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The Holocaust History Project.
The Holocaust History Project.

WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
 
 
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Godesberg. In 1947 or 1948, the Americans had even given him a German identity card bearing one of those names.

On July 16, 1964, Dr. E. Hoffmann of Berlin-Zehlendorf testified that in 1964 Barbie had introduced a Dane, Dr. Zarp, a former journalist and an economics expert for the S.S., into the American secret service in Memmingen. A former colleague of Dr. Hoffmann, Franz Adam Minnich of Stuttgart-Cannstadt, testified in his turn that he had put Barbie in touch with Dr. Hoffmann because Barbie had told him he needed information about Rumania for his work for the Americans.

After the war Barbie's family increased. A son, Klaus-Georg, was born on December 11, 1946, in Kassel (birth certificate No. 3,008, dated December 18 for son of Nikolaus Barbie). Today that son is known as Klaus-Georg Altmann, and he represents his father's company, Transmaritima Boliviana, in Hamburg. His Bolivian passport, dated January 27, 1971, is No. 51/71. He is married to a young French girl.

Klaus Barbie has prospered in Bolivia for many reasons. The German colony there controls sixty percent of the country's economy. The Bolivian army was trained back in the late 1920's by the sinister Roehm, an S.A. leader. On a television program recently broadcast in the Federal Republic, a German magnate of the well-established Gasser family stated: "We are the ones who brought Colonel Hugo Banzer from Argentina, where he had taken refuge. We took up a collection to finance the putsch of August 1971, by which he overthrew General Juan José Torres. We also furnished the arms."

Barbie – or Altmann, as he calls himself – is one of those expert businessmen who saw to the protection of the German community's interests. His name was mentioned in connection with the helicopter crash in which President René Barrientos lost his life in 1969. Barbie had an interest in all kinds of more or less shady businesses in Bolivia: a sawmill, quinine, and even shipping, although Bolivia has no access to the sea. He is a director of Transmaritima Boliviana, a company that buys ships for Bolivia. Barbie has squandered its funds, which had been raised by a national levy. Hence he is in a good position to implicate a number of high government officials in that financial scandal.

On September 20, 1969, the Foreign Minister of the Federal
    
   
 
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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