Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief known as the Butcher of Lyon, returned to France on February 5, 1983, nearly four decades after he fled the city in 1944. His arrival ended one of the longest manhunts in modern European history and opened the first French trial for crimes against humanity.
The operation that brought him back was the result of years of pressure from survivors, journalists, and a determined couple, Beate and Serge Klarsfeld. For much of that time, Barbie had lived quietly in Bolivia under the name Klaus Altmann.
Barbie's record in Lyon included the hunt, arrest, torture, and deportation of thousands of resistance fighters and Jews. He was the officer behind the raid on the children's home at Izieu in April 1944, when 44 Jewish children were seized and sent to their deaths. He was also linked to the arrest of Jean Moulin, the envoy of General de Gaulle, at Caluire in June 1943.
After the war, Barbie disappeared into a defeated Germany. He hid behind false identities such as Becker, Schmidt, Mayer, and Mertens. British and American police searched for him, but he was not a priority for the Allies, who were turning their attention to the coming conflict with the Soviet Union.
In May 1947, the U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps recruited him in Memmingen. He became Agent X-30-54. His American employers described him as an honest, quiet, and brave man, and above all as a committed anti-communist. He was a professional spy who knew how to gather information and run agents.
The Americans were pleased with their new asset. Barbie, still unknown to the wider public, moved among crowds and worked against communists. He enjoyed two years of quiet family life with his wife and two children, but history had not forgotten him.
His name appeared on a United Nations list of 70,000 wanted war criminals. France requested his handover several times. The American response was that occupation forces and German police had been unable to find him. A secret memo from a U.S. counterintelligence chief suggested the honest solution was to admit they knew where he was and hand him over, but that was not done.
Instead, the Americans decided to get Barbie out of Europe. They turned to Father Krunoslav Draganovic, a Croatian priest with a murky past who was himself wanted for war crimes. From a small church on the outskirts of Rome, Draganovic ran a well-established escape network known as the Rat Line.
Draganovic provided fleeing fascists and Nazis with infrastructure, papers, and travel documents. He gave Barbie a new identity. Klaus Barbie became Klaus Altmann. On March 9, 1951, the Altmann family left Germany and traveled for three days and nights to Genoa in northern Italy.
Draganovic arranged everything, including travel papers through the International Red Cross. On March 16, 1951, the passport was issued for the refugee Nikolaus Altmann. Barbie made himself two years younger and claimed to be a mechanic, but kept his own first name and the names of his children.
On March 23, 1951, the Altmann family boarded the ship Corinthes bound for South America. The operation was calm from beginning to end, according to the CIC report on the smuggling of Klaus Barbie. Like Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann, he had escaped Europe.
In France, he was tried in absentia and sentenced to death in 1952 and 1954. None of that mattered to the man now calling himself Klaus Altmann, thousands of kilometers from Paris. He reached Bolivia and built a new life in the Amazon region, working in the timber trade.
He worked alongside Indian laborers and also with Jews. In one incident, he marked wooden planks with a swastika in chalk. When his Jewish acquaintances asked him angrily whether he was a Nazi, he replied that it was a beautiful symbol and that there was nothing wrong with it.
On October 3, 1957, he became a Bolivian citizen. The Altmann family later settled in La Paz and lived an ordinary family life, visiting the countryside and Lake Titicaca. To outsiders, they looked like any German family that had moved to Bolivia.
Behind the appearance of a normal family man, Barbie developed several businesses, including timber and export. In the mid-1960s, German intelligence contacted him because of his knowledge of Bolivian politics. He became an agent for a time, but when the Germans realized who he was, they cut ties and did not inform judicial authorities of his whereabouts.
Barbie also built ties with the Bolivian military. He became close to General René Barrientos, who took power in November 1964 with U.S. backing. In military circles it was rumored that the new president had a German brain. Once in office, Barrientos treated Barbie as his right hand.
Barbie advised Barrientos on police and interrogation methods. His experience in intelligence and torture was useful to a dictatorship. Opposition activists such as Mirena Morello were arrested and tortured, and Morello later recalled seeing Barbie present during her detention.
In the 1960s, Barbie was also involved in a scheme to buy a ship for landlocked Bolivia. A popular subscription raised 50,000 dollars, including donations from children and wealthy society women, but no ship ever appeared. Instead, a shipping company, Transmaritima Boliviana, was created, and Barbie, listed as Nikolaus Altmann, sat on its board.
Through the company and his government connections, Altmann obtained a diplomatic passport. He could travel freely in Latin America and the United States, and even return to France. No one was prosecuting Klaus Barbie.
French intelligence files noted reports from Germany that Barbie was healthy, happy, and present in the country. One option considered was that he was still useful to the Americans and still believed to be their agent, so France would not intervene. Another question was whether France even had the means to act.
In 1964, Jean Moulin was honored at the Panthéon. André Malraux, then minister of culture, wrote the speech delivered in the presence of General de Gaulle. Malraux recalled that in Fort Montluc in Lyon, after being tortured, Moulin had drawn a caricature of his executioner because he could no longer speak.
The entry of Jean Moulin into the Panthéon seemed to confirm that France knew where his executioner was living. Yet nothing happened. It took Beate and Serge Klarsfeld to force the issue.
In the late 1960s, the Klarsfelds began their campaign against unpunished Nazi war criminals. Their methods shocked public opinion. Their first target was Kurt Kiesinger, who had become chancellor of West Germany and had once been a leading figure in Nazi propaganda. On November 7, 1968, Beate Klarsfeld entered a CDU conference and slapped him publicly, shouting that he was a Nazi and should resign.
In 1971, the Klarsfelds turned to Germans who had committed crimes in France and were living undisturbed under the postwar treaty. They filmed men such as Herbert Hagen, a former SS officer working for a food company, and Kurt Lischka, former Gestapo chief in Paris.
Among these men was Klaus Barbie, but the Klarsfelds knew nothing about him. Unlike French, American, or German intelligence, they did not know where he was. They launched a press campaign to remind the public of Barbie's crimes, especially the raid on the children of Izieu.
In the spring of 1944, in southeastern France, the Maison d'Izieu sheltered Jewish children whose parents had already been deported. On the morning of April 6, Maundy Thursday, the children were waking up and going to breakfast when they heard noises. German forces sent by Klaus Barbie stormed the house.
All 44 children were taken. They were locked up that same evening in Montluc prison. Barbie sent a telegram to his superiors in Paris reporting that the children's home at Izieu had been cleaned out and that 41 children aged 3 to 13 had been arrested and transferred to Drancy on April 7, 1944. The telegram was signed by Barbie.
The children were sent on to Auschwitz. None returned. All were exterminated. Twenty-seven years later, the Klarsfelds refused to let the crime remain unpunished.
To trace the man who signed the order, they received unexpected help. German judicial authorities, persuaded by their determination, gave them a secret document from Barbie's file. It was a photograph of a long table with about ten people standing. Near the front was a man who clearly resembled Klaus Barbie.
The photograph had been taken three years earlier at the headquarters of Transmaritima in Bolivia. The resemblance to Barbie was striking. He had been photographed in 1939, and experts in anthropometry confirmed the match: the same ear, especially the right ear, the same prominent brow bone on the left, and identical lip lines.
The Klarsfelds kept the discovery secret because the shock effect could be enormous. They passed the information to French authorities. Serge Klarsfeld met with Jacques Chaban-Delmas, who issued an ultimatum: they had found Klaus Barbie, and unless extradition was requested, the file would be released within 15 days.
When authorities did not act quickly enough, Serge Klarsfeld toured Paris newsrooms. On the morning of January 19, 1972, the case broke. For the first time, the French learned that the executioner of Jean Moulin was living quietly on the other side of the Atlantic.
Interest in Klaus Barbie rose sharply. Beate Klarsfeld decided to go to Bolivia. Two journalists were also sent to La Paz, following a man who once again enjoyed protection at the highest level of the state.
Barrientos, Barbie's former ally, had not ruled the country for several years, but dictators came and went, and Klaus Altmann always knew how to make himself useful. He remained close to power. After a military coup, the country was controlled by General Hugo Banzer, a right-wing conservative government that supported Altmann and allowed him to stay in Bolivia.
A French television team arrived on January 31, 1972, in a highly charged climate. Finding and embarrassing the former head of the Lyon Gestapo was a major journalistic goal. Ladislas de Hoyos and cameraman Christian von Ryswyck had no contacts and little information.
La Paz sits at about 4,000 meters above sea level. De Hoyos described the city as an anthill with tens of thousands of inhabitants and wondered how he would find Barbie there. The first day of searching produced nothing. The second day also produced nothing.
Then France responded to Klarsfeld's pressure and formally requested Barbie's extradition from Bolivia. De Hoyos reported that Altmann, or rather Klaus Barbie, was hiding in one of the houses of La Paz, and that the French ambassador had formally demanded his handover. The Bolivians did not respond and would not respond.
The extradition request worried Bolivia's interior minister, who feared that Klaus Altmann, a Bolivian citizen, might be kidnapped. The press added heat. A local newspaper reported that a team of very special agents disguised as journalists were in the country trying to seize Mr. Altmann.
The publicity also allowed a woman to contact the journalists, offering to act as an intermediary for a few dollars. She said she knew the interior minister well and could arrange an interview with Mr. Altmann. The minister agreed to meet the journalist, but on his own terms: several thousand dollars for a three-minute interview in Spanish.
The meeting was set for Thursday, February 3. De Hoyos finally met the man called Klaus Altmann at the ministry. He had imagined a man two meters tall, wearing boots and a cap. Instead, a small, private-looking man entered the room.
The camera captured the first images. He seemed restless, with eyes that never settled. Then came a calm attitude and a frozen little smile, as if everything was ready for the interview. The first questions were in Spanish, until de Hoyos broke the rule and suddenly switched to German.
He asked: Who are you? What is your name? Where were you born? He looked around at the minister and the people nearby, who began talking among themselves. De Hoyos thought they would cut the interview, but they did not dare. It continued.
The German authorities and the Allies at the Munich trial were convinced of the authenticity of the case, but Barbie dismissed it. De Hoyos then used another idea. In the middle of a German answer, he interrupted in French and asked: But have you never been to Lyon? Have you ever visited Lyon?
The man claimed not to understand French. De Hoyos repeated the question. Without hesitation, Barbie answered in German that his foot had never set foot in Lyon. The journalist had just proved that the supposed Altmann understood French perfectly.
De Hoyos did not stop there. He placed his thumb on a photograph to get a fingerprint from Mr. Altmann, hoping to formally confuse Barbie. A double game developed between the two men. The journalist asked him to repeat sentences in French.
Barbie responded: I am not sure I have enough French for that, but I will help you. I am not a killer. I have never tortured anyone. De Hoyos found it surreal. Barbie pretended to hesitate, but fooled no one.
When de Hoyos shook his hand to say goodbye, Barbie showed a superficial smile. He realized he would not come out of the interview unharmed. De Hoyos was elated, recognizing that he had captured something extraordinary.
The images were extraordinary and needed to be kept safe. People at the ministry understood that something important had happened. De Hoyos left with the reels, refusing offers to develop the film there. He ran 300 meters to the French embassy, put everything inside, closed the trunk, and was offered whiskey. He began to cry like an athlete at the end of a match.
Convinced that the journalists were actually French agents, the Bolivians decided to jail Barbie that same evening to protect him. De Hoyos went to San Pedro prison the next day to take photographs. A payment of 150 dollars opened the doors, and the two men faced each other again.
But Barbie had changed since the day before. He threatened de Hoyos, telling him he could do nothing, but warning him to be careful because he had stepped on dangerous ground. In La Paz at that time, a human life was worth only a few dollars. De Hoyos decided it was best to board a plane and leave quickly.
Inside his cell, Barbie had reason for confidence. He was not just a Bolivian citizen. The man protected by President Banzer had for a time been one of his private advisers. Barbie's expertise was police work, interrogation, torture, and intelligence, all useful to a dictatorship.
The dictatorship benefited from the former Nazi's advice. Banzer's police targets included opposition activists such as Mirena Morello, who never forgot the night of her arrest. She recalled being beaten and then seeing the door open and a man who wanted to see her. She later learned it was Barbie.
Barbie did not spare himself. He advised on the best methods of beating to get answers. To this day, it is unknown how many people were tortured while Barbie watched. One thing is certain: he had real activities with the dictatorship.
De Hoyos's team took the threats seriously and returned to France as quickly as possible. The exclusive interview with Klaus Altmann was broadcast in France with key witnesses present. At the screening, Barbie's victims were invited to see the interview and identify their executioner.
Among them was Raymond Aubrac, who had visited Barbie at Caluire with Jean Moulin. Also present was Simone Lagrange, who had been arrested by Barbie when she was only 13. She was asked whether Klaus Altmann could be Klaus Barbie.
She said she had been arrested at 13 and remembered the look well. In her view, there was no doubt. It was the same man, the same shaving blade, the same soft appearance that could suddenly become hard. Looking at the images, she felt the old fear return. He had aged and wrinkled a little, but had not changed much.
That evening, the French discovered on screen the face of the man they called the Butcher of Lyon. The broadcast had a major effect in France. The next day, in front of the Bolivian embassy in Paris, the signs were clear. But public pressure changed nothing, and the extradition request remained stalled.
On February 11, President Georges Pompidou personally wrote to General Banzer. He said the president must be aware of the profound effect the revelation of Klaus Barbie's identity had had in France. He described Barbie as a war criminal and the executioner of many French people, including Jean Moulin, the resistance hero honored by the whole nation. Time erases many things, he wrote, but not everything.
The letter did not change the Bolivian president's position. Faced with this stalemate, the Klarsfelds decided on a new step. They considered shooting Barbie, but concluded it would look like a settling of scores rather than an execution. Instead, they planned a kidnapping.
The model was Adolf Eichmann, one of the organizers of the Final Solution, who had lived peacefully in Argentina. He was seized in the street by an Israeli intelligence commando, tried in Jerusalem in 1961, and sentenced to death.
At the end of 1972, Serge Klarsfeld planned the kidnapping of Barbie with two opponents of the Bolivian dictatorship. The first was Régis Debray, a journalist and left-wing activist. The second was Gustavo Sánchez, a Bolivian exiled in Chile for two years.
Barbie was considered relatively easy to kidnap. He frequented cafes and lived a normal life like any other Bolivian. The plan was to seize him, throw him into a car, and bring him to the Bolivian border. He would then be loaded onto a small plane and taken to Chile, from where he could be handed over to France.
Serge Klarsfeld's role was to raise money for the operation. He personally gave 5,000 dollars to his partners. To cross the border, he needed to change his identity because his name was too well known. He asked a friend to lend him a passport and another friend, a surgeon, to remove the photograph. Tools were needed to remove all the pins from the passport, and he inserted his own photo in place of his friend's.
Serge Klarsfeld met his partners at the agreed meeting point in Chile. He gave them the 5,000 dollars. They wished each other luck, and he left again. Before saying goodbye, they recorded the unusual meeting in a photograph. The operation could have begun with that picture, but it would end there.
While carrying out the second test to see how long it took to reach La Paz, they had an accident. On a curve, they encountered a llama and the car overturned. There was no way to remove it. The accident destroyed the car and the three partners' dreams of justice.
They had thought it would succeed. There was still uncertainty, but then disappointment rained down. It was a great blow. By 1973, the Klarsfelds sent a woman to Bolivia to monitor Klaus Barbie. The photographs she brought back were clear. The man called Klaus was still living peacefully in Bolivia.
He was confident in his protection, 60 years old, and clearly still had good days ahead. How long would it last? They thought Barbie would soon be on French soil, but he would continue to operate for another ten years under Bolivian power. Some even spoke of active involvement in cocaine trafficking because of his ties to the army in power.
In 1980, he was officially appointed an honorary lieutenant colonel on the staff of the new dictator, García Meza. But in the early 1980s, everything finally changed.
On May 21, 1981, François Mitterrand was elected president of the Republic. At his inauguration, with a rose in his hand, he honored the great men of the nation at the Panthéon. Beside him, among his friends, wearing a white suit, was Roland Dumas, his old companion.
Among the crowd, witnesses watched as Mitterrand walked with the rose and entered the different tombs, placing flowers one by one on the graves of those he wished to honor. The first thing he did was place a rose on the urn containing the ashes of Jean Moulin.
At that moment, people said to themselves that this was the ally they had been waiting for, especially since Mitterrand appointed Régis Debray as a special adviser. Would the election of Debray and the public honoring of Jean Moulin finally move the Barbie file forward?
Jean-Louis Bianco, then secretary-general of the Élysée, said the matter was under discussion and was being demanded, but nothing special happened until the regime changed in Bolivia, where a military dictatorship still ruled. The following year, the dictatorship was overthrown.
Barbie did not yet know it, but the election of the socialist Hernán Siles Zuazo would hasten its fall. The new president's first decision was to appoint the journalist Gustavo Sánchez to the government. The former rival returned to his country to report on the elections. It was a democratic government that wanted to end fascism.
Barbie had to be expelled from the country and handed over to France. Gustavo Sánchez was in Bolivia. Régis Debray was in France. The architects of the failed kidnapping operation now whispered something in the ear of their head of state.
In La Paz, Barbie did not know his fate was at stake. Rumors of his expulsion, already circulating in cafes, left him indifferent. He told a friend that he did not believe it. He trusted Bolivian laws and said extradition was impossible. He said he had committed no wrongdoing in Bolivia, had not stolen, killed, or tortured, and that everything said about him was a web of lies and madness. That was why he still walked the streets alone and feared nothing.
His name was Klaus Barbie, or Klaus Altmann. His nickname was the Butcher of Lyon. He had begun a new life in Bolivia under the protection of a regime that had little hostility toward former Nazis.
Barbie was arrested one night in La Paz on a charge of fraud. What happened to Al Capone happened to Barbie. He was arrested over an unpaid debt dating back to Transmaritima. It was a false pretext, at least as a reason for the Bolivian authorities not to expel him.
The Bolivian president kept his word. Because of an unpaid debt of 10,000 dollars, Barbie was imprisoned in San Pedro. It was believed he would leave within a few days. Instead, this was the first step in the authorities' plan. The Bolivians were now ready to hand Barbie over.
At the Élysée, discussions became lively. The president seemed to have certain reservations. François Mitterrand was driven by several feelings. He had a hatred, or almost a hatred, for such figures. At the same time, he was inspired by another feeling, that of a French head of state whose country had suffered division between supporters and opponents.
There was a concern that a public trial of Barbie, this skilled scoundrel, would inevitably raise harmful scenarios, especially around the arrest and conviction of Jean Moulin. There was fear that Barbie would try to discredit or distort this or that resistance figure and change the image of the Resistance. Some preferred not to talk too much about that time.
There was also concern that reopening old divisions between the French should be avoided. During a special committee meeting attended by Robert Badinter, one participant said he did not understand the discussions at all. There was a law, a very precise text that put the crime first: crimes against humanity, meaning the mass murder of civilians. This was the case with Barbie. He did not understand why, for reasons linked to shadows of the past, France was being offered the handover of Klaus Barbie. France would not accept the handover and would not judge him? The question was settled.
François Mitterrand gave the green light. Under maximum secrecy on both sides of the Atlantic, the return of Barbie was organized. In La Paz, the key figures were the Bolivian president Siles Zuazo, Deputy Minister of Information Gustavo Sánchez, and the French ambassador to Bolivia, Raymond Césaire. In Paris, Minister of Justice Robert Badinter and Secretary-General of the Élysée Jean-Louis Bianco essentially controlled the case.
The idea that a Bolivian plane could deport him finally accompanied the exiled man and brought him to France. The Bolivians were not friendly and legalistic, and they were very fragile. But there was absolute, constant will throughout the case, precisely because he was the first criminal against humanity they had known. There was no doubt about the legal requirements.
Bringing a French plane was out of the question because it could be legally controversial. They quickly agreed that a Bolivian plane would supposedly transport Barbie to Cayenne, in French Guiana, French territory in South America, where a French plane would be waiting. Cayenne was a few hours' flight from La Paz. Once Barbie touched French soil, the move would be justified under French law. From then on, the law would be fully respected, as Robert Badinter requested.
In La Paz, on February 4, 1983, the expulsion was to take effect. To carry it out successfully, President Siles Zuazo appointed Gustavo Sánchez to the interior ministry, giving him full authority to complete the task. Sánchez was given Klaus Barbie's file. He was ordered to expel him.
Ten years after the failed kidnapping attempt, the chance finally came to expel the former Nazi. Within a few hours, everything would be ready. Nothing was announced, but the press learned of it and positioned its forces in front of the prison.
Gustavo Sánchez then devised a diversion to get Barbie out. He dressed a prison guard in Klaus Barbie's clothes, with a coat over his head, and put him in a jeep heading for the airport. The real Barbie, his head hidden behind a newspaper, left the prison half an hour later under the eyes of a few photographers.
Sánchez did not take him directly to the airport. He made a detour through the interior ministry. The images show Barbie's last moments in Bolivia. Handcuffed and under guard in the ministry's basement, he was informed of the reason for his exclusion: fraudulent acquisition of Bolivian nationality.
He was very relaxed, fully convinced that what happened would not happen. He believed he would be transferred from prison to a barracks, where he would be held while the handover papers were completed. Looking at the camera, he seemed resigned. At worst, Barbie expected to be handed over to Germany.
A few moments later, Gustavo Sánchez led him out again, this time toward La Paz airport. Sánchez accompanied Barbie to the platform, where a man waited impatiently. He was the only person authorized to film the historic event: Carlos Soria, a Bolivian television journalist.
Soria saw Barbie for the first time when he arrived at night in a lit area of the air base, handcuffed and surrounded by several agents. Pierre Viau, first counselor at the French embassy, was also present. Viau said it was the first time he had seen Barbie Altmann, but he recognized him naturally. Barbie seemed very tired, but not worried.
They left and went to the plane. Barbie returned up the ramp and sat in a corner of the aircraft. At 10:30 p.m. local time, the Bolivian Hercules C-130 took off, carrying him away from his golden retreat toward Guiana.
They breathed a sigh of relief because it had not been easy until the last moment. On board, Carlos Soria was finally able to begin his interview. He asked whether the flight was a return to the past. Barbie said it was a return to Germany, where he should live a normal life. Property in Germany was his only interest.
Barbie asked Soria whether they were going to Germany. Soria said he did not know, and that was true. Barbie also said he had not shaved and asked how much an electric razor cost in Germany, since they do well in Germany. He had no idea the plane would land on French territory within hours.
In Paris, the organizers were feverish. There was tension and anxiety among all those involved, including those in Bolivia and Claude Silberzahn in Cayenne. The fear was that a grain of sand could derail the plan, that Barbie could rebel, or that an accident could occur.
At Cayenne-Rochambeau airport, the gendarmerie and the air transport brigade were on alert. On February 5, 1983, at 5:30 a.m., the control service was informed by the tower of the imminent arrival of a foreign aircraft.
On board, Barbie still did not know where he would land. But as soon as the doors opened, he noticed. It was pitch dark, the door was heavy, and they could hear French. Soria said that was the moment Barbie realized he was not going to Germany but to France. It must have been a very difficult moment for him.
Barbie stood before a representative of France for the first time. Claude Silberzahn, governor of Guiana, saw an old man sitting on a seat, very wrinkled and looking a little stunned. He told him: Mr. Barbie, you are on the territory of the French Republic, and I will bring you before the judge who will charge you with crimes against humanity.
When he appeared before the judge, Barbie defended himself. He showed his Bolivian identity papers and gave his name as Nikolaus Altmann. His protests were of no use. This time, he was officially arrested by France.
On the tarmac, a plane of the French Republic waited. Moments later, it took off with Klaus Barbie on board, now under arrest. Carlos Soria continued his interview from La Paz. His interviewee's attitude had changed. He was morally depressed because he knew he was entering French territory.
Soria asked whether Barbie thought France, Europe, and the world should forget his crimes. Barbie said yes, because many new crimes had occurred, more than 100 wars after World War II, and all recent crimes were known to the public. He had not yet reached France, but he was already defining his defense.
The operation was almost complete, except for one detail: where would Barbie be held? The prison administration intended to hold him at Saint-Joseph prison in Lyon. But while Barbie was still on the plane, the minister of justice intervened. He said no, that was not all. On arrival, Barbie must be taken to Fort Montluc. He must go to the scene of his crimes. He must again spend the night in a cell there, waiting for his fate.
After 40 years of escape, Barbie finally found French territory and the city of Lyon. His arrival stirred emotions. That day, a woman named Monique, a former detainee at Drancy, was arrested with a long rifle. She said during questioning that she wanted to kill Klaus Barbie.
Barbie had returned to France. One might have thought the story of his escape had reached its end. But now, after years of silence, everything was beginning. An extraordinary trial was about to start. No one had ever been charged in France with crimes against humanity. Barbie was finally brought to justice.
Lyon, Saturday, February 5, 10:30 p.m. After a journey of about 24 hours, Barbie finally arrived at Montluc prison. He was told: welcome, my dear friend. Barbie was now an ordinary prisoner.
As with any prisoner, the administration confiscated his personal belongings: a newspaper, a card holder, a set of keys, and a handful of pesos. Then the investigating judge informed him of the charges. It was 1 a.m. when Barbie found himself behind bars.
A police photograph taken when Barbie arrived in his cell at Montluc shows a man much older than the one who left Lyon in 1944. He had a piercing look, his usual piercing look, undoubtedly containing anger at finding himself trapped. It was the full feeling of a killer returning to the scene of his crimes.
The walls of Barbie's cell had undoubtedly contained the sounds of his victims, the thousands of people he had arrested there during the war in inhuman conditions. One survivor said he had lived the worst hours of his life in that cell, and that if he had had a small cyanide pill, he would have swallowed it.
Hundreds of prisoners had been crammed into cells, and dozens more were held in a shed at the back of the prison called the Jewish barracks. It was a hut in the middle of the courtyard. About a hundred people arrived there, most of them Jews. At night they went to bed with a few cups and nothing for everyone, and some remembered sleeping on the floor.
Montluc prison was the Gestapo's waiting room. Dozens of prisoners were brought there every day. They waited for the terrifying interrogations of Klaus Barbie, held in the cellars of his house.
One survivor met Barbie for a whole week, because Barbie came to fetch him every morning and brought him back in the evening. After beating him and asking the only question, give me the address of your brothers and sisters, Barbie wrapped his hair around his hand and gave him the best slap of his life. The survivor fell to the ground.
There were sticks, kicks, slaps, and blows. Under the blows, he fainted. When they lost consciousness, they escaped. Nothing else happened. Unfortunately, it did not last long. During every interrogation, he woke to the sound of blows.
Each time he did not want to answer, Barbie took one of his teeth, broke two or two, and then started again. It was bad. He was very mean. He smoked a cigar, and whenever he passed by, he put it in the prisoner's throat. Barbie gave the impression that beating was a source of great joy for him.
These were the interrogations, tortures, and deportations that had taken place while Barbie was at Montluc. Forty years after the crime, charged with crimes against humanity, he warned his friend Alvaro de Castro in the first letter he wrote from his cell.
The reality was this: he was imprisoned in Lyon, Fort Montluc, accused of crimes against humanity, not war crimes. War crimes were barred by law. Therefore, Klaus Barbie could not be tried on that charge. So he was prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
The term crimes against humanity has moral force because it means the victims of the crime were killed because of who they were. Curiosity grew among the French, who had not yet seen a crime against humanity. They had not seen Barbie. Only the police withheld his image.
In the press, a race began to see who could publish a photograph of Barbie first. It took only a few days for a photo to appear. Barbie was photographed in the Montluc courtyard with a telephoto lens. The photo also showed authorities that a killer could easily hit his target from any nearby building.
The prison authorities were not wrong, because the images showed that someone could have killed him. On the night of February 12, Barbie was transferred to another, more secure and modern prison. He could now begin preparing for his trial, which would begin in a few months.
Then the question made headlines: who would defend Barbie? The morning daily in Paris put the question to dozens of members of the bar. Most seemed to agree they did not want to defend him. The only one who stood out was Jacques Vergès.
Vergès said he would not answer, because if he said yes, he would be seeking to recruit a client, and if he said no, he would be attacking a man who was not his client, which was not his role as a lawyer. Did Barbie learn of the article? A few weeks later, on April 29, 1983, the Paris lawyer received seven letters by mail from Lyon.
One letter was signed by Barbie. On this occasion, the man reclaimed his real identity. He wrote that on the advice of his daughter's friends, he was pleased to offer his advice on the subject. Vergès was surprised. He replied immediately with yes, because he was responding to the tradition of the French bar, the tradition of defending the political enemy.
Vergès went to Lyon to see him. Barbie was very surprised to see him. He was an SS man. Vergès said he was not suited for nothing. Barbie looked at him with eyes in very deep sockets and said, so master, you are the one who will defend me, what a strange world.
Barbie was not the only one preparing for trial. Many complaints were filed and civil parties formed. Marcel Storz, Ita and Alexandre Allen Brenner, and Simone Lagrange were among them. They would also be among the first to meet Barbie face to face.
A confrontation was organized on July 20, 1983, at Saint-Joseph prison in the presence of the investigating judge and his lawyer. It was a meeting between the executioner and his victim. They stayed for a while, and then it began.
Simone Lagrange recalled turning and wondering when the judge would start. He leaned toward her and said if she did not disturb him anymore. She did not see him, and her hand was shaking. She was asked whether she remembered meeting Mrs. Lagrange personally, and whether she was Miss Cadot, 13 years old.
Barbie said he did not remember asking this person because it was not his area of responsibility. Hundreds of people had passed through his office. He did not remember them all. He did not understand why he would interrogate this little girl.
From the way Barbie looked at her during the confrontation, Simone Lagrange had the clear impression that although he did not recognize her, he remembered her story. Against Simone Lagrange, Klaus Barbie denied everything categorically, as he would in every confrontation with his victims.
The confrontation favored Barbie more, because he had lost no one and was vengeful. He was a police officer by profession. The list of charges against the former head of the Gestapo was long.
He was accused in particular of the roundup on Rue Sainte-Catherine in Lyon on February 9, 1943. Among the men arrested that day was the father of the minister of justice. Robert Badinter said he had not known that his father's deportation order was signed by Barbie. It was not only his father; among the 83 was a list of names. He learned this along the way.
Robert Badinter had not founded a party for citizens, but he ensured the procedure remained firm. It would take four years before the trial began. On that day, an old man would appear, but he was the one who had unleashed the reign of terror in Lyon 40 years earlier.
The psychiatric report was official. They were preparing to condemn the same man as in 1944. Jacques Vedrin was one of the doctors who met Barbie during the examination. Nothing had changed about him. There was no approach to thinking about national socialism. He was still inside. He was still a Nazi.
Klaus Barbie was called to the witness stand before the Lyon assize court on May 11, 1987. He was not being tried for the murder of Jean Moulin, but as the executioner of hundreds of Jews and resistance fighters. He was charged with crimes against humanity. It was the first time in France.
On arrival, a large number of law enforcement officers, a few demonstrators, and the press were deployed everywhere. A few minutes later, the trial began with a news broadcast. It was the first time in the history of French justice that there was a Mondiovision director, because the opening of the trial was broadcast on Mondiovision.
The courtroom in Lyon became an event. It was a very moving moment, a remarkable moment full of emotion. It was shared by the journalist who had followed the case personally for 15 years. Without the interview, without recognizing that face as Barbie's and not Altmann's, there might have been no trial.
At 1:04 p.m. on May 11, 1987, the Barbie trial began. The session was opened, and the security service was asked to bring the accused before the court. Vergès told himself to try to put on a good face so people would not scream when he or his client arrived. They did not scream, but when Barbie came, there was a reaction.
Barbie was told to sit down. He was asked whether he was stable, whether he wanted a blanket. Vergès thought the court was overly solicitous toward those around him. Barbie still had his very changeable appearance and a frozen little smile. He arrived like an animal amid a large crowd.
One observer was excited to see him arrive because, although he was old, the Nazi crime was always returning despite all difficulties. Juror number 14, Christiane Levra, joined the president of the court. It was the first time she had attended a criminal trial. It was also the first time she had seen Klaus Barbie.
She met him then, and what struck her was his very piercing look. The accused was asked to stand and give his first and last names. He said Klaus Altmann. He was asked his father's name. He said Nikolaus. His family name? Barbie. His mother's name? Anne Rice. He was told that he had said his name was Altmann. His father's name was Barbie. Since when had he used the name Altmann? He said he had been naturalized on October 3, 1957, and lived under the names Klaus Altmann and Klaus Barbie. He was told to sit down.
Barbie set the tone for the discussions, a complex civil status situation, and this was only the first chapter. His defense line. On the third day of the trial, he had a trick ready for the court. They had just finished discussing his personality and wanted to look at the facts. When his lawyer glanced at his client, Klaus Barbie stood up.
He said: Mr. President, I would like to speak. I would like to state once again that I am a Bolivian citizen and I stand physically here before you. Thank you for this illegal experience. Thank you. He said he was no longer present at the time of the publication of the judgment. He asked the president.
The Saint-Joseph meeting had already discussed this possibility. Barbie feared that with a large audience, it would be a big show, that he would be a Punchinello pelted with pebbles, so he preferred to avoid it. The prosecutor was asked whether he wanted to intervene.
Barbie had French law on his side, but his choice angered the prosecutor. There were different ways of conducting an inquiry. Something similar had happened in this city more than 40 years earlier, and no one under interrogation had any means of escape. He could not say that in a low voice.
From then on, Barbie returned to his cell and stayed there quietly. He said: do what you want, I am not interested. Everyone was very surprised. They had not known this could happen, that the accused might not appear. They thought the accused were forced to be there.
Now, as always, it was Mr. No, Mr. No, no to everything. Everyone was disappointed. It was a good feeling, but at the same time a little disappointing. They would have liked to include him. In the end, he escaped again. He was the shameful Nazi who did not even dare to look at his past and say what happened.
The session was adjourned. Klaus Barbie would not participate in his trial. As he left the room, perhaps for the last time, Ladislas de Hoyos tried to conduct a spontaneous interview in the mousetrap, the narrow passage through which the accused was evacuated from the courtroom.
It was very narrow, so de Hoyos put his fingers in Barbie's ribs to see if he was wearing a vest. Barbie turned and said, de Hoyos, are you Hoyos? De Hoyos said yes and asked if he remembered. Barbie said yes, the passport and so on. He remembered it perfectly.
De Hoyos asked whether he did not want to spend the night at Mont Saint-Botin. Barbie said no, because he was Bolivian. He had been deported and handed over to France. The interview continued. At one point, de Hoyos asked who gave him Jean Moulin. He said, tell me, who gave you Moulin? Some had told them, but the operation was over.
Journalists were even seen walking around saying there were no more Barbie trials, that Barbie was no longer here. But from the moment Barbie left, the voice of the victims dominated the entire debate. Barbie had disappeared, and witnesses took turns speaking.
For the first time, the crimes of the Butcher of Lyon were described. It was difficult to describe the wild beast Barbie had been. One witness said they had not seen a man, as if a wild animal had entered the cell, and it was terrifying. He screamed. For that witness, it was horror. He embodied the night, black, satanic, pure evil.
One witness said Barbie gave him the first two slaps, interrogated him, and sent him into exile. His torments were not those of those who came before him, but they were no less.
There was the account of a 13-year-old girl assaulted in front of her parents. She began to speak and did not remember what she said. These are the things that stay with us, the memories that remain forever.
One observer said she had the screams of some witnesses in her head, and the tears. She saw Simone Lagrange, and she did not see a 60-year-old woman when she testified, but the little girl.
Alexandre Allen Brenner was called to approach. He was a little confused because it was the first time he had to speak before so many people. It was not a matter of shame, but it was very difficult. His family had been struck twice by the same person, Mr. Klaus Barbie.
His mother, when she died, was not asked to speak much. What is more precious to a mother than two children? Nothing is more precious. There is nothing in life more precious than two children. She said things. The mayor could say there are very difficult things. He was a man, and he was still alive.
There was an extraordinary moment in the trial, the only word heard that summarized the entire crime against humanity. Sabine Zlatin, director of the Izieu children's home, remembered the abduction of her children in the spring of 1944 and shouted at Barbie.
She asked: the children, the 44 children, what was this? Were they resistance fighters? Were they masked? What were you? You were innocent. Everything was summarized. All the horror of the crime against humanity, all its meaning, all its dimensions, all its attack was expressed in those words.
At the end of the day, no one could say how much they had heard. It was also recorded in what was written. There was also testimony from Hublon, and then they moved to the next testimony, and they were all terrible. The testimonies took the form of indictments written by 40 lawyers over two weeks of pleadings.
One lawyer spoke of the living man who returned from Auschwitz, but Jacques, Richard, and Jean-Claude did not return. What did this blank page mean? Had anyone here answered instead? It was the shroud of children accepting one another.
In the name of France, which had suffered so much from its weaknesses and had repented too late, the court, which had long doubted its greatness and truth, acquitted Klaus Barbie without further delay. That was the expected phrasing, but the reality was different.
On July 3, 1987, a few hours before the verdict, Barbie had no choice but to appear in the box. He almost smiled. He was the last to speak. He said he had never had the power to decide on deportation. He had fought the Resistance, which he respected, with all courage. But it was a war, and the war was over. Thank you.
When he said the war was over, it was as if he was erasing what happened, as if today there was no war and he was a different man. It meant, almost excellently, that when there is a war, everything is permitted. Everything had been said. It was war, the end. The guards took the accused away. The session was adjourned.
The nine jurors withdrew to a small room where they were locked in. This always happens. With the windows closed, it was very hot. There were very long deliberations, which caused some tension. People thought the decision would clearly be made within fifteen minutes. It took much longer.
The jurors, locked behind those windows, had to answer 341 questions about Barbie's guilt. It was the end of an endless wait for the civil parties and victims, who were prepared to spend the whole night in the court so as not to miss the verdict.
After more than six hours of deliberation, the hearing resumed. It was midnight. The room was tense. They did not know the repercussions. To them, it seemed they already knew what would happen. There was a great deal of tension and a great silence.
The accused, Klaus Barbie, was asked to stand. The court and jury's answers to the questions would be read. It turned out that Klaus Barbie was guilty. First, in 1943, in Lyon and on French territory, he had committed a crime against humanity by participating in the implementation of a coordinated plan aimed at deportation, enslavement, and extermination of the civilian population, or persecution for political, racial, or other reasons.
For 30 minutes, Barbie listened to the 341 answers of the jury until the verdict was announced. It was about one in the morning. The court and jury overwhelmingly sentenced Klaus Barbie to life imprisonment. He showed no remark, no approval, no condemnation. He had to be punished.
The criminal session was adjourned. The public was asked to remain silent and calm, to show a little dignity. It was an explosion and a relief, because many people had feared an incident.
Two months after the proceedings, Barbie left the court and its condemnation. Without showing any remorse, he returned to his cell to serve a sentence he considered unjust. One observer saw him afterward and asked why they had sentenced him to prison. Barbie said he had expected to be placed under house arrest, in a small house with a little nature around it, with police officers preventing escape. He thought he deserved that. In short, prison was not what he expected.
Barbie was in fact sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars in that Lyon prison. He died at the age of 77 after spending only eight years in prison.
For one witness, it was horror. For that witness, he was truly the Nazi in all his glory. In their view, he embodied the night, black evil, pure evil.
The serious question that remains is how certain immunities work, and how they can cause human stupidity, allowing monsters to be made. Klaus Barbie was not the only one. He harmed humanity, and his ideology harmed humanity. Humanity does not deserve this.
What will remain of the Barbie trial, and what was its purpose? Above all, it is the memory of the children of Izieu.