Since I found an Imperial Ethiopian Air Force page on Faebook, I have been digging through my mothers diaries. I found an entry in January of 1964 where my father had an accidental bump with history. I have spent a lot of time poking in my mothers diaries lately, especially since I found an IEAF page on Facebook. Among the entries found for 18 Jan 64, a Saturday, was that my father left with some Ethiopian friends (Dr. Assefa Woldesemait, Fesseha Menghistou and a fellow named Johannes, dont know his fathers name) on a trip for a few days to Jimma. The entry for 21 Jan 64 states that Dad returned and had a nice trip. It also mentions that Dad had a minor accident with an Ethiopian police truck. It so happened that the police truck was carrying the body of a man found in a crocodile infested river when the accident happened. The man had been spotted in the river and was duly reported to authorities by Sergeant Charles Gates of the MAAG station, The man was identified as Dr. Karl Babor, a Nazi who was being hunted by both the Germans and by Simon Wiesenthal for his participation in the Holocaust at the Gross Rosen concentration camp near Sachsenhausen. Babor had been initially considered small fry by the Nazi hunters and was released in Austria, whereupon he fled to Ethiopia. Babors wife left him at some point and contacted Simon Wiesenthal, and some time after that, Babor decided to try his luck swimming with the crocodiles. I have Dads military records and had read the accident report he made to the MAAG commander. The accident happened when Dad, who was driving a MAAG motor pool Land Rover, was stuck behind a slow-moving truck for some kilometers and when he pulled out to pass, had to do so fairly quickly - didnt say if he faced oncoming traffic or just bad road conditions - and he clipped the front bumper of the slow-moving truck after passing it. I am pretty sure we had switched to driving on the right hand side of the road by then, and I remember that the motor pool Land Rovers were right hand drive. I found no indication of what Sgt Gates was doing down there when he found Babor. I studied Google Earth images and the only river of any size that Rt. 7 crosses or comes near is the Gibe River, which is also the most likely to be crocodile infested. The Wikipedia entry for Dr. Karl Babor is pretty thin, but the Holocaust research project goes into more detail about the man. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Babor holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/grossrosen.html
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 16:59:39 +0000
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