|
|
 |
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
| |
|
| |
 |
Back |
 |
Contents |
Page 245 |
|
Home
Page |
Forward |
 |
| |
| |
French witnesses make to our requests for
identification of the photographs.
Late in October I sent
Ludolph various affidavits from people who had met Barbie and recognized him
more or less definitely as the man in the La Paz picture.
On November
2, L'Aurore ran the picture of Barbie I had given it as well as the
anthropometric test, and captioned it: "The Murderer of Jean Moulin." Philippe
Bernert wrote that he was amused to see that "for the first time B.K. is
leading a crusade with the blessing and support of an important West German
judge, even though she is out on bail and under prosecution from the Cologne
Attorney General for having tried to kidnap Lischka. A paradoxical situation
for Prosecutor Ludolph's new assistant!"
A few weeks later Ludolph
asked me if I would get in touch with a German living in Lima, Peru, who
thought he could identify Barbie as a businessman who had recently come to La
Paz. The German had seen Barbie's 1943 picture in a recent issue of Munich's
Süddeutsche Zeitung that had come to him in Lima. I agreed.
The German's name was Herbert John, who, as I later learned, was the
manager of Editoriales Unidas, a publishing firm owned by the extremely rich
Luis Banchero Rossi, Peru's commercial fishing and fishmeal king.
On
December 16, Prosecutor Rabl, who had made the decision to dismiss the Barbie
case, wrote me:
I acknowledge receipt of your letter of
November 19, 1971, containing the very interesting depositions of Mile. Forest
and M. Halaunbrenner. Meanwhile the court has come into possession of recent
photographs that may be of Barbie. I have just requested the Anthropological
and Ethnographical Institute of Munich University to give me an expert opinion
on the question of identity. I hope to have its report by the end of the year.
After we receive it, I should be very happy if you could come to Munich to
discuss in detail what steps should be taken.
Prosecutor Rabl
had been absent from Germany in recent months on a mission to Israel to
interrogate witnesses in another case. Furthermore, Rabl was half Jewish; his
father, who had been a civil servant in the Berlin patent office, was dismissed
when Hitler came into power. He was a young man whose only real interest, he
told me, was Oriental art. He had forgotten his family's unpleasant experiences
and felt quite comfortable in the inner circles of the
|
|
| |
| |
| |
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
|
Back |
Page 245 |
Forward |
|
|
