Michel Goldberg (1) (1938–1999)

Michel Goldberg, later Cojot or Goldberg-Cojot, was born to a Jewish family in Paris, France. At the start of World War II, he and his parents escaped to the so-called unoccupied zone in the south. In 1943, when Michel was five years old, his father Joseph Goldberg went into Lyon one day, was captured by the Nazis, and deported to Auschwitz, where he was killed. Michel and his mother survived the rest of the war in hiding. Afterwards, his mother remarried and changed her son's surname to that of his non-Jewish stepfather, Cojot. Michel became a wealthy investment banker in Paris, married, and had three children. However, he was haunted by his father's murder and consumed for years with the need to avenge him by killing the man responsible for his arrest: Klaus Barbie, head of the Gestapo in Lyon. Serge and Beate Klarsfeld revealed publicly in 1972 that Barbie was living in Bolivia. In 1975, Michel tracked Barbie down to his home in La Paz, followed him, and tried to shoot him -- but couldn't pull the trigger. He returned to France, deeply depressed. A year later, he took his oldest son Olivier, aged 12, on a trip to Tel Aviv, Israel. Their return flight aboard Air France was hijacked by terrorists and rerouted to Entebbe, Uganda. Amid the chaos and fear, Michel served as a translator and negotiator before being released along with his son and some of the other hostages. Michel was able to tell Israeli agents what he had carefully memorized about the terrorists' compound, their daily habits, where the remaining hostages slept, and more that was critical to the successful rescue mission. His contributions were featured in Operation Thunderbolt (2015), the acclaimed book about the raid on Entebbe by Saul David. Michel later resumed the surname Goldberg and wrote an account of his failed assassination attempt on Barbie for Le Point magazine. After Barbie was returned to France in 1983 and put on trial for war crimes, Michel testified at the trial. His autobiography Ecorché Juif was published in 1980; it was translated into English and published as Namesake in 1982. He also was the subject of a 2020 documentary film called Cojot: A Second Chance Comes Only Once directed by Boaz Dvir.