A victim of Colonia Dignidad said that the compensation granted by Germany was insufficient

Germany's decision to compensate the victims of Colonia Dignidad is a "help" but insufficient For those who have been badually abused and tortured in this old German enclave founded by a Nazi in Chile, he told the AFP one of the victims.

The German Government and a parliamentary committee decided to compensate up to 10,000 euros ($ 11,200) to each of the victims, which sets the total amount of the compensation at around 3.5 million euros this year to 2024.

"We are very grateful for the help, for the tremendous effort of the parliamentarians who visited us is certainly a help, but it does not solve the problem of (…) we are a lost generation"he said to the AFP Horst Schaffrick, a German settled at the age of 3 next to his family in the enclave located in southern Chile.

Schaffrick was the victim of badual abuse by former Nazi corporal Paul Schäfer, who founded the colony in 1961. The place presented as a warm family place has been transformed into a kingdom of Schäfer, which has installed a forced labor and raped German and Chilean children.

Compensation "covers very little, compared to the 40 years without pay, without taxes, there is also the subject of suffering for slavery, sticks, drugs, badual abuse for 20 years ", commented the German who still lives in the lands where the colony was erected.

"How am I going to grow old, how am I going to live?" This is not resolved, it is the seriousness of the situation ", he added.

The German Government has noted that compensation is a consequence of "moral responsibility, without being able to deduce a legal obligation"

But Shaffrick believes this is an "unacceptable" position that This forces victims to continue to seek justice.

The German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier acknowledged in 2016, when he was Chancellor, that "for years, German diplomats were limited, at best, to look away. and they clearly have not done enough to protect their compatriots from this colony. "

The atrocities committed by Schäfer appeared at the end of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), who also used the enclave to torture opponents of his regime.

Detained in 2005 in Argentina, Schäfer died in prison in 2010.

Currently, the former settlement called "Villa Baviera" and is managed by private companies who provide tourism services on their land.

With information from AFP