P3DO NAZI CULT! Today, we look into one of the most chilling and dark communities that we have talked about: Colonia Dignidad. We will see how Paul Schäfer, a p3do religious leader who was a medic in the Reich Labor Service (a paramilitary organization established by Nazi Germany), managed to start and control a community that even catered to then-Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and the horrors that came with this evangelical community that would literally (and legally) steal children, force slave labor, and hoard military equipment. WELCOME TO CAMP 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsors: Morgan & Morgan and Bluechew👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: https://campgoods.co/🏕️ Get Today In History Email Here (Free): https://camp.beehiiv.com/🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.comTimestamps:0:00 Intro1:24 Cult Leader Paul Schäfer3:42 Forming The Community6:11 Life at Colonia Dignidad12:07 Nazi Officials Working at Colonia Dignidad14:19 Colonia Dignidad Turned Into Concentration Camp16:50 Public Attention on Colonia Dignidad21:38 The End of Paul Schäfer27:12 Colonia Dignidad Today + Augusto Pinochet31:10 Phone Call w/ Marks Chilean Friend34:40 Stay Away From Cults
Chapter 1: What is Colonia Dignidad?
Colonia Dignidad. We know that Nazis had fled post-World War II and many of them went to South America, but did you know there was a rural Chilean cult that harbored many of these Nazis and engaged in many nefarious acts? And today we're gonna be breaking it all down. If you've never heard of Colonia Dignidad,
Chapter 2: Who was Paul Schäfer and what did he do?
This is a secretive German enclave established in rural Chile in 1961 by a gentleman named Paul Schaefer, who fled Germany following allegations of child abuse. Presented to the outside world as charitable, religious community, Colonia Dignidad concealed a reality of the worst human rights abuses you can imagine.
I mean, child exploitation, forced labor, collaboration with Chilean military dictatorship. I mean, the worst stuff imaginable. And the story of Colonial Dignidad is an example of how a charismatic leader, an authoritarian ideology, and a state complicit with abuse enabled decades of suffering behind closed doors.
So today, we're going to dive deep on this bizarre chapter of history known as the Nazi pedo cult, and how they were able to take advantage of the needy and legally adopt children without consent. So without further ado, let's jump in. So who was this guy, Paul Schaefer? All right. He was born in a little town called Bonn on December 4th, 1921. He's the third son of a woman named Anna Schmitz.
His father, Jacob Schaefer, disappeared after they divorced in 1932. And Paul Schaeffer was 10 years old at the time, and his mother remarried in 1933. And according to Schaeffer, his father had died in the war, as did his two older brothers. And at the age of six, Paul Schaeffer was severely injured in his eye.
And from then on, he wore a glass eye that becomes, you know, sort of emblematic of his myopic view on the world today. And at the age of 18, Schaefer moved to a small town near Cologne. And in October 1940, he was called up for a few months in the Reich Labor Services. This was basically a Nazi paramilitary force in a town nearby. Due to his eye injury, he was not deployed to the front.
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Chapter 3: What was life like at Colonia Dignidad?
And in 1941, he was drafted for a military service and stationed in a small town known as Munster, presumably as a medic, but no one is really clear. Due to the sparse information about Schaefer's role during the Second World War, there are later many different speculations about his involvement in other Nazi crimes.
Specifically mentioned were possible assignments in forced labor camps and a sub-camp of the Buchwald concentration camp. Again, none of this necessarily can be verified, but again, many theories about what he was doing abound. After the war, he becomes active as a lay preacher and a youth worker in the Evangelical Free Church.
Schaeffer was known for his charisma and this sort of authoritarian style, you could say, that he spoke very, he was very convicted and he would speak with absolute certainty. And as a result, he attracted many people. after the war, specifically war widows and their children.
And he founded what he called the Private Social Mission, which operated basically as like an orphanage and some type of Christian charity. And Schaefer's approach was marked by this sort of like strict German discipline and this focus on obedience, which later we'll see kind of lays the groundwork for his leadership style in Chile. So by the 1950s,
Schaefer's activities in Germany came under some suspicion. Parents and authorities raised concern about his inappropriate behavior with some of the children in his care. And in 1961, the German police opened a formal investigation into these allegations. So in order to evade prosecution, he leaves. He flees Germany and takes with him a group of loyal followers, including many of their children.
The circumstances of their departure were... I guess, legally questionable, you could say, as some children were removed from their families really without proper consent. So him and his followers, they go to Chile in 1961, seeking to escape the legal prosecution that they were facing in Germany.
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Chapter 4: How did Colonia Dignidad become a concentration camp?
And upon their arrival, they acquired this large tract of land near a town called Paral in central Chile. The Chilean government granted legal status to the group, officially recognizing it as the Sociedad Benefectora y Educacional Dignidad. Gabe, how was my pronunciation on that? That was horrible. Thank you. I appreciate that.
The legal recognition basically allowed Schaefer and his group to kind of like establish themselves with a degree of, you know, protection, right? Like they are coming here and we're being legit and above board. And this lays the foundation for the enclave that would later become Colonia Dignidad. The community is... Right. I mean, this is like a like an old cult tactic, right?
Chapter 5: What was the relationship between Colonia Dignidad and the Pinochet regime?
You take people from a place. I mean, you know, Jonestown is the most infamous example. And you move them to a new place and they don't know anyone. They don't necessarily speak the language. So they're forced to be very isolationist, which, as we'll learn, can become rampant for all types of terrible abuses. So the community operates, you know, as its own sort of like.
you know, agrarian industrial kind of commune in a way. And it has its own internal systems and effectively functions as a state within a state. And Schaefer exercises absolute control over all the people and all aspects of their life within Colonia Dignidad.
He enforces a regime of, you know, discipline and surveillance and obedience using a lot of like religious ideology as the central tool for keeping all of this authority. And members were subjected to... Very rigorous routines of, you know, monitoring and isolation from Chilean society and then even their own families within the enclave.
And religious doctrine was used to justify and reinforce a lot of this stuff. And this, again, ensured that Schaeffer would be, you know, the head authoritarian within this little sub-community. So within the colony, Schaefer established this hierarchy system that relied on all the things from discipline to basically suppression of their individual rights.
He presented himself as this spiritual leader using... but really a pseudo-religious discourse to legitimize his authority over all the people within this community. And this framework was centered on, again, just maintaining control of all the people.
The structure of the community is characterized by separation of family units and prohibition of a lot of interpersonal relationships and this enforcement of a rigid daily routine. So he kind of enforced almost like a... like a Gestapo in a way, inside the colony.
People were constantly monitoring each other and they were encouraged to report to each other about someone else potentially going outside the commune or having private closed discourse with other people within the community. And this environment of constant monitoring and fear was... the key element upholding the community's order and ultimately Schaefer's dominance.
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Chapter 6: What happened to Paul Schäfer?
Many of the members were denied access to any type of external media or communicating with outsiders. And if anyone did, they'd be severely punished within the commune. Personal bonds, including, you know, romantic or even family relationships, were suppressed in order to eliminate potential alliances that could go against Schaefer's authority.
And anyone that did question his authority was met with severe punishment. Again, reinforcing the system where human rights violations were systematically and deeply embedded in the community's life every single day. So this is where it starts to get interesting. even more effed up. So you have this guy Schaefer, right?
And he starts to forcibly remove children from their parents and basically commit them to communal care. So parents with their kids, he's now severing the family ties and saying these children are now the children of the commune and not your kids specifically. And custody rights were then transferred to other group members, ensuring that the
the rigid hierarchy, and then again, subjected to all these abuses. I mean, it's just crazy. You have to think like these people, they go through this war in Germany. And again, many of them were on the wrong side, as you can imagine, but these kids are ostensibly innocent and the widows, you know, they were at home.
And so now they're moved away from their families and their immediate families put into a different country. And then their kids are forcibly taken from them within the commune in a place that they know nothing about With a language that they can't speak, they don't even know who to go to. They can't even leave the commune. So now their kids are taken from. I mean, I have a kid.
I have a seven month old little baby boy. And the idea that someone would take my kid, I mean, it'd be like agonizing. I mean, it's like insane to think that this guy would forcibly take their kids, especially if you know that he's being investigated for child abuse back in Germany. It's like absurd.
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Chapter 7: What is Colonia Dignidad like today?
So from the foundation of the colony, they start now actively reaching out to impoverished families in the surrounding rural areas. And this is a classic, again, like abuser cult move where they find the most disenfranchised people that need support, offer them the support, and then systematically abuse them either through forced labor or sexual abuse, all this other terrible shit.
So what they would do is they would go around offering free medical care and educational opportunities to local kids. And these services were used to build trust and kind of bring families in who lacked access to these basic resources. Again, positioning the commune as this benevolent kind of force within the region.
So they go to these people and say, hey, you know, your kid is really smart, but he's not getting access to the right education. You know, we come from Germany where we have all these educational opportunities. Wouldn't you want your kid to have access to the most? tip-top educational opportunities. And the parents are like, yeah, I guess.
And then they pull in more people, again, pull them away from their communities. And now they've fully got their grips on them. So many of the local families, they kind of got persuaded and they entrusted their kids to the commune, unaware of the true nature of what Schaefer was doing there or even back in Germany.
And they believed their children would receive better living conditions and just offering them an opportunity outside of the poverty that they were experiencing. So within the colony now, both German and Chilean children are becoming victims of this systemic abuse and exploitation.
And the structure of the commune, again, with its hierarchy, isolation and, you know, snitching culture where people were monitoring each other at all times, facilitated and concealed the crimes. The abuse of the miners, especially boys, was a central ongoing crime within the enclave. And the leadership not only, you know, protected, but just enabled all of this to happen within the community.
I mean, it's just crazy that like these people would just kind of, you know, just turn the other way. But if again, if this guy is saying like, hey, well, you know, we'll kill you. We'll send you to the authorities. We can get you deported. You'll never see your kid again. He now has, you know, claim to you and your entire family.
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Chapter 8: What can we learn from the Colonia Dignidad tragedy?
And again, this abuse is not only to the children that were the Germans, but local families as well that were lured in under these false pretenses. So the leadership within this colony, not only was it Schaefer, but it was many people with their backgrounds that were linked to the Nazi Germans and other far right extremist groups that existed in that area.
So a researcher, Jan Steele, documented that amongst Paul Schaeffer's followers were people who had been part of this Nazi regime and had strong sympathies for the ideology even after the war. So the enclave's founder, Schaeffer himself, was a former member of the Hitler Youth and a medic during World War II.
So the presence of former Nazis in these far right extremists contributed to this authoritarian and hierarchical structure that defined the community. You know, these people had already been brainwashed and indoctrinated under these Nazi ideals. And so it was much easier to co-opt them into now taking on this class of ideas, which, frankly, is not that different. Right.
It's a system of surveillance and abuse. And this ideology, along with, you know, this nostalgia for the German homeland and the hierarchy and the religion were all justifications for his authority. So Schaefer himself as the head of the commune, but many of the other hierarchs that he kind of brought in as the top brass of the commune.
would, through a system of surveillance and punishment, would force people not only into this sexual abuse, but also into forced labor. And people, specifically the natives, the Chileans of the region, adults and children, were forced under harsh conditions to work, you know, 16-hour days doing manual labor.
And anyone that dissented or stepped out would then be either tortured or threatened with torture. And again, this form of, you just led to a cyclical nature where people were then, you know, more and more inclined to listen to everything that he said.
So throughout the 60s, Schaefer had established a colony that was built on this type of pseudo-religious, you know, borderline Nazi authoritarian abuse. And by the 70s, this again, this abuse had been going on for a decade, the political tensions of Chile created a system where they could now rely on the turbulence of the local political government.
So by the 1970s, Schaefer and the leadership of Colonia Dignidad aligned themselves with the country's political right. This strategic alignment was motivated by the fear of, you know, land reform policies that was then proposed by the President Salvador A la Dante and his government that then threatened the enclave's extensive property holdings.
And if you infringe on the property holdings, then the isolationistic methods of control would then be lost. So Schaefer and his followers sought protection and political favor by supporting the conservative right wing actors that, you know, opposed the president's reforms. Shortly thereafter, there was a military coup by General Augusto Pinochet in 1973.
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