relations with Germany and declared war in 1943; during World War II, many German Jews settled in Chile, fleeing the Holocaust, while foreign citizens suspected of Nazi sympathies were sent to the Pisagua internment camp. After the war, many leaders and collaborators from Nazi Germany sought to take refuge in the southern region of the country, fleeing justice against them. Paul Schäfer even founded Colonia Dignidad (Dignity Colony), a German enclave in Region VII, where human rights violations were carried out. Among the many distinguished Chileans of German descent are the commander Fernando Matthei Aubel, the architect Mathias Klotz, tennis players Gabriel Silberstein and Hans Gildemeister, the athletes Sebastián Keitel and Marlene Ahrens, the musicians Patricio Manns and Emilio Körner, the economist Ernesto Schiefelbein, the politicians Miguel Kast and Evelyn Matthei, the entrepreneurs Jürgen Paulmann and Carlos Heller, the painters Uwe Grumann and Rossy Ölckers, television presenters Karen Doggenweiler and Margot Kahl, writer César Müller, and the actors Gloria Münchmeyer, Antonia Zegers, Aline Küppenheim, and Bastian Bodenhofer. Since 1973 The coup by Augusto Pinochet against Chilean President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973 sparked the biggest migratory wave in Chile’s history. Even though the number of migration is heavily tipped towards Spain, this can be traced back to closer cultural ties for Chileans to Spain as a first European country to which to migrate other than Germany. Additionally, after World War 1 Germany lost its colonies, meaning many Germans migrated out of Germany, where channels into Germany were more sealed than has been the case in countries with huge colonial presences i.e. France, England, Spain. Roughly 7,000 Chileans arrived in Germany, fleeing from the dictatorship. Approximately 4,000 were taken in by the Federal Republic of Germany while Communist East Germany (GDR) granted political asylum to 3,000 Chileans. It was the first time that German society in both states came into contact with a large group of exiled Latin American politicians. A number of diverse Chilean solidarity groups sprang up in both German states. Some of them thought that they could keep up the fight and topple the Pinochet regime from Germany. In that West German city, there was a politically active Chilean community in the 1970s and 1980s, associated with the Evangelical Church. Some political refugees even underwent military training in Communist East Germany. Some were even sent to Cuba for further training. Chile began the transition to democracy in