the world–diplomats, mil­i­tary attach­es, spies etc.

Net­work­ing with like mind­ed inter­ests in oth­er coun­tries, they worked with ele­ments in the U.S. dis­cussed in FTR #838. Fur­ther illu­mi­nat­ing some points of dis­cus­sion fea­tured in our first inter­view, the pro­gram sets forth infor­ma­tion about the Nazi-allied Ukrain­ian fas­cist milieu active in the U.S. pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II. Top­ics high­light­ed include:

  • Review of the basics of “the Pelypenko affair.”
  • John Koos and his work for Hen­ry Ford and net­work­ing with Father Cough­lin and Third Reich intel­li­gence: “. . . . Now Cough­lin real­ly opened up. He revealed to the aston­ished priest [Pelypenko] that he was a coor­di­nat­ing link with all sub­ver­sive groups in the coun­ty; that he was con­nect­ed to the whole White Russ­ian Nazi groups under [Nazi spy Count Anas­tase] Von­si­atsky, that he was in direct touch with Ukrain­ian ter­ror­ist groups in Detroit, and that he was linked to John Koos, the Nazi Ukrain­ian work­ing for Hen­ry Ford. (From Amer­i­can Swasti­ka by Charles High­am, p. 129.) John Koos was the leader in Amer­i­ca of the Ukrain­ian Het­man Orga­ni­za­tion (UHO). This was  Nazi group, based in Berlin, com­posed of eth­nic anti-Com­mu­nists and engaged in ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties against the Sovi­ets, as well as against pro-Com­mu­nist or anti-Nazi indi­vid­u­als and groups every­where else. Koos worked out of the Ford Motor Com­pa­ny fac­to­ries in Detroit where he arranged for the hir­ing of thou­sands of Ukraini­ans to work the plants and to form  fifth col­umn work­ing direct­ly for Hen­ry Ford. The posi­tion of Koos was so secure in the eyes of the Reich that Hitler him­self sent the mes­sage that Koos would be named Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Affairs in Ukraine once it had been lib­er­at­ed by the Nazis. Koos received a medal award­ed by Alfred Rosen­berg, the Nazi ide­ol­o­gist men­tioned above. . . .” (The Hitler Lega­cy, pp. 102–103.) We high­light this, in part, to illus­trate the depth and breadth of the Ukrain­ian Nazi/fascist milieu that has gained pow­er in Ukraine fol­low­ing the Maid­an coup.

3. We digress, slight­ly, to present a brief overview of the Ford Motor Com­pa­ny milieu and inter­na­tion­al fas­cism, from Ger­man-Amer­i­can Bund leader Fritz Kuhn to Michael Ver­non Town­ley, a per­pe­tra­tor of the assas­si­na­tion of Orlan­do Lete­lier, son of a Ford Motor Com­pa­ny employ­ee in Chile, mem­ber of the Chilean Nazi par­ty and one of the prin­ci­pals in the design and oper­a­tion of Colo­nia Dig­nidad. We briefly digress to sum­ma­rize Colo­nia Dig­nidad and Peter’s brave, fright­en­ing vis­it to that Nazi bas­tion dis­cussed in his book Unholy Alliance.

Peter vis­it­ed “The Colony,” as it was known, against the advice of the local con­stab­u­lary. Staffed by Ger­mans, it served as a tor­ture cen­ter for the Pinochet dic­ta­tor­ship. Michael Ver­non Town­ley, an elec­tron­ics engi­neer, who cre­at­ed remote con­trol tor­ture cen­ters, which per­mit­ted mul­ti­ple sus­pects to be “inter­ro­gat­ed” simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, by remote con­trol.

After being able to leave Colo­nia Dig­nidad, Peter was put on a plane back to the Unit­ed States, lost his job with the Ben­dix cor­po­ra­tion and was repeat­ed­ly sub­ject­ed to anti-Semit­ic death threats.

 

Discussion

4 comments for “FTR #839 Interview (#2) with Peter Levenda about “The Hitler Legacy””

  1. Great pro­gram! Ordered my copy of the book today. Real­ly look­ing for­ward to read­ing it. Thanks

    Posted by GK | March 16, 2015, 7:20 pm
  2. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/world/americas/villa-baviera-chile-reinvents-itself-for-tourists.html?ribbon-ad-idx=6&rref=world/americas

    Chilean Com­mu­ni­ty, Once a Site of Tor­ture, Rein­vents Itself for Tourists

    Vil­la Baviera Jour­nal

    By PASCALE BONNEFOY
    NOV. 5, 2015

    A Pic­turesque Des­ti­na­tion With a Gris­ly Past

    VILLA BAVIERA, Chile — Clau­dio Pacheco took his fam­i­ly on an out­ing recent­ly to Vil­la Baviera, a pic­turesque farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty tucked away in the foothills of the Andes. They ate a vari­ety of Ger­man dish­es and won a live deer in a raf­fle.

    And like oth­er vis­i­tors, they spent much of the day wan­der­ing some of Vil­la Baviera’s 35,000 acres of forests, farm­land and rolling hills — neat­ly trimmed lands once used to tor­ture, kill and bury polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, amass weapons and ter­ror­ize a com­mu­ni­ty.

    Vil­la Baviera, once home to a deeply secre­tive Ger­man sect whose for­mer leader was con­vict­ed of sex­u­al­ly abus­ing young boys and was under inves­ti­ga­tion for col­lab­o­rat­ing with the regime of Gen. Augus­to Pinochet, has rein­vent­ed itself as a tourist attrac­tion in a bid to stay alive after its leader fled the coun­try and the colony fell into finan­cial dis­ar­ray.

    The com­mu­ni­ty, which at its peak in the 1960s and ’70s had about 300 mem­bers, has turned for­mer work­shops where devo­tees labored with­out pay into a hotel. The com­mu­nal din­ing hall, one of the few places where par­ents in the colony could glimpse the chil­dren who had been stripped away from them, is now a pub­lic restau­rant. It cel­e­brates Okto­ber­fest, and a small store sells sou­venirs and home­made pas­tries and sausages.

    A tourism com­plex has a small lagoon with pad­dle boats, a pool, hot tubs and bicy­cles for rent. Ser­vices include wed­ding cer­e­monies and so-called his­tor­i­cal tours through the for­mer leader’s bed­room, where he abused boys, and the hos­pi­tal, where fol­low­ers were drugged and tor­tured.

    “I come here a lot; I love the Ger­mans,” said Mr. Pacheco, a 64-year-old farmer from a near­by town. “I buy plants and eat at their restau­rant. Although I had heard rumors, I learned what had hap­pened here only a few years ago.”

    There has long been inter­est in Chile about what hap­pened under the watch­tow­ers of Vil­la Baviera while the sect’s leader, Paul Schäfer, ruled the com­mu­ni­ty. Dis­turb­ing details of what went on here have trick­led out since the 1960s, and con­tin­ue to do so. In Octo­ber, a clas­si­fied police intel­li­gence report detail­ing what detec­tives found dur­ing raids on the colony more than a decade ago was released and pub­lished by a human rights group.

    Mr. Schäfer, an evan­gel­i­cal Ger­man preach­er, fled to Chile in 1961 to evade pros­e­cu­tion over charges relat­ed to sodom­iz­ing chil­dren. Hun­dreds of his fol­low­ers came with him, and they cre­at­ed a colony here, for­mer­ly called Colo­nia Dig­nidad, that would build a self-sus­tain­able agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty and pro­vide char­i­ty to the local pop­u­la­tion.

    But inside these grounds, Mr. Schäfer exert­ed com­plete con­trol over the lives, bod­ies and minds of his fol­low­ers, who worked under slave­like con­di­tions and were sub­dued through manip­u­la­tion, beat­ings, elec­troshocks and drugs, accord­ing to the tes­ti­monies of colony mem­bers.

    Cou­ples were not allowed to live togeth­er, and chil­dren were sep­a­rat­ed from their par­ents and raised in com­mu­nal care. Only mem­bers of the lead­er­ship had access to tele­vi­sion or any media. Barbed wire and guard tow­ers sealed the res­i­dents in, and hid­den cam­eras and micro­phones record­ed them at all hours.

    Gen­er­al Pinochet’s secret intel­li­gence agency brought dis­si­dents to the colony to be tor­tured in the 1970s, accord­ing to Chile’s truth com­mis­sion. Some were exe­cut­ed and secret­ly buried here, and, accord­ing to court tes­ti­mo­ny, their bod­ies were lat­er exhumed, incin­er­at­ed and dumped into a riv­er.

    The gen­er­al and oth­er offi­cers also spent week­end get­aways at Colo­nia Dig­nidad.

    Over the decades, var­i­ous Chilean gov­ern­ments gave the colony tax breaks for being a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion and turned a blind eye when escapees report­ed abus­es.

    Pho­to: What was once a com­mu­nal din­ing hall for mem­bers of a Ger­man sect has been turned into a pub­lic restau­rant in Vil­la Baviera, Chile.

    But the colony’s lead­ers even­tu­al­ly lost their pro­tec­tion. Mr. Schäfer fled Chile in 1997 and went into hid­ing in Argenti­na, want­ed for crimes relat­ed to child abuse, tax fraud, weapons pro­duc­tion, forced labor and col­lab­o­ra­tion in the tor­ture and dis­ap­pear­ance of pris­on­ers.

    He was cap­tured in 2005 and died in a max­i­mum-secu­ri­ty prison in San­ti­a­go in 2010 while serv­ing a 20-year sen­tence for sex­u­al­ly abus­ing minors. Most mem­bers of his inner cir­cle were impris­oned three years lat­er.

    After his death, the com­mu­ni­ty vot­ed: Would they bury him in their ceme­tery? They decid­ed not to. The man they had wor­shiped had stolen their lives.

    Today, Vil­la Baviera is a shad­ow of what it was. Its eco­nom­ic strength is gone, and so is half its pop­u­la­tion. Most young adults left for Ger­many or oth­er parts of Chile. The restau­rant, hotel and farm­land rely on work­ers from near­by towns.

    “When Schäfer’s dic­ta­tor­ship end­ed, we fell into chaos,” said Thomas Schnel­lenkamp, 46, a son of a jailed for­mer leader. “We learned about what had hap­pened here, peo­ple start­ed blam­ing each oth­er and no one trust­ed any­one any­more. There was a lot of frus­tra­tion, and many left.”

    But it was also an oppor­tu­ni­ty for change, as some mem­bers of the younger gen­er­a­tion left for a uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion and the few who returned, includ­ing Mr. Schnel­lenkamp, took the reins of the sect’s cor­po­rate hold­ing.

    The com­mu­ni­ty that remains is strug­gling to stay afloat in the face of huge debt, because of an aging pop­u­la­tion, sub­si­dized hous­ing and ser­vices, poor invest­ments and — in a sig­nif­i­cant change from the past — the need to pay work­ers. A poul­try farm that pro­duces 32,000 eggs a day is its major source of income. The com­mu­ni­ty now hopes that tourism will pay off.

    In addi­tion to explor­ing hik­ing trails in pris­tine woods and enjoy­ing roman­tic moments by reser­voirs, tourists can see — just doors down from the hotel’s guest rooms — the sleep­ing quar­ters of armed guards with dogs and a com­mu­ni­ca­tions cen­ter, out­fit­ted with an emer­gency fire pole, that con­trolled all move­ment inside the colony.

    Two old pota­to ware­hous­es also hide secrets: In one, inves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­ered a large cache of weapons in 2005, while the oth­er was used in the 1970s to tor­ture polit­i­cal pris­on­ers of the Pinochet dic­ta­tor­ship.

    Pho­to: An exca­va­tion site, one of sev­er­al, in Vil­la Baviera. Inves­ti­ga­tors have dug up areas in search of mass graves, doc­u­ments and the remains of vehi­cles belong­ing to peo­ple who dis­ap­peared dur­ing the regime of Gen. Augus­to Pinochet.

    Colony mem­bers wres­tle with being regard­ed by out­siders as vic­tim­iz­ers, when they were vic­tims them­selves. The sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion lead­ers stress that they are not respon­si­ble for their par­ents’ crimes, but to many Chileans, they still rep­re­sent the oppres­sive sect into which they were born.

    With­in the com­mu­ni­ty, there is a tug of war between appeas­ing old­er res­i­dents, many of whom con­tin­ue to resist the changes, and forg­ing a new future and assim­i­lat­ing into Chilean soci­ety.

    Some accuse the for­mer lead­ers in prison of main­tain­ing pow­er.

    “They exert a moral influ­ence over the com­mu­ni­ty and their chil­dren who run it,” said Win­fried Hempel, who fled the sect in 1997 when she was 20. “They main­tain a psy­cho­log­i­cal siege on peo­ple there.”

    But even for tourists, it is impos­si­ble to ignore Vil­la Baviera’s dark past. Along the wind­ing roads, where bright yel­low fields of rape­seed con­trast with the green spring crops of wheat and oat, are huge holes in the ground, exca­va­tions where last Novem­ber inves­ti­ga­tors searched for evi­dence of crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. Climb­ing the Doradil­lo hill, one can see two small­er holes where dis­si­dents were believed to have been buried in the 1970s.

    One of those vic­tims may have been Clau­dio Escanil­la, a 17-year-old stu­dent from the near­by city of Par­ral who dis­ap­peared in Colo­nia Dig­nidad.

    “I hope they find a but­ton, a tooth, any­thing,” said his sis­ter, María Cristi­na Escanil­la, who along with a group of activists and vic­tims recent­ly held a memo­r­i­al cer­e­mo­ny at the colony.

    Ms. Escanil­la also ques­tioned the colony’s new indus­try. “How can they have tourism where so many have been killed?” she asked.

    Although a few colony lead­ers are try­ing to set up a muse­um to hon­or the vic­tims of Mr. Schäfer and Gen­er­al Pinochet, human rights groups have request­ed that cer­tain places in Vil­la Baviera be pre­served as memo­ri­als, and they con­tin­ue to hold protests demand­ing answers.

    “We’ve told the fam­i­lies of the dis­ap­peared that we suf­fer for their loss, and we’ve let them come in to hold their cer­e­monies,” said Dorotea Baar, one of the sect’s orig­i­nal mem­bers. “But we don’t know any­thing, and we are vic­tims, too.”

    A ver­sion of this arti­cle appears in print on Novem­ber 6, 2015, on page A9 of the New York edi­tion with the head­line: Along Pic­turesque Chilean Trails, Reminders of a Dark Past

    Posted by newsgrabber | November 8, 2015, 2:54 pm
  3. For more on Oper­a­tion Con­dor read “Preda­to­ry States: Oper­a­tion Con­dor and Covert War in Latin Amer­i­ca” By J. Patrice McSh­er­ry
    the defin­i­tive account of the hor­rors of that era. She aslo con­nects it GLADIO and the Nazi under­ground. Michael Town­ley fig­ures promi­nent­ly in It. Sarin in small dos­es can be used to induce untrace­able heart attacks by the way.
    Although Con­dor was Sup­poss­ed­ly named for the nation­al bird of Chile It was prob­a­bly named after the Nazi Con­dor Legion from the span­ish civ­il war.
    Check out my review of her book
    http://anti-imperialist‑u.blogspot.com/2015/10/operation-condor.html

    Posted by Hugo Turner | June 13, 2016, 10:36 am
  4. I was sur­prised and amazed to recent­ly dis­cov­er a fea­ture film was made about Colo­nia Dig­nidad in 2015. It’s sur­pris­ing good with some famil­iar actors. Star­ring Emma Wat­son, Daniel Brühl, and Michael Nyqvist.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonia_(film)

    Posted by Another John | October 6, 2021, 1:19 pm

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