The Stolen Son
© Sofía Yanjarí für ZEITmagazin
Adoption scandal in Chile:The Stolen Son
As a toddler, Héctor was taken from his mother in Chile and grew up in Germany. 50 years later, he set out to discover his past.
From ZEITmagazin No. 30/2026July 8, 2026
34 Min.
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The Stolen Son – Page 1
This article is part of ZEIT am Wochenende , issue 28/2026.
Héctor Mangelsdorff and his mother Margot sit side by side, holding hands and gently stroking each other's fingers. Then they take off their shoes and place their feet together. "Look," says Héctor, "we have the same toes." His mother smiles and rests her head on his shoulder. They are sitting on a rooftop terrace, the Andes rising on the horizon.
Héctor traveled 12,000 kilometers to meet his mother, from Germany to Chile . Now they are searching for what connects them, across the chasm that time has created between them: Héctor, 53, who grew up in Bonn with German adoptive parents. And Margot, 69, his Chilean mother, who lost him as a young boy and found him again as a grown man.
Pemuco, a small town in southern Chile. This is where their story began, where Héctor was born. On the drive there in January 2026, they sit side by side in the back seat, their hands clasped together. As an adult, Héctor never experienced such intense physical closeness with his now-deceased adoptive mother. Margot tells them how she used to ride her horse from the farm to the town center. She talks about the school she only attended a couple of times before she had to work. "Wouldn't you like to learn to write, to write down your life story?" Héctor asks. "Maybe," Margot says.
The car turns onto a gravel road, bumps through a forest, and stops in front of a solitary house. "We've arrived, hijo," says Margot, "this is where you were born." Héctor gets out of the car, takes a few steps away, and gazes silently at the landscape. Did he perceive anything as an infant? Did this place shape him? How would his life have turned out if he had grown up here instead of in Germany?
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One morning in January 1974, two women took Margot's baby away.
Margot recognizes the trees: the old chestnut, the pear and plum trees. "We sometimes ate lunch under the chestnut in summer," she says. She tells of Héctor's birth, how she held him in her arms, how he nursed at her breast. Then she falls silent. First she sobs softly, then she cries. Héctor silently steps closer and puts his arms around her. She rests her head on his chest. He holds her.
Margot says she has cried a lot in her life. Her mother died when she was seven. An aunt took her to the farm in Pemuco, where the owner forbade her from going to school. Instead, she had to feed sheep, do laundry, and scrub floors. If she took too long to fetch water from the well, the woman beat her with willow switches. At 15, she became pregnant by an older man. In mid-1973, she ran away from the farm with her baby, just a few months old, to find her family .
This article is from ZEIT No. 30/2026. You can read the entire issue here.Discover the issue
Shortly thereafter, on September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet, with US support, staged a coup against the elected president, Salvador Allende, whose left-wing coalition government had promised democratic socialism and significantly improved the lives of Chile's poor. The military coup ushered in a dictatorship that persecuted left-wing parties and unions. Poverty was seen as fertile ground for leftist ideas, which had to be eradicated; raids on slums, arbitrary arrests, and violence were commonplace. Part of this logic was the notion that poor people were incapable of raising children. Thousands of young, uneducated, single mothers had their children forcibly taken away and put up for adoption .
One morning in January 1974, two women took her child away. Héctor, not yet a year old, was placed in a children's home. A social worker wrote an assessment questioning Margot Ulloa's maternal abilities. A year later, the juvenile court judge in Concepción granted Monika Mangelsdorff's request to have Héctor placed in her temporary care "as a protective measure." Her husband, Jürgen Mangelsdorff, was a diplomat; at the time, he worked as a payment office manager at the German consulate in Concepción. Monika Mangelsdorff's application, submitted by Héctor's future adoptive mother, lacked any supporting documentation, not even a copy of her identity card or marriage certificate, although her husband's permission was legally required at the time. There was also no assessment of her suitability as a mother. Three months later, a social worker wrote in a report that the foster parents were raising the child "like their own," which was advantageous "since his mother, whose identity is unknown, abandoned him."
"I expected to meet a broken woman," says Héctor. "But she laughs a lot."
“I’ve been searching for my son my whole life,” says Margot. She speaks softly and deliberately, like someone who has often been silenced. In her garden in Punta de Parra, a two-hour drive from Pemuco, the air smells of the sea. The blackberry bushes are in bloom; it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere. At this time of year, Margot likes to cook pastel de choclo, a sweet corn casserole with meat, onions, egg, and an olive in the center. Today she’s cooking it for her son, whom she has longed for for 50 years. She calls out, “Lunch is ready, hijo. ” Hijo, son, she says it often, as if to make up for the many years she couldn’t address him that way. Héctor replies in Spanish, “I’m coming, mamacita.” He speaks a little Spanish, but he often finds it difficult to understand his mother. She doesn’t speak German, so at first they communicated mainly through body language. "I had to get used to being someone's son again," Héctor later said. "The term 'Mama' was too loaded for me, so the Spanish diminutive 'mamacita' was helpful."
Héctor always knew he was adopted. His adoptive parents told him they had taken him in out of pity. © Sofía Yanjarí for ZEITmagazin
After Héctor was taken away from her, Margot worked as a domestic servant for many years. On one of her days off, she met her future husband, and she went on to have five more children. Her eyes light up as she shows the photos of her other children hanging on the wall behind the dining table. Even so, she thinks about her eldest son every day, she says, "I always said I had six children." She kisses Héctor on the cheek again and again. "I expected to meet a broken woman," says Héctor. "But she laughs a lot."
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The only memories Héctor has of Chile are the taste of coriander and sea urchins. Thanks to its long Pacific coastline, Chilean cuisine is heavily influenced by fish and seafood: mussels, crabs, and sea urchins are all staples – often prepared with coriander, onions, and lemon, "a taste you don't forget." And he remembers the feeling of vastness at the sea. The waves, the spray, the rugged rocks. Until he was two and a half years old, he lived with his adoptive parents in Concepción. A photo of him was pasted in a family album: a little boy with straight hair, a red anorak, and a serious expression, the sea in the background. "When I look at it," says Héctor, "I see a child who spent a year in an orphanage and finally has room to run. I associate the sea with an incredible sense of freedom."
Héctor had always known he was adopted. When he asked his adoptive parents about his origins, they told him that his biological mother had been taken into custody by the police in Chile and he had been placed in an orphanage. The story seemed plausible to him, and he didn't ask any further questions. His adoptive mother, a housewife and devout Catholic, had found him in an orphanage when he was two years old and had taken pity on the malnourished, dark-haired boy, or so she told him. Later, when they argued, she would sometimes say, "We should have left you there." When his adoptive father was angry again and slapped him, Héctor vowed that no one would ever make him cry again.
After adopting Héctor in Chile, the Mangelsdorffs adopted another little girl. Then the German Foreign Office sent them to the embassy in Saudi Arabia, followed by a stay in Mexico, and later back to Germany. The parents argued frequently, shouting at each other; the children witnessed their father hitting their mother. Héctor remembers that when Monika Mangelsdorff was unhappy, she sought comfort in him and held him in her arms. When he was ten years old, the family moved to Mexico. Héctor liked it there. He fell in love with a classmate. But after a devastating earthquake, his mother wanted to return to Germany.
The search for the biological mother
Arriving in Bonn in the summer of 1985 was difficult for him, says Héctor. He was twelve years old. High school bored him; he couldn't concentrate, preferring to look out the window or skip class. During puberty, conflicts with his adoptive parents intensified. His mother didn't understand his goth-punk phase, the Sex Pistols poster in his room, the music of Einstürzende Neubauten. His father, whom he never experienced as affectionate or loving, let him do as he pleased. He slipped him money when he needed it and gave him cigarettes when he started smoking. Héctor repeated three years of school, only later completing his vocational diploma. He studied social work for a few semesters, then started waitering in a pub. He dropped out of university. Today he works in a Bavarian inn in Bonn.
When he first fell truly in love with a woman and experienced his first breakup, he fell into a deep depression. "It completely devastated me because I just didn't understand it." He felt worthless, powerless. He never wanted to experience such pain again. At 27, a woman became pregnant after only three encounters. He broke up with her before the baby was born. "I was a completely immature egoist," says Héctor. When their son was ten, the woman moved with him to another city, and contact with her ceased. Héctor maintained contact with his son but missed out on much of his own childhood, partly due to the distance. At 42, he became a father again; this time the relationship lasted two years. Héctor wanted to be a better father now, one who was there for his daughter. "I often hurt women, even if unintentionally," he says. His infidelity was a frequent cause of the breakups. "I can't give my love to just one person, maybe because I want to protect myself somehow, out of fear of loss."
When he sees reports about Chile on television, he wonders if he resembles one of the women in them.
Héctor tries a few times to explore this fear of loss. In 1999, he flies to Venezuela, intending to travel on to Chile, but after a few weeks, he runs out of money. Two years later, he writes an email to the Chilean child and youth protection agency, Sename, to search for his mother. He receives no reply. Sometimes he sees documentaries about Chile on television. Then he studies the women closely and wonders if he resembles any of them.
In 2021, Héctor's adoptive father died, followed in 2024 by his adoptive mother after a long illness. Héctor says he hated his father, "but I was able to develop a kind of love for my mother. But until her death, I couldn't bring myself to say, 'I love you.'" In the last months before her death, his adoptive mother was unable to speak due to muscle failure. "That certainly didn't help me express the unspoken things." But after her death, he feels as if something inside him is being released. He can allow himself to feel more emotions again. He can cry again.
His inheritance would give him the financial means to travel to Chile and search for his biological mother. But he doesn't know how.
One day, he pulls out the folder containing the adoption documents. Yellowed papers, handwritten letters, officialese in Spanish—he doesn't understand much. In the documents, he finds his birth certificate: Concepción is listed as his place of birth, his adoptive parents as his biological parents, and his name is listed below: Héctor Marcelo Mangelsdorff Maes. But then there's a second birth certificate, from 1974, with a different place of birth: Pemuco. And a different surname: Héctor Marcelo Muñoz Ulloa. In irregular adoptions , a new birth certificate was often created to conceal the birth parent's identity; in many cases, the original certificate no longer exists, leaving the children with no way of knowing who their biological parents are. Héctor, however, now had a clue to his biological mother's surname: Ulloa. He's puzzled, but he puts the folder away. "I didn't realize what kind of explosive was inside," he says today.
When she was separated from her son, Margot had all documents containing information about him taken away. © Sofía Yanjarí for ZEITmagazin
In early 2025, he lies on his bed in his Bonn apartment with his laptop, watching the Arte documentary " Adopted Children – A Scandal Without Borders" on the media library . It's about "fake" orphans, meaning children from South America, Asia, and Africa who were adopted by families in Europe and the USA, even though they weren't orphans. Chile is also featured: the documentary tells the story of children who were separated from their mothers and given up for adoption during the Pinochet dictatorship and are now, as adults, searching for their origins. And it also features mothers searching for their children. Héctor is deeply moved. "Women crying really gets to me; it cuts me to the core," he says.
The documentary also features the Chilean organization Hijos y Madres del Silencio (Children and Mothers of Silence), which supports those affected in their search for their relatives. Héctor photographs his adoption documents page by page and sends the files to the organization via a search form on their website. He checks his emails every day, but doesn't even receive a confirmation of receipt. After two weeks, he follows up to see if his request has been received. Again, he receives no reply. Héctor is disappointed. He tries to come to terms with the idea that he may never find his biological mother.
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The group Hijos y Madres del Silencio (Children and Mothers of Silence) meets every Thursday in a city library in the Lastarria neighborhood, in the heart of Santiago, Chile. It's a colonial-era building with high ceilings and plenty of light streaming through large windows onto the tables. Around twenty women sit together, embroidering. They call these weekly meetings "Bordemos Esperanza" (Let's Embrace Hope). As the needles pierce the fabric, they tell stories of their missing children, brothers and sisters, who may have been adopted abroad. Many stories begin similarly: poor, young women told by doctors at the hospital that their babies had died during childbirth. Others had their children taken away by midwives or nurses in the hours or days after delivery.
Marisol Rodríguez, the organization's president, is searching for her sister, who was born in 1972. Doctors had told her mother the girl was stillborn. When she later inquired at the hospital, there were no records, no trace, as if the birth had never taken place. In 2014, Rodríguez came across an article about a priest who, under the same pretext, took children from their mothers and put them up for adoption. Rodríguez founded a Facebook group, which eventually became Hijos y Madres del Silencio (Children and Mothers of Silence). Since then, the women have been involved in the search process, protesting and demanding answers: "There was a network that facilitated this child trafficking," says Rodríguez.
During the military dictatorship, up to 1,000 Chilean children were adopted abroad each year.
It wasn't until 2018 that the Chilean Chamber of Deputies established a commission to investigate allegations of irregular adoptions. A year later, it published a 144-page report describing "mafias" that took babies from their mothers and turned it into a "lucrative business" by placing them for adoption with couples abroad who paid thousands of US dollars per child. Behind this was a well-established network: midwives and nuns who separated mothers from their children; social workers, lawyers, and officials who falsified documents; judges who authorized departures; and airlines that transported the children out of the country. These illegal adoptions had already taken place in the 1950s and continued into the 2000s. But during the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s, these practices reached their peak: Chile became one of the most important countries of origin for international adoptions, with up to 1,000 children leaving the country each year. The report speaks of systematic human rights violations by the state. What began as ideological contempt for poor families developed under the dictatorship into an international system driven by greed.
Hijos y Madres del Silencio receives daily inquiries from women and men searching for their origins: from Italy, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the USA. Marisol Rodríguez and her colleague Ana María Olivares process these inquiries on a volunteer basis, evenings and weekends. Sometimes it takes weeks or months before they can respond to messages. They have already reunited over 300 adoptees with their birth families, often meeting only via video calls, and usually without speaking the same language. Many of the mothers have already passed away without having found their missing children.
In June 2025, four months after his inquiry, Héctor receives an email from Ana María Olivares: “Dear Héctor, we have created a missing person ad with a photo of you on social media so that your biological family might recognize you.” It is the photo of him by the sea. Héctor sees the ad on Facebook: “Héctor Marcelo Muñoz Ulloa is looking for his family. Born on May 13, 1973, in Pemuco. Living in Germany.” It is shared over 90,000 times in just a few days. He hopes.
Héctor writes a letter to his mother. He begins with: "Beloved Mama".
Just four days later, at home, he receives another email: "We've found your mother. Her name is Margot Ulloa." Héctor is stunned, he cries, "a complete emotional meltdown"—that's how he describes the moment in retrospect. His first thought: "I have to go there now, as quickly as possible." Attached to the email is a photo of Margot. He likes her friendly expression, but at first he doesn't see any resemblance, "she was practically a complete stranger to me." He forwards the email without comment to his daughter's mother and to his son, who replies: "Wow, amazing, I'm sooooo happy, my grandma, haha." Then Héctor drives to work at the inn. His boss can see that something has happened. "Can I hug you?" Héctor asks him. They hug, and Héctor cries. Then he goes back to work as if it were just another day.
The search organization offers to arrange a video call with Margot for Héctor. But Héctor doesn't want to see his mother on a screen for the first time. He writes her a letter. It begins with: "Beloved Mama." He writes how happy he is to have found her. "I knew that on my deathbed I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I hadn't at least tried to find you."
A new life begins
Margot was at home in her garden in Punta de Parra when her husband showed her a photo on his phone and said, "This is your son." She saw the picture, a child in a red anorak with a serious expression, and felt, as she recalls, a pang in her heart. She burst into tears, feeling as if a weight had been lifted from her, a weight she had carried for decades.
Margot is illiterate. When Héctor was separated from her, all documents containing information about her son were also taken away. No one told her where he was. She wanted to search for him but didn't know how. Later, her husband helped her, and in 2018, she filed a complaint with the National Institute for Human Rights and reported the case. In 2022, the institute informed her that the police had located her son in Germany. But due to data protection laws, she was not allowed to contact him. An employee of the human rights institute told her, she recalls: "Perhaps your son doesn't want anything to do with you." Margot cried so hard that she fainted and had to be treated with sedatives in the hospital. When Héctor's missing person poster went viral in 2025, a family acquaintance saw it and knew that Margot was searching for her son.
The embrace feels familiar, Margot cries and sinks into Héctor's chest.
Two weeks after receiving the email, Héctor lands at the airport in Santiago. Unlike before, he feels ready for this trip. He hasn't planned much; he's only booked accommodation for a few days. At passport control, the officer asks him for the address where he'll be staying, but Héctor has no answer. He becomes nervous and starts to sweat. When he finally gets his passport stamped, he stands at the baggage carousel. He wonders: What awaits me? What will she smell like? Will I cry?
Then he pulls his backpack off the conveyor belt, places it on a luggage cart, and pushes it toward the exit. As he steps through the glass door, he sees his mother holding a hand-painted sign: "Amado hijo – bienvenido," welcome, beloved son. Beside her are the women of Hijos y Madres del Silencio, some holding up cell phones and cameras. When they see Héctor, they applaud. Margot starts running, Héctor lets go of the luggage cart, and the two embrace. The hug feels familiar; Margot weeps and sinks into Héctor's chest. "I thought I was going to see my baby again, but of course he was much bigger," Margot says now. Héctor remains composed. He feels he has to be strong; he wants to comfort and support his mother. "Her crying wasn't just an expression of joy, but also of all her suffering," he says of that moment. "I was holding this tiny being in my arms, the one who had been searching for me for 50 years."
In the first few days, Héctor says, they hardly spoke, "we just touched and kissed." He sits in his mother's garden, rolling a cigarette. On his first visit, he stayed for two weeks. Everything was new to him: the language, the food, the people. But he never felt uncomfortable or awkward, but rather warmly welcomed by his new family. They are an incredible enrichment, he says, "but with that comes the willingness to accept new pain and new losses." This is his second visit; he arrived in December with his 26-year-old son, his ten-year-old daughter, and her mother, his ex-girlfriend. They are visiting Héctor's mother in Punta de Parra, in a simple, one-story house with a shallow gable roof, a green garden fence, and pink flowers blooming in the dry earth. Thanks to her husband's work, the family could afford the small house. Héctor celebrates Christmas in the summer under a plastic tree; the presents aren't opened until midnight. His family leaves after three weeks, but Héctor stays longer to spend time with his mother, for example in her garden.
A few days later, Héctor and Margot meet with a lawyer in Santiago. They want the injustice they suffered to be acknowledged and those responsible brought to justice. A fan hums, and the Ritter Sport chocolate Héctor brought from Germany melts on the table. Patricia Parra specializes in cases involving crimes against humanity. These crimes have no statute of limitations, she explains. But the chances of a conviction are slim. Margot has already given her statement. Parra is here today to discuss Héctor's testimony with him. "It's important that you become a co-plaintiff; that way we can exert more pressure," the lawyer says.
Héctor listens attentively and speaks little. Then he says, "That's quite a big responsibility." He's supposed to explain how the adoption has affected his life. But Héctor isn't quite sure how to answer this question yet. That's often difficult for adoptees, says Parra. "Most of the time, their birth families live in poverty, and the adoptees have grown up in wealthy countries. Many people think: 'That was the best thing for them,'" she says, "but who decides what's best?"
It remains unclear whether Héctor's adoptive parents knew that his mother had not given him up voluntarily.
In 2017, a judge in Santiago launched an investigation into illegal adoptions, and since then, over 1,000 victims have filed charges against the Chilean state. The judiciary estimates that more than 20,000 children were given up for adoption against their mothers' will. However, the legal proceedings are progressing slowly, and many of those responsible have already died. In June 2025, a court ordered the arrest of a juvenile court judge involved in the adoptions for the first time. The judicial investigation revealed that a criminal organization abducted children from impoverished backgrounds, often under the pretext of providing them with temporary protection, and then sold them to foreign couples for approximately US$50,000. The judge is alleged to have abused her position to expedite the adoptions and facilitate the children's departure from Chile.
Often, the adoptive parents themselves were victims of these criminal networks and were unaware of the circumstances under which the children were separated from their parents. Whether the Mangelsdorffs knew this or not remains unclear. They moved in diplomatic circles and were part of the German community in Concepción. The juvenile court judge of Concepción, Irma Bavestrello, who was married to a man of German descent with the surname Perelman, approved Héctor's adoption. She is under investigation for her possible involvement in the network that facilitated the abduction of children.
There are numerous irregularities in Héctor's adoption process. There's the application from his adoptive mother, which Bavestrello approved the same day, even though the required documents and expert opinions were missing. Then there's the report from the social worker who recommended the final transfer of the child to the couple after only three months. According to a witness statement that is part of the ongoing court proceedings and is available to ZEITmagazin, a German consular official facilitated contact with German couples who wanted to adopt children in Chile. This official could possibly be Jürgen Mangelsdorff.
In the first few days after their reunion, Héctor says, he and his mother kissed constantly. © Sofía Yanjarí for ZEITmagazin
The German Foreign Office has admitted that the German government was informed in advance about the planned coup under General Pinochet. Trade between Germany and Chile experienced a boom after the takeover. The Federal Intelligence Service (BND) may also have cooperated with the CIA, which supported the coup, and with Pinochet's backers. At the very least, the Foreign Office was aware of the human rights violations committed by the military junta. The German sect settlement Colonia Dignidad served as a torture camp for the Chilean secret police – and Chilean children were also illegally adopted there by Germans, as a report by the Chilean Institute for Human Rights shows. "For many years, from the 1960s to the 1980s, German diplomats at best turned a blind eye," said then-Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in 2016 regarding the Foreign Office's handling of the German colony in Chile.
Did they perhaps also turn a blind eye to irregular adoptions? There are no official nationwide statistics on the number of Chilean children adopted in Germany during the Pinochet dictatorship. A central register for international adoptions has only existed since 2002. In response to an inquiry from ZEITmagazin, the German Foreign Office stated: "The Foreign Office has no figures on the number of Chilean children adopted between 1973 and 1990. As far as is known, adoptions of Chilean children took place in both Chile and Germany during this period." A request under the Freedom of Information Act was processed but yielded no results. "Furthermore, the Foreign Office has no independent findings on irregular adoption processes between 1973 and 1990," the statement continued. Organizations such as Hijos y Madres del Silencio (Children and Mothers of Silence) assume that the number could be in the hundreds or even thousands.
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In several European countries where children were adopted during the Chilean dictatorship, state institutions have now launched official investigations or at least official procedures to address potential illegal international adoptions. In Sweden, a commission of inquiry presented a report in 2025 on abuses in international adoptions, confirming that children were adopted without parental consent and that Swedish authorities were aware of this. The commission recommended an end to international adoptions and an official apology. Switzerland also published a government-commissioned report in 2023 on international adoptions from a total of ten countries of origin, including Chile, which showed that authorities were aware of illegal practices.
After their meeting with the lawyer, Héctor and his mother were planning their first vacation together. They wanted to go to the coast with its rugged cliffs and wild waves, the place Héctor remembered from his childhood. But then, while they were still in Santiago, they received news: the devastating wildfires in southern Chile had reached Punta de Parra. The village had burned to the ground, and Margot's house and garden had been destroyed. A small suitcase and two cloth bags were all that remained for her and her husband. Instead of going to the beach, Héctor and his mother drove to Punta de Parra. They camped among the rubble and ash and rebuilt what had been destroyed. Together, mother and son.
Héctor launched a crowdfunding campaign and collected donations in Germany for his new family. Many were touched by his story and wanted to help. "I had just made all these new memories with my family, and then it was all gone," he says. He helped set up temporary accommodation. Two weeks later, he had to leave; his work, his children, and his daily routine awaited him in Germany. Back in Bonn, he spoke to Margot twice a week. She sent him photos, wanting to show him how the house construction was progressing. In September, he planned to fly back to Chile, this time for the national holiday. "A new life has begun for me," he says.
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K
KaPatty
28 minutes ago
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A touching story, I wish you much success in processing it!
Speaking of which, it also happened in the GDR that children of parents critical of the regime were taken away from them.
In West Germany, children were also more easily taken away from unmarried, single parents, because they were considered immoral per se.
I don't mean to downplay the systematic injustice that occurred in Chile. The inhumanity of what happened here after 1945 doesn't even come close. But sometimes we should remember how far we've come in recent decades.
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The Commentator
2 hours ago
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A similar system existed in Spain under Franco.
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Anne T.
3 hours ago
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Sometimes one could despair at the cruelty of the world. It has always been this way and is probably impossible to eradicate. Until humanity manages to destroy itself.
I wish mother and son all the best for the rest of their years together. May their love for each other help them overcome the past.
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ClaudeHuhu
4 hours ago
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Hector's life path, his handling of relationships, etc., sounds to me like a post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Hellas
19 hours ago
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How shocking.
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Borsig circle runner
20 hours ago
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"But for data protection reasons, she's not allowed to contact him."
It doesn't get more cynical than that. Data protection in Germany is a playground for soulless and intrusive naysayers who are useless where it really matters.
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blender
20 hours ago
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"For many years, from the 1960s to the 1980s, German diplomats at best turned a blind eye."
The Federal Republic of Germany, and especially the CDU/CSU under Franz Josef Strauss, actively supported Pinochet. The Catholic Church, almost everywhere in the world, took children away from poor, unmarried indigenous mothers.
One would have to be very oblivious not to suspect where these children came from.
⭐️ 40❤️ 22
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