Klaus Barbie
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Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon (October 25, 1913 – September 25, 1991) was a Nazi war criminal and drug trafficker. He held the rank of Hauptsturmführer in the German SS and the Gestapo (secret police) during the Nazi regime. He took part in intelligence activities after the war, working for the British and the CIA, and then went hiding in Bolivia, in 1955. There, he used the alias Klaus Altmann. In 1980, he took part in the 'Cocaine Coup' of Luis García Meza Tejada. Arrested in 1983, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 1987, and died in 1991.
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Life
Barbie was born in Bad Godesberg (now Bonn), Germany, and was educated at the Friedrich-Wilhelm Institute. He joined the SS in 1934, immediately after his graduation from the university, and became a member of the NSDAP in 1937.
In 1941, Barbie was posted to the Bureau of Jewish Affairs and sent to Amsterdam and later, in May 1942, to Lyon — there, he earned the sobriquet The Butcher of Lyon as head of the local Gestapo. He committed a number of war crimes, including the capture and deportation of 44 Jewish children hidden in the village of Izieu, and the torture murder of Jean Moulin, the highest ranking member of the French Resistance ever captured. All told, the deportation of 7,500 people, 4,342 murders, and the arrest and torture of 14,311 resistance fighters were in some way attributed to his actions or commands.
From 1945 to 1955, he was protected and employed by British, and then American, intelligence agents, who used his counter-insurgency skills to suppress the leftist resistance to the American and British occupations in Germany, France, Greece, and Italy.
In 1955, after the Americans and British were no longer in need of his services, Barbie, together with his wife and children, moved with American help to Bolivia. He lived in La Paz, Bolivia under the alias Klaus Altmann, where he became a drug lord and narcotrafficker. With Italian terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie, he took part in the 'Cocaine Coup' of Luis García Meza Tejada, when a notoriously corrupt military regime forced its way to power in Bolivia in 1980.
He was identified in Bolivia as early as 1971 by the Klarsfelds (Nazi hunters), but it was only on January 19, 1983, that a new moderate government arrested and deported him to France.
His trial started on May 11, 1987, in Lyon – a jury trial before the Rhône Court d'Assises. In a rare move, the authorization was granted to film the trial, for its high historical value. The lead defense attorney was Jacques Vergès, who claimed that Barbie's actions were no worse than the ordinary actions of colonialists worldwide, and that his trial was selective prosecution making a difference between victims. The head prosecutor was Pierre Truche.
On July 4, 1987, Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, and died in prison of cancer four years later at the age of 77.
Trial
In 1984 Klaus Barbie was put on trial for crimes committed whilst he was in charge of the Gestapo in Lyons between 1942 and 1944. As the trial opened Philip Potter, a Caribbean pastor, described Barbie as the last product of the Enlightenment, which, he claimed, had produced four things: the Industrial Revolution; the founding of the United States, based on the application of liberty and equality to all men; the French Revolution where liberty and equality were claimed.
At the trial Barbie received support not only from Nazi apologists like François Genoud, but also from leftist lawyer Jacques Vergès. He had a reputation for attacking the French political system, particularly in French colonial territories. In 1960 he extracted a confession of torture from Paul Teitgen, secretary general of the police in Algiers. Vergès' strategy at the trial was to use the trial to expose war crimes committed by France since 1945. Indeed, many of the charges against Barbie were dropped, thanks to legislation that had protected people accused of crimes under the Vichy regime and in French Algeria.
Vergès argued that the Nazi crimes were no different in nature from those committed by French imperialism, and thus the French courts were in no position to try Barbie. Nabil Bouaita, an Algerian lawyer, and Jean-Martin M'Bemba, a Congolese lawyer, joined the defense team. "Does crime against humanity only force emotion or merit commemoration if it hurt Europeans?" Vergès asked. B'Memba gave an account of how 8,000 Africans died building 140 kilometres of railway in French colonial Africa. Bouaita discussed Sabra and Chatila.
In the end Barbie was found guilty, but Vergès' defense had changed the terms of debate about crimes against humanity. This has led to the term New World Negationism to describe the denial or trivialisation of crimes against humanity such as genocide and slavery that were perpetrated by Europeans in the New World (i.e. North and South America). A related term is Black Holocaust, but this is restricted to the enslavement of Africans.
Guilt - Proofs
ISBN 3-88395-431-4, > Barbie (SS, Lyon), p. 453 Fn, O&W ed. 110 case No. 77, Fn 908 KsD Lyon IV-B (gez. Ostubaf. Barbie) an BdS, Paris IV-B, 6. April 1944, RF-1235
References
A documentary film on Barbie's life during and after World War II is available under the title Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie. The film was directed by Marcel Ophuls and amounts to four and a half hours of investigative journalism; it won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 1989.
The ex-CIC, Erhard Dabringhaus, who worked against the Soviets during the Cold War, recognized Barbie in TV and wrote a book about the contribution of him to the USA.
Trivia
- He is mentioned in the song 'Sheriff Fatman' by Carter USM, with the lines
- The film Rat Race featured a museum dedicated to Klaus Barbie that some of the characters mistook as being about the doll.
- One of his last remaining living relatives is world famous alligator wrestler Josh Barbee.
External links
es:Klaus Barbie fr:Klaus Barbie he:קלאוס ברבי nl:Klaus Barbie pl:Klaus Barbie pt:Klaus Barbie fi:Klaus Barbie sv:Klaus Barbie