A cold case for an American family and for the Chilean authorities. The disappearance of the professor who loved to climb and chose Los Andes, without knowing that it would be his last and tragic destiny, remains a mystery almost 40 years after it occurred.
“I need to escape this Pennsylvania snow,” were Boris Weisfeiler’s last words to his sister, Olga. She never heard from him again.
He was a mathematician born in Russia, nationalized American, but of Jewish origin. He targeted Chile for his “escape”, with a passion for climbing that brought him to this country, not knowing that he would be trapped between recent history and oblivion.
This brief but significant review brings out his desires, his origins and his impetuous youth, which led him to crash into a foreign reality, in a convulsive context that already had Chileans suffering.
Almost 40 years have passed since that name echoed in the Andes, a place that dragged it to South America.
Boris Weisfeiler and his last trip to Chile: “It’s summer there”
He was 43 years old and he prepared all his climbing gear. Before taking a plane to the Chilean Andes, Boris Weisfeiler spoke on the phone with his sister, who heard his determination to travel to South America.
“I need to get away from all this Pennsylvania snow. I’m going south. It’s summer there”the woman told the BBCamong the international sites that were responsible for remembering his story in 2016. By then, it had been more than 3 decades since the disappearance of Boris Weisfeiler.
The Pennsylvania mathematics professor of Russian origin had the last talk with his younger sister before taking the flight. He was running, still, 1984.
The photographs given by his family to the international press, reflected the smile of an adventurous man, who set his sights on the ground and the Chilean mountainous area. They also distill the pain for not knowing his whereabouts and, above all, for what happened after the tireless search for him.
In January 1985, his backpack, the one he carried on his back from Pennsylvania, was found in a river near the Andean zone.
A preliminary investigation claimed that Boris drowned trying to cross the tributary, however, his expertise as a climber was among the first doubts that this was his destiny.
Kidnapping and Murder: The Declassified Files
In the midst of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, Boris Weisfeiler decided to arrive in Chile and conquer the Andes, like the expert climber he was. He never imagined that, suddenly, his life and that of his family would come crashing down.
After attributing his death to suffocation by immersion, in a local river and without his body being found, details emerged that gave account of a possible kidnapping and murder. The first to put this theory to work were the declassified documents from the USA 22 years ago (2000), by the government of Bill Clinton.
These are files that have to do with the murder and disappearance of US citizens during the Chilean military dictatorship.
A testimony in the documentation maintains that a Chilean army patrol intercepted him and took him to Colonia Dignidad, in the Maule Region, founded in the 1960s by ex-Nazi Paul Schäfer, and used to torture Pinochet opponents.
According to the witness cited in the US reports, Weisfeiler was interrogated at this location, only to be executed on the spot.
“They killed him with a shot to the neck”reads the document that cites the British television website.
With the information putting a new and tragic end in perspective, the family of the mathematician of Jewish origin hoped to recover his body, from some remote place in Chile.
The capture for the Boris Weisfeiler case that generated hope
The version of Boris Weisfeiler’s murder was unproven, but his family wanted to get to the bottom of the truth.
BioBioChile published in August 2012 the judicial step to be able to reach this. Special judge Jorge Zepeda opened a trial against eight former police officers and former military personnel for the disappearance of the American mathematician Boris Weisfeiler. He pointed them out as alleged perpetrators of the crime of “qualified kidnapping” y “accomplice”.
28 years had passed since the disappearance of the Russian-American. By this stage of the disappearance, new details came to light. Among these, that the military patrol intercepted the math teacher near the border with Argentina. As he was partially dressed in military clothing, they mistook him for an “extremist”, captured him and held him captive until his fatal end.
A judicial note regarding the case added that the defendants maintained “a persistent behavior of concealment about the circumstances of the detention and the whereabouts of this American citizen”.
From hope to the reverse: the closure of a case that generated expectation
Boris Weisfeiler’s relatives believed they were very close to justice and to recovering the body of their loved one. His sister was kept in the international media bidding to see that day come. However, she reached the reverse more than 8,000 kilometers away.
The judge who opened the case, Jorge Zepeda, closed it four years later, issuing his reasons for making such a decision..
According to the judicial official, the Rettig Commission, responsible for the report with the same name (National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation), refused to place the kidnapping of Professor Weisfeiler in said document.
“I am devastated,” Olga Weisfeiler told the BBC shortly after. “I have spent the last 16 years trying to find out what happened to Boris and now this!” she assured. It must be taken into account that in the year 2000 the hope of finding her brother arose, after the declassification of US intelligence documents on this case.
The woman appealed the ruling through her lawyer in Chile, identified as Hernán Fernández. The lawyer insisted on the indications of the participation of agents of the dictatorship in the kidnapping of Boris Weisfeiler.
Almost 40 years after the disappearance of the Russian-American professor, of Jewish origin, no one has been able to find his remains. They rest somewhere in the Chilean territory, the same one that in his last words he described with a warm “It’s summer there”.
