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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
 
 
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[dis…] patch. Again I realized how little effect reports have; it's the presentation that counts. On the following day Serge was to give the whole file to the directors of the French military tribunal.

At two A.M., dead tired, I went to bed. It was too late to talk to Arno, and when I left in the morning, it would be too early.

At four A.M. Serge, who was arranging my files, awakened me. The radio had announced that Barbie had left Lima and taken the road toward Bolivia. We figured that he could not reach the border before Friday, by which time I would be in Lima and, if necessary, could follow him to La Paz.

At seven A.M. I spoke on the "Europe No. 1" newscast: "What good is it for French politicians to pay tribute to Jean Moulin in the Panthéon so long as the French government is not doing what is required to bring his murderer to justice?"

An hour later I was in the London airport, where I encountered my first difficulties. The immigration officer looked at my passport, and then consulted a thick volume containing the names of all the people the British were looking for or suspected. He asked for my ticket, took my passport, and disappeared. I was worried that I might miss my plane. I questioned his superior, and he asked: "Why are you going via London and not taking the direct Paris-Lima flight?"

I owed this treatment to my campaign in London against the expulsion from England of Rudi Dutschke.

"Put a policeman alongside of me," I told him, "until the Lima plane leaves. Then you will have nothing to worry about."

At last he let me through. I kept studying the Barbie data, and I slept. The stops – Trinidad and Caracas – vanished behind us, and I landed in Lima at 10 P.M. the same day, thanks to the time difference. I was rather disoriented. It was hot and humid, and I was wearing a winter coat. There were no reporters, for I had made a mistake in my cables by giving Greenwich instead of Lima time. Not even my source of information, Herbert John, whom I had telephoned from Paris, was there to meet me.

I managed to get in touch with Albert Brun, the AFP correspondent, a thin, tanned, fifty-year-old, who came to meet me at the airport in a car with Nicole Bonnet, Le Figaro's correspondent. I got a room at the Hotel Savoy, took a shower, changed my clothes, gathered up my data, and went down to the bar, where reporters congregated for news. I showed the proofs of Altmann's
    
   
 
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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