[6] Reports from Chile's National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation indicate that a small set of the many individuals abducted by Pinochet's Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional during his rule were held as prisoners at Colonia Dignidad, most of whom were subjected to torture, and often to extrajudicial execution as well.

At its largest, Colonia Dignidad was home to some three hundred German and Chilean residents, and covered 137 square kilometers (53 sq mi).

[2][14][15] Ewald Frank was a key figure in helping Colonia establish its weapons factories by contracting with German arms producers to assist the colony in setting up their operations.

The colony had its own press operations which recorded and broadcast videos showing their happy residents amid celebrations and commemorations: men dedicated to farm work, women and girls embroidering or preparing butter.

[citation needed] In 1967, Schäfer freed another inhabitant of the colony, Heinz Kuhn, who confirmed the allegations previously made by Müller, and provided more information on abuses.

However, these first allegations were rejected by politicians and were emphatically denied due to their ties with the management of the Colony in their preparation of the military coup of September 11, 1973, as demonstrated later in Chilean court cases.

[citation needed] In 1988, Georg and Lotti Packmor escaped and testified in a parliamentary hearing in Bonn, Germany, that German citizens were forced to live in the enclave against their will.

[18] Before officially moving his organization to Chile, Paul Schäfer requested that the Chilean government exempt him from paying taxes and grant him asylum as long as he helped with gaining political intelligence.

[19] The Rettig Commission noted a wealth of information supporting the accusations of the use of the land owned by Colonia Dignidad for detention and torture of political detainees during Pinochet's military dictatorship.

[9] Schäfer's 2005 arrest saw more than 500 government files of missing detainees hidden in the bodega de las papas (potato cellar in English).

In the late 1970s, Pinochet allegedly ordered for the mass graves containing hundreds of murdered detainees to be unearthed and for the bodies to be either thrown into the sea or burned.

Colonia Dignidad authorities remained powerful and also had allies in the army and among the Chilean far right, who would warn them in advance when the police were preparing to visit the site.

[24] Those on the side of the colony said that it was a harmless organization, but, those against it recounted it as tyrannical in structure, and highly restrictive in terms of interaction between genders and in expression of sexuality, with a reportedly aging population.

Inside, however, the colony seemed fairly normal, though a bit old-fashioned:The village had modern apartment complexes, two schools, a chapel, several meetinghouses, and a bakery that produced fresh cakes, breads, and cheeses.

He made great efforts to illustrate Colonia Dignidad as a utopian paradise, seemingly frozen in a time before World War II.

[19] The inhabitants lived under an abnormal authoritarian system, where in addition to minimal contact with the outside, Schäfer ordered the division of families (parents did not talk to their children, or did not know their siblings).

Schäfer sexually abused children and some were tortured, as is clear from the statements of the German Dr. Gisela Seewald, who admitted the use of electroshock therapy and sedatives that her boss had claimed were placebos.

Males would initially be placed in a group called "The Babies", then advance to "The Wedges" by age 6, "The Army of Salvation" by 15, "The Elder Servants" by the mid-30s, and lastly, "The Comalos" by 50.

However, there are many cases uncovered in recent years that refer to illegal adoptions of children from families residing in the surrounding areas by the German hierarchy in order to deliver on the promise of free education.

[17] Colonia Dignidad's involvement came to light as early as an October 1976 report from the United Nations Ad Hoc Working Group on Chile, as referenced in a March 1977 Amnesty International report, "Disappeared Prisoners in Chile", with the latter report describing the evidence in this way: Another DINA detention center described in the [U.N.] document, in which it is alleged that experiments in torture are carried out, is Colonia Dignidad, near the town of Parral…[29] Prisoners being tortured in the tunnels under Colonia Dignidad were each interrogated to gain an understanding of their personality in order to gauge the appropriate torture technique.

[31] In 2012, a judge in Chile ordered the arrest of eight former police and army officials over the kidnapping of Weisfeiler during the Pinochet years, citing evidence from declassified US files.

[32] In 2016, the case was closed and the men were freed when a judge ruled that Weisfeiler had indeed been abducted, but that it was only a common crime, long past the statute of limitations, instead of a human rights violation.

The first, within the colony itself, included three containers with machine guns, automatic rifles, rocket launchers, and large quantities of ammunition, some as many as forty years old but with evidence of recent maintenance.

[36] In January 2005, former Chilean secret police operative Michael Townley, then living in the United States under a witness-protection program, acknowledged to agents of Interpol Chile links between DINA and Colonia Dignidad.

[37] The Central Intelligence Agency and Simon Wiesenthal claim that Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi concentration camp doctor, known as the "Angel of Death" for his lethal experiments on human subjects was present at the colony.

The German government states that to this date, there is "no evidence to support or invalidate Wiesenthal's claim or the more general allegation that the Colonia Dignidad or its legal successors was a place of refuge for Nazi criminals.

[27] In early 2011, Hartmut Hopp, considered to be Schäfer's "right-hand-man" at Colonia Dignidad, was placed under house arrest in Chile while awaiting trial for human rights crimes.

[43][44][45] Hopp and other alleged accomplices in Schäfer's crimes who were charged and awaiting trial took refuge in Ewald Frank's church in Germany, where they were protected from extradition.

The government of Chile banned Ewald Frank from entering the country after finding he had been visiting and holding revival meetings with Schäfer's followers at Colonia.

[51][49] When the transition of the colony first started, many of the former victims protested in front of the "Villa Baviera", attached photos of the murdered and disappeared on the fence and compared the use of the former torture site to "installing a McDonald's in Auschwitz".