We spent a memorable afternoon in Santiago with a small but diverse group of local Chileans, all of whom made an impact on us. The gathering was coordinated by Jeronimo Ruiz, of the band Entrefuego; he was joined by his mother, who is active in the ANEXPP, musician Daniel Pavie (of the band Nuestra Venganza) and journalist Francisco Luna. But, all eyes were on Haydee Oberreuter, spokeswoman for Agrupacion Nacional de Familiares de Ex Prisioneros Politicos Fallecidos, who told her story of resistance and social activism in Pinochet's Chile.

Haydee started in the third-person, telling us that hers was the story of a 50 year-old mother, a 20 year-old daughter, a 1 year-old granddaughter and a soon-to-be grandchild, four months in the womb. In this narrative, Haydee was the 20 year-old activist, Director of the Federation of Students at the University of Chile-FECH. Like so many others, Haydee quickly became a target of state security forces and had to go underground. However, in her absence, the military targeted her mother and young daughter, using them essentially as bait to get Haydee in custody, which ultimately happened in 1975.

The next three years saw Haydee's movement from one detention and torture center to another, including a stop at the infamous Villa Grimaldi. Subjected to torture, despite her delicate condition, Haydee had to experience a double-trauma, enduring the abuse in and of itself, while also grieving for the loss of what would have been her second child. For, as a result of the torture, Haydee miscarried.

While the torture centers were closed down in 1978, Haydee was not freed until 1980, and even then she continued to be monitored and hounded by security forces until 1994. Unlike many in her position, Haydee did not go into exile, choosing to stay in Chile and remain active, despite the significant risk that represented.

In Poland, we frequently asked concentration camp survivors how they maintained hope while living in conditions that seemed to epitomize hopelessness. We asked the same of Haydee - how could she maintain hope after being tortured for several years, losing her baby, seeing her mother and daughter imprisoned and abused? Haydee responded without hesitation that she had no hope at all, that she thought her release from the camp was a total miracle.

So, in a position of complete hopelessness, how does one survive? What is the mindset? Haydee remembered just struggling for comprehension - "you can't believe what you are going through." She was 20 at the time and, like most people her age, had all sorts of goals for the future, only to have the rug ripped out from under her. Where she had been envisioning new potential selves - all of the different futures available to her - she now experienced a different sort of fragmenting. Other people began to emerge within her - the greatest surprise, by the end, was not just that she survived the camps but that she survived as herself. "You see the most beautiful and the ugliest of people emerge."

Haydee testified on the first day of the Valech Commission. She arrived with a clear vision - gaining official recognition for her mother and daughters as victims of the military government. She wanted to expose that not only were radicals targeted, but also old people and babies. Testifying was a moving experience for her, but the commission's decisions were problematic. She succeeded in gaining recognition for her mother and oldest daughter before the commission, but not her unborn child. And then, in the official report, only Haydee and her oldest daughter were acknowledged, as her mother had died by this point. In other words, in order to be eligible for legal reparation in Chile, one needs to not only have survived the military dictatorship, but actually survived to this day.

Everyone believed they were going to gain justice, Haydee said, but the commission fell well short of it. She pointed out the 50-year suppression of testimony and also noted that many of the political prisoners from the Pinochet years were given special benefits. None have received more than 541 days of punishment, and many of those imprisoned were placed in very gentle conditions.

Instead of pursuing justice and legitimate closure, the Chilean government is acting to forget what happened - to not only turn the page, but to close the book and stash it away on the shelf. "I forgive everything," Haydee says, but forgiveness and justice are two very different things. She can forgive because she already has enough pain to carry on her own; she can manage that, but she cannot handle the dual burdens of pain and anger. However, she will still seek prosecution and she won't forget. In discussing the torturers, others at the table were a little more terse - "I hope they all die of cancer."