Namesake

by Michel Goldberg

Michel Cojot, born Goldberg successful international banker, husband and What caused this man to plan the murder of Klaus Barbie, the former Gestapo Chieftain, and what caused him to spare Barbie at the crucial moment? How did he find himself in Entebbe, spokesman for the passengers held hostage by Palestinian terrorists on a hijacked Air France plane? And why did Cojot, at the peak of his career and the height of his powers, leave his job, divorce his wife, and determine to make a radical change in a life that most other men would envy? This remarkable memoir, a bestseller in France under the title Ecorche Juif is a taut, searingly honest, and yet mockingly ironic account of a remarkable man who had the courage to track down and confront the source of his own soul sickness. His itinerary, which took him to Bolivia, to Israel, to Entebbe, to Spain, and to Beaune-la—Rolande, depot for Auschwitz deportees, could have traced the route of a downfall. Yet this is the story of a conquest, crowned by the reunion of Cojot’s individual destiny with the collective fate of his fellow Jews. Coiot real- izes that the gaping void in his life is the absence of his father, stolen from him in early childhood along with the name Goldberg that marked his identity. His decision to abandon the life he had known, to come to know his father, to know and accept himself, to love, is the core of this book.

192 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

My PhD adviser's favorite book. A moving personal history of Michel Goldberg, a man who plotted (and had the chance) to kill Klaus Barbie.