SAVI CONSTRUCTION & INTERIORS

Roberto Kozak, at airport, assists a rebel frontrunner connect a plane towards the for the exile. Photograph: Art gallery regarding Thoughts and you can Human Liberties, Chile

Significantly less than General Pinochet’s laws regarding terror inside Chile, one-man protected many people about dictator’s raw magic cops. Exactly how did Roberto Kozak do it – and you may escape passing?

J ust before 10am toward The fresh new Year’s Eve 1986, equipped males started to any office off a small organisation getting brand new resettlement out of migrants, inside the Santiago, Chile. It quickly first started rounding upwards personnel. “It put us from the appointment place, on the ground, deal with down. It clipped computers cables and fastened you up, arm to arm,” recalled Eliana Infante, among teams. “When they tied up us up, it expected, ‘Which of you is the communist child of a great bitch Roberto Kozak?’”

Kozak are marched off a trip away from staircase. That have a servers gun so you’re able to their lead, he had been compelled to sit near the top of a meeting table as he was interrogated by the paramilitaries.

The latest gunmen had been people in a great rightwing dying team ultra-dedicated toward Chilean dictator Standard Augusto Pinochet. They were looking for guns and cash which they guessed have been stashed into the Kozak’s place of work: the fresh Santiago part of your own Geneva-founded Intergovernmental Committee having European Migration (ICEM). These were and selecting facts dating4disabled stronka that Kozak try implicated for the a murder sample into the Pinochet a couple months prior to, which had leftover four of the dictator’s bodyguards dry.

From the days then ambush, Pinochet’s cover attributes got kidnapped multiple higher-profile leftwing activists in Santiago and you will slit the throats.

Immediately following one hour, Kozak was launched, personally unharmed, and you may rushed upstairs to untie his professionals. “He was eco-friendly. It was a color between red-colored, light and you can green,” said Infante. “However, poker-experienced, the guy went downstairs, silently called Geneva to tell her or him of one’s raid following went on with his performs.”

When the paramilitaries bust towards ICEM work environment, Infante and also the other countries in the teams dreaded that Kozak are planning to getting slain – hence after eliminating your, new equipped guys carry out set fire to their workplace, making him or her, tied on to the floor, burning so you can passing

Roberto Kozak’s is amongst the higher untold stories of twentieth 100 years. Diplomatic acquaintances whom understand full details of what the guy did during the Pinochet time labeled your due to the fact “Latin America’s Schindler”. Such as for example Oskar Schindler, the latest German businessman which assisted to save 1,two hundred Jews for the Poland inside the 2nd world conflict, Kozak’s tale is the fact away from men who fearlessly put their position to store lifestyle. He may without difficulty keeps remaining their head off whenever you are thousands were taken prisoner, punished or “disappeared” from the Chile’s raw military and you can wonders police, but he picked not to ever. In the many years following the 1973 military coup, Kozak and diplomats from other places helped a projected 25,000-35,one hundred thousand Chilean governmental inmates escape from captivity and find safe retreat overseas.

Significantly less than interrogation, Kozak insisted that the Santiago office was only working in enabling refugees, and therefore there have been none firearms neither large amounts of cash into the site

More 10 years before the raid into the their place of work, Kozak got has worked his means to the internal groups of one’s Pinochet techniques, courting senior army numbers, people in politics, officials and you will people in the trick police. Deploying a mixture of diplomatic appeal, determination and you may crates from brought in whisky, he embark on painstakingly discussing the discharge out of detainees, many who was basically regarding the Chilean left. He even hid many of them inside the own home. Kozak brokered their sale in the batches, either results otherwise hundreds of prisoners immediately, often just one or two.