Author Archives: Katharine White

About Katharine White

Katharine White is a staff scholar in the campus outreach division of the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She holds a Ph.D. in modern German history, and is completing a book manuscript tentatively entitled, East Berlin’s Red Youth: The Red Woodstock, International Solidarity, and Dissent Behind the Wall. Her work has previously been published in the journal Central European History.

Germany and Colonia Dignidad: Colonial Entanglement, Medical Humanitarianism, and Human Rights Abuses in Chile

Abstract: In the early 1960s, a group of West Germans established the religious colony of Colonia Dignidad (the Colony of Dignity) in central Chile. This article chronicles the violence and atrocity that occurred at the Colony during the era of Augusto Pinochet’s military rule. At the same time, it demonstrates how Germany’s longer history of colonial entanglement and the Nazi practices of torturous medicine served as the underpinnings for the human rights violations that occurred. The Colony’s existence was only possible due to the long-standing ties Continue reading → Continue reading →