Personal Life
One year after becoming a Colombian citizen in 1942, Gerardo married colleague Alicia Dussan, who herself was one of the first graduate students in Anthropology of the Instituto Etnologico Nacional. The two were to form a lifelong bond and close-knit research team concentrating on Colombian archaeology and anthropology as researchers and university professors and also in disseminating material for experts and for the general public. During the 54th International Congress of Americanists held in Vienna in July 2012, professor Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo (University of Florida) presented a conference where he showed evidence regarding the participation of Reichel-Dolmatoff in his youth in the Hitler Youth and later in the SS, between 1932-1935. He was also a SDAP member in Austria, an joined the Hitler Youth in 1926.–—Oyuela-Caycedo most damaging so-called evidence, however, was the SS file and NSDAP file of his activities, as well an account of a journal, "The Third Front", published by Otto Strasser, NSDAP leader who became opposed to Hitler's branch of the Nazi party, after the killing of his brother Gregor Strasser in 1934, and wanted to discredit it (see Wikipedia Otto Strasser) – According to the conference paper presented by Oyuela-Caycedo, in 1935 (four years before the start of the Second World War), and following a mental crisis, Reichel-Dolmatoff abandoned the Nationalsocialist party. In 1939 and advised by Profesor André Siegfried, Reichel arrives to Colombia. Reichel continued work as an active member of the Resistance and was appointed Secretary to the France Libre/Free France Movement, by his colleague and friend Paul Rivet (1942-1943) who was the Delegate of the Resistance of France Libre and was a personal friend of General Charles De Gaulle. Charles De Gaulle later awarded Reichel-Dolmatoff with the medal of the Ordre du Mérite.
He is buried in Medellín, Colombia.
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Burial place
Read more about this topic: Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff
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