German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has ordered the declassification of documents related to Colonia Dignidad.  That's the German colony in the Chilean Andes founded by and run by a former nazi medic and pedophile.  Human Rights groups welcomed the move, while some lawyers representing colony victims fear the documents are coming out past the statute of limitations for the government's negligence.

"The handling of Colonia Dignidad was not a glorious chapter of the history of the foreign ministry," said Mr. Steinmeier.  "For many years, from the 60s to the 80s, German diplomats looked the other way, and did too little to protect their citizens in this commune," he admitted.

Former Luftwaffe medic and evangelical preacher Paul Schaeffer fled pedophilia charges in what was then West Germany, and founded the fenced-in town in 1961.  People were forced to live and work as virtual slaves, while Schaeffer sexually abused the male children.  Those who did escape found little help from the Chilean government, which was ruled by fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet at the time; his forces used the settlement as a base for the torture and murder of political opponents.  Nor was West Germany's diplomatic mission in Chile of any assistance, and there are suspicions that some may have profited from Colonia Dignidad's cover as a religious charity.

Schaeffer was eventually charged and convicted, and he died in a Chilean prison in 2010.  Other colony officials fled to Germany, where they were convicted of minor offenses, and are currently free - something that vexes the survivors of the torture and abuse.  Other colony residents rebranded the town as "Villa Baviera", and stayed on to try to make it work as a tourist site featuring German culture.

"It is something of a tourism center with aspects of the 60s, where a strange mix of Chilean famers, German migrants, victims and culprits, exist," said former Colonia Dignidad resident and victim Winfried Hempel.  "This is as if you had put a McDonald's into Buchenwald," he said, referring to the nazi death camp of World War II.