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In the footsteps of the "Butcher of Lyon", the Nazi hierarch who continued to torture and kill in Bolivia

2020-07-02T02:50:06.089Z


Following the Route of the Rats, he camped in La Paz. It was functional to the dictatorships of Banzer and García Meza. And he collaborated in the capture of Che. One day he was unmasked.


06/30/2020 - 13:35

  • Clarín.com
  • World

In the heart of the city: between rushed businessmen, lovers kissing on the benches, and indigenous people in colorful dresses selling merchandise, he walked the Prado often, from top to bottom. It is said that he sometimes walked and chatted along the walk for hours. He, that white European whom everyone remembers as a well-dressed and very friendly gentleman - even today. He had lived in Bolivia for 32 years. Most of that time here in the city of La Paz in the Andes. At 3600 meters high. So close to heaven. And yet, even here, he sent many people to hell.

Klaus Barbie , aka Klaus Altmann . The Butcher of Lyon . The old Nazi. It is not known where to start with the story of this German monster. For example, with the teenage Barbie, the one who, driven by great religious zeal, wanted to be a priest? The one who remembers his last years with his tyrannical and alcoholic father in Trier as a "time of terrible suffering"? Or with the young Barbie who loved punctuality, order, and camaraderie, and joined the Hitler Youth in 1933? Or the Barbie that made a career with the Nazis? The one who was finally appointed head of the Gestapo in the French city of Lyon and assumed command in 1942 with the words: "I have come to kill" ? Or the Barbie who was renamed Altmann and became the man on special missions in Bolivia?

A man with two last names. With two lives . The first in Europe. The second in South America.

"He asked my father to 'lend' me a while, so he put it," recalls Ricardo Ragendorfer. "My father did it, and I went with Barbie to the closest store in town, where he bought me candy." This experience dates back some 60 years. The child-friendly man worked for his father. "Both my father and mother were Jews who had fled from the Nazis," says Ragendorfer, who has Austrian roots. Bolivia was one of the few countries that issued visas for Jews fleeing Europe. The young family lived in Los Yungas, in the Bolivian jungle, not far from La Paz.

World War II: Lyon is occupied by the Germans. SS Obersturmführer Klaus Barbie was sent there in 1942. His main task: to persecute and exterminate Jews and French resistance fighters. His specialty: brutal torture methods . With sadistic joy, Barbie, the head of the Gestapo, interrogates the prisoners. Thousands of French and Jews are tortured or deported to death. He is quickly known as the "Butcher of Lyon". But the allies are coming closer, and soon France will be freed from the Nazis. In time, Barbie flees to Germany in 1944. Wandering through the war-torn country, during that time he is even promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer. Finally, the war ends in the spring of 1945. Shortly before, Barbie takes off her SS uniform and vanishes . To survive, he sells cigarettes and butter on the black market. A clandestine network of old Nazis is formed, helping each other. French authorities are looking for Barbie. In subsequent years, he will be sentenced to death several times in his absence.

"Well, my father's sawmill manager was a punctual German," says the bald Ragendorfer, now a renowned journalist in Argentina. "I was three years old, he sometimes carried me in his arms or took me by the hand." Soon after, the Jewish family moved to Buenos Aires. The jungle sawmill was sold. Ragendorfer still remembers well the moment, years later, when her mother opened a newspaper, saw the photo of the Butcher of Lyon and said in surprise: "But he is the manager of the sawmill!" "My father turned pale," says the man who is now 62 years old. "That's where I found out who the nice Uncle Klaus really was ."

The Route of the Rats

Barbie's Luck: In 1948, thanks to her Nazi friends, she contacted the US Secret Service in Augsburg. They hire him. Agent Barbie's mission is to provide intelligence to help combat the enemy embodied in communism. Americans know he is wanted in France. By 1951, they find it too risky. They don't want it on their payroll in case it gets caught. And now that? What to do with an unwanted agent who knows too much? The Americans decide to help Barbie escape , through what they call the Rat Route . Under the protection of the US and with the help of the Catholic Church, many wanted Nazis escaped this route to South America.

The identity card with which Barbie arrived in Bolivia./ Archive

Barbie gets a new passport, a new identity: Klaus Altmann. With his wife and two children he travels through the Alps to Rome. From there to the port city of Genoa. Then, take a boat directly to South America. Finally, he travels by land from Buenos Aires to Bolivia , his new home.

Bolivia. One of the poorest countries in South America. Today, many areas are still very rustic, wild and impassable. It is usually a chaotic place, where laws can be evaded if the necessary contacts and money are available.

70 years ago it was even wilder . An ideal country to settle down and remain undiscovered. That was something that became clear to Barbie immediately.

The man with two surnames, Klaus Barbie, alias Klaus Altmann, the Butcher of Lyon who continued to kill from Bolivia.

After a short stay in La Paz, Barbie settles down the first years in Los Yungas, where she lives with her family in a cabin and works as a manager of a sawmill. Later he will write about this time: "Jungle far and wide, isolated from the world, without newspapers, without radio, nothing . This was the right place for me to recover from the difficulties of the war and the post-war period."

"Ah, Banzer, that was a pig," says the slim little man. He shakes his head and rests his face on his hands like a sufferer. José * was a general in Bolivia during the bloody military dictatorship of the German-born dictator Hugo Banzer (1971-78). Today José is 76 years old, retired and at the moment is drunk in a small bar in La Paz. It's past midnight. "Do you understand me? A real pig! He was a liar, a coward. I really regret supporting him in those times," José says as he drinks another Corona beer. And Klaus Barbie? "Sure, I knew him. Barbie worked closely with Banzer ."

Barbie can no longer bear the isolation of the jungle, full of mosquitoes. She moved to La Paz, where she has the German School for her children and the German Club for herself. A club, where even after the war - at least until the 1960s - Jews are excluded. Where Nazi discourse and Hitler's salute are commonplace. No wonder someone like Barbie is welcome there. With the support of old Germans and businessmen, she quickly established contacts with politicians and the military. And soon bloody dictatorships will ravage the country, several between 1964 and 1982.

"Barbie came to Bolivia as an expert, she had already learned to torture and kill in Europe," says José with a lament: "Ay!". Cover your face again with your hands. It seems to be broken. Above all, he seems like someone who does not have a clear conscience. "Barbie knew more than we Bolivians, so he taught us." José looks thoughtfully towards the small stage of the bar. An aging singer with an Elvis Presley-style hairstyle sings old-time songs. When they are in Spanish, José joins him at times. Then he continues: "When Banzer received visits from other politicians, businessmen, journalists, Barbie stood behind him , on the other side of a wall, invisible to the guests." Barbie was inspecting people. When they were leaving, she would tell the dictator "who to eliminate and who not." Ay, José is still drinking beer.

A few days later, José will deny everything he said that night in the small bar. And it will not be the only one that retracts. Also, almost everyone who talks about Barbie insists not to be mentioned by name.

La Paz, the Andean city with the shape of a caldera and a population of about 800,000 inhabitants.

La Paz, the Andean city with the shape of a caldera and a population of about 800,000 inhabitants. With countless small, simple houses built on steep slopes. A city that seems big, but it is not. People know each other. That has to do with the different cultural groups that move in parallel worlds. Indigenous groups live mainly on the slopes. The richest classes tend to live in the center and the South Zone of the city. In this small world of politicians, military, of educated people, mostly white, mostly wealthy, everyone knows each other. So no one wants to know too much, no one wants to be considered a traitor, no one wants to be vulnerable.

The capture of Che Guevara

When the situation turns brutal in Bolivia, Barbie, aka Altmann, always has her hands in it. It is involved in the preparation of coups, in the elimination of opponents of the regime, in torture and murder, in arms trafficking. It even helps organize the capture of Che Guevara in Bolivia. He advises the Bolivian Armed Forces in the ambush of Che, in which he was assassinated by order of the CIA in 1967. The power and influence of Barbie is considerable. You have free access to the Presidential Palace. In 1980 he even received an honorary military rank for a foreigner in Bolivia: Lieutenant Colonel. That year the last military coup in the Andean country takes place. General Luis García Meza establishes a narco-dictatorship - as it will be called later - since the military earn fortunes from cocaine trafficking. García Meza brings millions of dollars to Switzerland. Barbie participates in mass violence and drug trafficking.

Photo taken in 1967, in Vallegrande, Bolivia, shows the body of Ernesto Che Guevara. / Archive

"Barbie was my friend." In those days, she met with him regularly, says Aziz *, who may have been in her 20s in the 1980s. With Barbie, she would have coffee in the city center or walk along the Paseo del Prado. Aziz is a slim and gray-haired man. His gaze is insistent, with dark facets. He is sitting in a cafe in the South Zone. Married to a very rich woman from the Bolivian upper class, Aziz takes a sip of espresso, thinks of something, actually prefers not to talk about Barbie anymore. However, he suddenly says, "Well, Barbie and I are talking about the Jews. I am a Palestinian." He casts a meaningful look, wait a while. "Or do you seriously believe that there were six million Jews killed during National Socialism?" It calls the number into question. When Aziz speaks, anger shines in his eyes. "I have never been able to visit my family's house in Jerusalem. I have no access, the Jews live there now."

Although Barbie does business with Jews in Bolivia, her aversion to them never changes. And, as fate wanted, it is a Jewish couple who finally unmasks it. Beate and Serge Klarsfeld recognize the old Nazi in a photo taken at a meeting with businessmen on Lake Titicaca. The Franco-German couple makes sure that this revelation reaches the media: in Bolivia, in France, in Germany, everywhere. At first Barbie is lucky, because the military in Bolivia gives her protection and does not deliver it. But when democracy returns, Barbie's time begins to come. In 1983, in a night action, the 69-year-old man was put on a plane by order of the new politicians and handed over to France .

"My uncle was German. He told me how Barbie - when he was drunk - played the piano at the German Club and sang in French," says Ramón **. It is a sunny morning in La Paz, the elegant businessman is having breakfast in a restaurant in the South Zone. It is actually there because today it is going to show the VW Barbie Beetle. He left it parked around the corner. "Barbie used to pretend she didn't know a word of French. If you were asking her when she passed after a night out, she didn't know a thing about anything." Ramón's cousin * was also a friend of the old Nazi. The military man was even Barbie's right hand man for a time. Just after the last dictatorship, they found the cousin on his farm riddled with bullets. "Revenge taken".

Klaus Barbie's Yellow VW Beetle.

Ramón * belongs to a family that has been in La Paz for generations. When he finishes his opulent breakfast, he shows the Beetle with which Barbie walked through the streets of the Andean city. The car used to be white, Ramón * painted it yellow. "I rent it often, for advertising or for weddings," says the big man in his fifties. "It is the only convertible Beetle in Bolivia." Furthermore: "A museum in Lyon wanted to buy it from me." But Ramón * did not want to sell it. Are you proud of this historic car? "No, I can't be proud to have a criminal's car," he says as he waves his hands and adds, "I have many Jewish friends."

However, Ramón * is pleased to report that he has the original vehicle papers and Barbie's driving license. Ramón * met the old Nazi in 1980, only briefly. When she bought the Beetle, Barbie, then 66, had to be present to sign the papers. At the clerk's office. "He seemed like a frail old man, as soon as he said a word, he avoided the public," says Ramón *. "He probably already had a feeling about what he was going to have to face."

Barbie's car is the only convertible Beetle in Bolivia. Now it is rented.

Barbie will be tried in Lyon. In 37 days of trial. The victims tell what the former head of the Gestapo did to them. Barbie is absent on many days of the process. When she is present, she looks taciturn, silent. She usually just repeats her standard phrase: "I have nothing to say." The crimes summarized: During the 21 months that Barbie was in charge of the Gestapo in Lyon, there were 14,311 arrests, 7,591 deportations and 4,342 executions in the city. However, Barbie became known worldwide for the deportation of 44 Jewish children between the ages of 3 and 13. The little French, Belgians, Germans, Austrians, a Pole, hid in a children's home in a town near Lyon. Barbie picked them up and sent them to die in the Auschwitz gas chambers. In 1987 Barbie was sentenced to life in prison. He never shows remorse. Rather, he finds his imprisonment unfair and calls himself "a poor devil." He died of cancer in 1991 at the age of 77, in prison.

What remains are the testimonies of the French resistance fighters and the Jews who survived: "Barbie is a wild animal . She interrogated me for 19 days straight. She tortured me. When she got tired, she stayed to watch her thugs torture me. " Or: "Barbie was very, very cruel. She hit me as if she didn't sense that I existed. Her eyes, usually bright but wandering like wildfire, went totally black. She was crazy. She enjoyed torturing people." Or: "Barbie liked shooting the Jews in the back of the head with a gun. She put them at the top of a ladder. If they made a perfect somersault down the stairs due to the force of the shot, he was happy." Or a journalist for the German magazine Der Spiegel, who reported on Barbie's crimes at the time, who summed up "appalling scenes": "Naked women beaten unconscious and then sexually abused by dogs, Catholic priests tortured by Barbie with electric shocks hanging from the feet until the blood came out of the mouth, nose and ears, children who were beaten and starved day after day. "

Bolivia. Barbie, aka Altmann. She left the country 37 years ago. Sometimes the memories of the people of La Paz seem very fresh, as if Barbie was still there. The nice uncle Klaus, who liked to give candy to children. Mr. Altmann, who always strolled through the city center well dressed and exchanged ideas with others - whose eyes twinkled when he had free rein to torture behind closed doors. Also in Bolivia.

By Camilla Landbø (*)

* Names are known

(*) The author is a Swiss journalist. For seven years she wrote from Buenos Aires on political and social issues in South America. After that, she worked for about two years in La Paz, Bolivia.

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2020-07-02

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