(Roughly) Daily

The boys at San Francisco’s food-truck-of-choice, Bacon Bacon, have created a special treat for Superbowl Sunday, the Bacon Log:

The artery-clogging begins with a tight weave of natural thick-cut bacon strips to create a porcine blanket that’s then wrapped snugly around a savory cylinder of housemade bacon jam, ground pork & California Prairie Pastures grass-fed ground beef…

Logs are available in two sizes: six-pounds–“feeds 20” reputedly; sounds a bit thin to your correspondent, who opts for the fifteen-pounder.  They can be had (by special order, via the link above, from February 2, through Game Day) cooked or uncooked…

As we carefully remove the crust from the bread that we’re serving, we might recall that it was on this date in 1983 that Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyons,” was arrested in Bolivia for his crimes against humanity four decades earlier.  Gestapo chief in Occupied France, Barbie oversaw the torture, abuse, or execution of thousands of French Jews and Resistance members, and sent thousands more to their deaths in concentration camps.

As France fell, Barbie retreated to Germany, where he joined other Nazi officers to form a secret anti-Communist organization– that was recruited and ultimately annexed by the U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC).  Barbie was a U.S. agent in Germany for two years, then in 1949 was smuggled to Bolivia, where he took the name of “Klaus Altmann” and worked both for the U.S. and for a series of military regimes.

Nazi hunters found Barbie in the early 1970s, but the military leader, Hugo “El Petiso” Banzer, refused extradition.  But in the early 80s, a more liberal regime acceded, agreeing to extradition in return for foreign aid.

Finally, in 1987, Barbie stood trial for 177 crimes against humanity. Ironically, Barbie was defended by three minority lawyers–an Asian, an African, and an Arab–who made the impassioned case that the French and the Jews were as guilty of crimes against humanity as Barbie or any other Nazi.  But as these advocates were more interested in putting France and Israel on trial than in actually proving their client’s innocence, Barbie was promptly found guilty– and sentenced to France’s most severe punishment, life in prison without parole. He died in confinement in 1991, at the age of 77.

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