THE FAILED ABDUCTION OF BARBIE

IN THE FALL of 1972, the French Marxist philosopher Régis Debray got in touch with us. For him, even more than for us, Barbie was a link between the Nazis’ European reign and the oppressive regimes in 1970s Latin America. Debray had been friends with Che Guevara; he had been sentenced to death in Bolivia, saved by the intervention of General de Gaulle, and freed after five years in prison. We felt we had a great deal in common with him. Like us, he was disliked by many of the 1968 militants because they thought he gave a “bad example.” Like us, he had the courage to go beyond words and postures and to risk his life for his beliefs.

Beate and I met Régis Debray at the Café de Flore in Paris. We got along well and decided to cooperate on the following basis: we would attempt, using the South American connections of Régis and his Venezuelan wife, Elisabeth, to kidnap Barbie and bring him back to France via Chile. Régis told us that the man he considered best qualified to carry out this operation was a former left-wing journalist and prefect from Bolivia, now exiled in socialist Chile.

His name was Gustavo Sánchez Salazar. He was forty-five years old. Régis assured us that he was absolutely trustworthy. We invited Gustavo to Paris, and he arrived on October 20, 1972. Together, we hatched a plan. Gustavo knew some young Bolivian army officers opposed to the country’s military dictatorship. He suggested that I go to Chile, bringing five thousand dollars so that they could buy a car and abduct Barbie on the road from La Paz to Cochabamba, where he went regularly because he was part owner of a sawmill in the area. Gustavo’s men would ambush Barbie’s car, abduct him, and transport him to the Chilean border. After that, it would be up to us to find a way to get him to France, using the support of Chile’s leaders, who were friendly with the Debrays.

I could not enter South America with my passport: the name “Klarsfeld” was too closely linked to Barbie’s. So a friend from high school, Michel Boyer, lent me his passport; when I opened it, I noticed that the stamp on the photograph was placed almost identically to the one on my passport. So Daniel Marchac, my surgeon friend, used his scalpel to remove the photographs from both passports and swap them. Only a close examination would reveal the forgery. I became Michel Boyer, and I learned to copy his signature.

Once I got to Santiago, Régis guided me. We rented a tourist plane that took us to the north of Chile, on the Bolivian border. On a dirt track, we waited for Gustavo and a Bolivian officer named Carlos, who would drive the car that they would buy with the money I was bringing them. Beate and I had raised the five thousand dollars from the small group that had gradually gathered around us during our campaigns. I handed over the briefcase; we all shook hands and then went our separate ways.

Back in France, I waited for the date of the operation to be set. But three dramatic events occurring one after another reduced our hopes to ashes. First, an accident destroyed the car we had bought; Carlos lost control of the vehicle as he attempted to swerve around some llamas that had strayed onto the road. Soon afterward, in March 1973, Barbie was arrested. While his extradition file was being examined by the Bolivian supreme court, he went to Paraguay for a few days. Fearing that Barbie would flee to Asunción and that the French government would blame its Bolivian counterparts for negligence, the Bolivians kept him under close guard, meaning that he could not be abducted. Last, just when Barbie was released, after the demand for extradition had been refused, Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende was overthrown by General Pinochet and died during the coup d’état.

In Brazil, reading a back issue of Le Monde, I learned that it was now possible for someone with a diploma from Sciences Po to enter law school in the third year without having to pass an examination. This news reassured me: it was not too late, at thirty-seven years old, to go back to my studies. It would be another challenge, of course, but the law was one of the few professions open to me that would prove useful in accomplishing our mission.