Missing in Chile: What happened to Boris Weisfeiler?
Missing in Chile: What happened to Boris Weisfeiler?
By Gideon Long
BBC News, Santiago
2 hours ago
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Gideon Long
Olga Weisfeiler's brother disappeared in southern Chile more than 30 years ago
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The last time Olga Weisfeiler spoke to her brother Boris was in late 1984, just before he flew to Chile for a hiking holiday.
"I need to get away from all this snow in Pennsylvania," he told her. "I'm heading south. It's summer down there."
Days later, Boris Weisfeiler was stepping out into the foothills of the Andes mountains in southern Chile, a rucksack on his back and an open trail ahead of him.
But he never made it home.
In January 1985, his backpack was found by the side of a river. Mr Weisfeiler, who was 43, has not been seen since.
Chilean investigation that same year concluded that Mr Weisfeiler, an experienced hiker, had drowned while crossing the river.
But his body was never found.
Then, in 2000, declassified US documents suggested Mr Weisfeiler might have suffered an altogether more sinister fate.
The documents cited a witness who claimed to have been part of a Chilean army patrol that seized Mr Weisfeiler and took him to Colonia Dignidad, a secretive Germanic agricultural commune set up in Chile in the 1960s.
It is known that Gen Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship, which ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, occasionally used Colonia Dignidad as a torture and detention centre.
The witness said Mr Weisfeiler had been interrogated at Colonia Dignidad before being forced to kneel and "murdered with a shot in the nape of his neck".
More:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35980852
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Colonia Dignidad had its own air strip, as well.[/center]
Earlier images of this Nazi run commune, and its perverted murderer leader, with information:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/110848170
http://www.democraticunderground.com/110823824
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141237682
