Nazi leader, born in Bad Godesberg, W Germany. He joined the Hitler Youth in 1931, graduating to the SS, and worked for the Gestapo in the Netherlands, Russia, and finally Lyon, where he sent thousands of people to Auschwitz. After the War, he fled to South America with his family under an assumed name, but was traced by Nazi hunters, and extradited from Bolivia in 1983. He was tried in France on 177 crimes against humanity, found guilty, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon (October 25, 1913 – September 25, 1991) was a German war criminal. Arrested in 1983, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 1987, and died in 1991.
Life
Barbie was born in 1913 in Bad Godesberg into a Catholic family.
In September 1935, he joined the SD or Sicherheitsdienst (security service), a special branch of the SS. In April 1944, Barbie ordered the deportation to Auschwitz of a group of 44 Jewish children from an orphanage at Izieu.
In 1947, Barbie became an agent for the U.S Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC). 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. 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.
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 while he was in charge of the Gestapo in Lyon between 1942 and 1944. Potter, a Caribbean pastor, described Barbie in an interview in the February 11, 1984 Le Monde as the last product of the Enlightenment, which, he claimed, had produced four things: "the Industrial Revolution, which subordinated man to the machine;
At the trial Barbie received support not only from Nazi apologists like François Genoud, but also from leftist lawyer Jacques Vergès. 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.
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.
Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment, but died in prison four years into his sentence at the age of 77.
Cultural 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.
Ex-CIC agent 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 United States (Erhard Dabringhaus, 1984, Klaus Barbie, Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books).
Further reading
ISBN 3-88395-431-4 > Barbie (SS, Lyon), p. Barbie) an BdS, Paris IV-B, 6. April 1944, RF-1235
User Comments Add a comment…