Victims of Chile Nazi sect says German compensation not enough

SANTIAGO: Victims of a Chile-based Nazi pedophile sect said compensation offered by Germany was not enough to make up for decades of slavery and abuse.

Germany said on Friday it would pay up to 10,000 euros each to victims of the "Colonia Dignidad" commune founded by a former Nazi soldier.

"It´s a help, yes, but it does not solve the problem. We are a lost generation," Horst Schaffrick, a German who arrived at the enclave with his family at the age of three, told AFP.

Schaffrick suffered sexual abuse by former Wehrmacht soldier Paul Schaefer, who founded the sect in southern Chile in 1961.

The commune was presented as an idyllic German family village but in reality, Schaefer, a convicted pedophile, abused, drugged and indoctrinated the few hundred residents and kept them as virtual slaves.

His group had close ties to the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and would torture and "disappear" regime critics.

Germany said on Friday it would pay up to 10,000 euros to victims of the sect.

The compensation "covers very little, if you compare it to the 40 years of work without pay," said Schaffrick, who also referred to "the suffering caused by slavery, beatings, drugs and sexual abuse for 20 years."

"How am I going to continue in my old age, how am I going to live? It cannot be solved, that´s what is serious about this situation," he said.

Winfried Hempel, who was born in the commune and lived there until the age of 20, also felt the proposed compensation "is a step forward, but certainly not enough."

"What we would have wanted, and what we are arguing for, would be that we give settlers who are old enough to retire a decent pension, no more and no less," said the lawyer, who is fighting for the victims.