Latin America's longest plane hijacking and Kristallnacht

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes.

We start our programme in 1973, when two men claiming to be Colombian guerrillas hijacked a plane making it fly across Latin American for 60 hours.

Our expert guest is Brendan Koerner author of 'The skies belong to us: Love and terror in the golden age of hijacking.'

Then we take a look at the 2009 UN-backed war crime tribunals in Cambodia that aimed to hold the genocidal Khmer Rouge commanders to account.

Following that we hear about the striking speech that inspired the Law of the Sea.

Then we go back to 1989 and hear how South Africa became the first country to make and then dismantle nuclear weapons.

And finally we hear a first hand account of the 1938 Kristallnacht.

Contributors: Edilma Perez - former fight attendant for SAM airline. Brendan Koerner - Author of 'The skies belong to us: Love and terror in the golden age of hijacking.' Rob Hamill - Brother of Toul Sleng prisoner Kerry Hamill. Christina Pardo Menez - Arvid Pardo's daughter. David Attard - Arvid Pardo's friend. André Buys - Plant manager and systems engineer at Kentron Circle. Kurt Salomon Maier - Witnessed Kristallnacht.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: SAM airlines 1973 Latin American flight. Credit: Jamie Escobar)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me
0:08.8	Max Pearson the past brought to life by those who were there.
0:13.2	Coming up, the trial of Cambodia's
0:15.2	genocidal Khmer Rouge commanders.
0:17.7	The crimes committed by the accused
0:19.4	are rarely matched in modern history
0:22.3	in terms of their combined barbarity, scope, duration, premeditation
0:28.2	and callousness.
0:30.0	The man who changed the laws governing the use of the sea and its resources.
0:34.0	The seabed will soon be subject to exploitation.
0:37.0	Will it be exploited under national auspices or will it be exploited under international auspices for the benefits of mankind.
0:44.8	And the historic 1938 Crystal napped or night of broken glass.
0:49.7	I could hear the mob downstairs, who, shouting Jew, you'd, all I could hear, you'd, you'd, ha ha,
0:59.0	you'd, ha, ha, ha, ha, that's all coming up later in the podcast. But first, perhaps every air traveler's worst nightmare being caught up in a hijacking. But sometimes a hijacking is not exactly all that it seems. Just over 50 years ago, two men, claiming
1:16.1	to be Colombian guerrillas, took over a plane and flew across Latin America for 60 hours.
1:22.0	But when it made its last landing, the local authorities
1:24.3	were surprised to see the hijackers had vanished. The airline involved was
1:29.4	Sam Airlines, and Adilner Perez, a flight attendant at the time, volunteered to relieve the original
1:35.3	crew on the second day of the hijacking. She's been 2nd of June 1973 and the sun hasn't risen yet when a Colombian airplane
1:50.9	lands in Argentina.
1:53.0	The aircraft has been crossing Latin America for the last three days under the orders of two
1:58.3	men who claim to be members of a Colombian guerrilla group called the National Liberation Army.
	...

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