Roberto Kozak, during the airport, facilitate a break the rules chief connect a plane to your to your exile. Photograph: Museum out of Memory and you can Person Legal rights, Chile
Significantly less than General Pinochet’s laws out-of terror in the Chile, one man stored huge numbers of people regarding dictator’s intense magic cops. Exactly how performed bekijken Roberto Kozak take action – and you can refrain demise?
J ust just before 10am on The fresh new Year’s Eve 1986, armed men arrived at the office from a small organization having the fresh resettlement from migrants, for the Santiago, Chile. They immediately first started rounding right up staff. “They threw you about conference room, on to the floor, deal with off. They slash computers cables and fastened all of us right up, arm so you can hand,” appreciated Eliana Infante, among the many employees. “Once they tied up all of us up, it requested, ‘Which of you ‘s the communist son off good bitch Roberto Kozak?’”
Kozak is marched down a journey out-of stairs. That have a host firearm so you can their lead, he was compelled to rest on top of a conference dining table while he is interrogated of the paramilitaries.
New gunmen were members of a great rightwing death group ultra-faithful to the Chilean dictator Standard Augusto Pinochet. They were searching for guns and money that they thought was indeed stashed from inside the Kozak’s office: brand new Santiago department of Geneva-built Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM). These people were and additionally selecting research one to Kozak try accused into the a murder take to to your Pinochet a few months earlier, which had leftover five of the dictator’s bodyguards lifeless.
From the weeks next ambush, Pinochet’s defense attributes got kidnapped numerous high-character leftwing activists within the Santiago and you will slit the throats.
Once one hour, Kozak premiered, really unscathed, and hurried upstairs to untie his professionals. “He had been environmentally friendly. It had been a color between reddish, white and environmentally friendly,” said Infante. “However, poker-encountered, he went downstairs, silently titled Geneva to share with them of the raid right after which went on together with his works.”
In the event the paramilitaries burst with the ICEM workplace, Infante and remaining portion of the staff dreaded you to Kozak try about to getting killed – and therefore immediately after eliminating your, this new armed boys manage put fire to their workplace, making them, tied up on to the floor, burning so you’re able to demise
Roberto Kozak’s is one of the higher untold tales of one’s twentieth century. Diplomatic colleagues who know the full details of exactly what he performed inside the Pinochet era described him since “Latin America’s Schindler”. For example Oskar Schindler, new Italian language business person exactly who helped to save 1,2 hundred Jews into the Poland during the next globe battle, Kozak’s facts would be the fact off a man exactly who fearlessly put his condition to save existence. He might easily possess left their head off while you are many was basically removed prisoner, punished or “disappeared” by Chile’s brutal army and you can secret cops, but he chose not to ever. Regarding years following 1973 military coup, Kozak and you may diplomats from other places helped a projected 25,000-thirty-five,100000 Chilean governmental prisoners getting away from captivity and acquire safe sanctuary abroad.
Significantly less than interrogation, Kozak insisted your Santiago place of work was only doing work in providing refugees, hence there had been none weapons neither large amounts of cash to your properties
Over ten years up until the raid on the their workplace, Kozak got spent some time working his method on the interior groups of Pinochet routine, courting elder military data, people in politics, officials and people in the secret police. Deploying a variety of diplomatic attraction, persistence and you can crates off brought in whisky, the guy set about painstakingly settling the production out-of detainees, many whom had been regarding Chilean leftover. He even hid a number of them in his own house. Kozak brokered their income when you look at the batches, either results otherwise a huge selection of prisoners immediately, either just one or two.
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