[opiniojuris] Kevin Jon Heller: Did Klaus Barbie Help Kill Che?

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Posted by Kevin Jon Heller:
Did Klaus Barbie Help Kill Che?
http://www.opiniojuris.org/posts/1198382116.shtml


   I thought that I Am Legend was at the top of my Christmas movie list
   -- but then I read about My Enemy's Enemy, [1]a new documentary by
   Kevin Macdonald that explores the possibility that the capture and
   subsequent murder of Che Guevara in Bolivia was orchestrated by...
   Klaus Barbie:

     Guevara was the Marxist guerrilla who helped Fidel Castro seize
     power in Cuba. Barbie was the Gestapo chief in Lyon whose crimes
     included the murder of 44 Jewish children, taken from an orphanage
     and sent to Auschwitz. Improbably, the men's paths crossed in
     Bolivia. My Enemy's Enemy, a documentary directed by Macdonald,
     whose previous films include Touching the Void and The Last King of
     Scotland, examines how Barbie's record was disregarded when he was
     recruited by US intelligence after the Second World War as a useful
     tool against communism. He evaded French justice by fleeing to
     Bolivia where, living under the alias Klaus Altmann, he was
     welcomed by fascist sympathisers. Meanwhile, in 1966 a disguised
     Guevara arrived in Bolivia to organise the overthrow of its
     military dictatorship.
     The Americans had been hunting Guevara and, according to the film,
     turned to Barbie for his first-hand knowledge of counter-guerrilla
     warfare: he had attempted to crush the French Resistance and was
     responsible for the death of its celebrated leader, Jean Moulin.
     Alvaro de Castro, a longtime confidant of Barbie interviewed for
     the film, says: 'He met Major Shelton, the commander of the unit
     from the US. Altmann [Barbie] no doubt gave him advice on how to
     fight this guerrilla war. He used the expertise gained doing this
     kind of work in World War Two. They made the most of the fact that
     he had this experience.'
     De Castro adds that Barbie had little respect for Che Guevara.
     'Altmann said once, "This poor man wouldn't have survived at all if
     he fought in the Second World War. He was a pitiful adventurer,
     nothing like his popular image. The people have turned him into a
     myth, a great figure. But what has he actually achieved? Absolutely
     nothing".'
     Kai Hermann, a journalist, tells the film-makers: 'He [Barbie]
     always boasted - though I cannot prove it - that it was he who
     devised the strategy for murdering Che Guevara.'

   I have no idea whether there is anything to the story, but it's
   fascinating nonetheless. And as anyone who has seen Touching the Void
   or the Academy-Award winning One Day In September, Macdonald is a
   master documentarian.
   My Enemy's Enemy airs in the UK on Thursday. With luck, it will appear
   on DVD soon thereafter.

References

   1. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2231851,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12