Original article: El mundo celebra la victoria contra el nazismo en 1945: En Chile recuerdan al padre nazi de Kast que arrancó de Alemania y se escondió en el país Memory Against Oblivion: Commemorating the Victory Over Nazism and Fascism in 1945 On May 9, we mark the 81st anniversary of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Soviet Union, a monumental event that cost over sixty million lives during six years of war. As noted by Yolanda Rodríguez González in MundoObrero. es, «it was capitalism and imperialism that created the conditions for the rise of fascism in the world,» emphasizing that the heroic resistance of the Red Army in Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad marked the beginning of the end for fascism—a truth that, she warns, must not be distorted.

During this commemoration, Chilean historian Jorge Baradit stirred social media by recalling the past and present ties of Kast in Chile: “Today we CELEBRATE the Nazi defeat at the hands of the Soviet Union (…) One of those Nazi officers fled, went into hiding, and later secretly immigrated to Chile. His son is now governing us. ” The Story of José Antonio Kast’s Nazi Father Michael Martín Kast Schindele’s involvement in the Nazi Party is an indisputable fact documented by major international media including The Washington Post, El País, and DW Español.

The latter confirmed in 2021 that the Bavarian, born in 1924, «joined the NSDAP in 1942 at the age of 18. » A soldier in the Wehrmacht until 1945, he emigrated to Chile in 1950, founded Cecinas Bavaria in Buin, and, as cited in Wikipedia and other texts, became a «collaborator of Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship,» establishing himself as the patriarch of the Kast family in the country. The Chilean context of the 1930s and 1940s was a fertile ground for Nazism: a 1942 article from La Nación warned of «35,000 party members» in Chile, «of which 8,000 were organized militarily,» with the German embassy in Santiago serving as a propaganda center.

Now, 81 years later, José Antonio Kast, who identifies as an anti-communist Catholic and upholds «the legacy of Pinochet,» has been elected president of Chile. The May 9 commemoration, Rodríguez González concludes in Mundo Obrero, should serve to engrave in memory that «fascism is a threat that endangers world peace. Never again fascism.