Klaus Barbie: The Life And Crimes Of The Butcher of Lyon
Klaus Barbie, a prominent figure within the Nazi hierarchy, garnered almost as much attention as Adolf Eichmann. A German Nazi SS officer, Barbie served as the head of the Gestapo in Lyon, France, during World War II. He became infamous for his ruthless torture and murder of Jews, members of the French Resistance, and numerous other victims, earning him the nickname the “Butcher of Lyon” for his brutal actions. While some suggest his crimes may have been partly influenced by his own troubled upbringing—Barbie’s father was an abusive, alcoholic figure—this does not account for his unwavering belief in Nazism, his sadistic tendencies, or his pursuit of power.
Barbie’s atrocities were not isolated acts but rather part of the broader, systematic campaign of genocide and terror orchestrated by the Nazi regime in France.
Barbie's early life and career
Barbie was born in Godesberg, Germany, in 1913. He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS in 1938. In 1940, he was assigned to the Gestapo in Amsterdam. In 1942, he was transferred to Lyon, where he quickly became known for his brutality.
On 19 February 1941 an SD raid entered a tavern called Koco, run by Jewish refugees from Germany, Cahn and Kohn. In the tavern, a protective device that Cahn had installed, an ammonia flash went off by accident, spaying the Germans with ammonia. The SD raid was commanded by Klaus Barbie and after some violence everyone inside was arrested and three days later, as a reprisal for his act of “resistance”, the SS raided the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, and seized 425 Jews, most of them young men. They were assembled on the Jonas Daniel –Meyer –plein subjected them to beatings and abuse and then on 27 February 1941 deported 389 of them to Buchenwald concentration camp and after two months 361 of them were deported to Mauthausen concentration camp and certain death. The arrests were followed by a general strike, Barbie was ordered to execute Cahn and his associates, who had been condemned to death. Barbie was put in charge of the execution squad.
He recalled:
“One of the condemned asked to hear an American hit record and then we shot them.”
On the 14 May 1941 a bomb was thrown into a Germans officers club in Amsterdam, and the German authorities decided the Jews should suffer as a reprisal. Barbie went to the offices of the Jewish Council in Amsterdam met Abraham Asscher and David Cohen and barbie tricked them into providing a list of 300 Jewish young men, on the basis they could return to the training camp and complete their apprenticeships. Asscher and Cohen were summonsed to see SD Commander Lages room and were told the boys had been arrested as a reprisal for the bomb attack. Asscher and Cohen were taken out of the building past those Jewish boys who had been arrested. All the Jews were deported to Mauthausen concentration camp where they all died before the end of the year. Just days after this coup, Barbie’s daughter, Ute Regine, was born in Trier.
Barbie's crimes in Lyon
On the 11 November 1942 the German army crossed the demarcation line into the Vichy zone, and Barbie arrived in Lyons as head of the Gestapo.
Another of Barbie's notorious crimes was the torture and murder of Jean Moulin, the leader of the French Resistance. Moulin was arrested by Barbie in January 1943
Christian Pineau, the unofficial prison barber was ordered to shave Jean Moulin who was stretched out motionless on a bench:
“He had lost consciousness; his eyes were hollowed as if they were buried in his head. He had an ugly bluish wound on his temple. A low moan escaped from his swollen lips. There was no doubt that he had been tortured by the Gestapo. Seeing me hesitate, the officer said again, “Shave him!” I asked for some soap and water.
The officer brought some and then went away. Slowly I tried to shave him, trying not to touch the swollen parts of his face. I couldn’t understand why they wanted to put on this macabre performance for a dying man. When I’d finished I just sat next to him. Suddenly Moulin asked for some water. I gave him a drink, then he spoke in a croaking voice a few words in English which I didn’t understand. Soon after he lost consciousness, I just sat with him, a sort of “death watch” until I was taken back to my cell.”
Gottlieb Fuchs the official interpreter of the Lyons Gestapo claimed that on the 25 June 1943 he witnessed Barbie drag a lifeless body down the steps to a basement in the Ecole de Sante. Fuchs later discovered that this victim was Moulin. The Gestapo in the Avenue Foch in Paris ordered that all those arrested in Lyons should be brought to Paris for further investigations. Moulin was taken by Barbie at the end of June 1943. Moulin was taken to a large villa in Neuilly which had been requisitioned by General Bomelberg, the head of the Gestapo in France, and interrogated at the Avenue Foch. On the 7 July an unconscious body on a stretcher was placed on a military train bound for Frankfurt-am –Main, Germany. Moulin was dead on arrival. Two days later the body was brought back to Paris and cremated at Pere Lachaise.
Barbie returned to Lyons and Raymond Aubrac one of those arrested in Caluire still remained in his care, and Barbie tortured him with unbridled ferocity. Aubrac recalled:
“Looking back, I sometimes even think that he wasn’t that interested in getting any information. Fundamentally he was a sadist who enjoyed causing pain and proving his power. He had an extraordinary fund of violence. Coshes, clubs and whips lay on his desk and he used them a lot. Contrary to what some others say, he wasn’t even a good policeman, because he never got any information out of me. Not even my identity, or that I was Jewish.”
Raymond Aubrac was rescued by members of the Resistance recruited by his courageous wife Lucie and they were both able to escape to England.
Barbie was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Lyon. He personally tortured many of his victims. He was also responsible for the deportation of thousands of Jews to Auschwitz.
One of Barbie's most notorious crimes was the raid on the Izieu Children's Home in April 1944. The Izieu Children's Home was a Jewish orphanage that was sheltering 44 children. Barbie and his men raided the orphanage and arrested all of the children and their 7 teachers. The children were deported to Auschwitz, where they were all murdered. In August 1944, as the Germans prepared to retreat from Lyon, he organized one last deportation train that took hundreds of people to the death camps.
Barbie's crimes in Lyon were not limited to Jews and members of the French Resistance. He also tortured and murdered other innocent people, such as Gypsies, homosexuals, and political dissidents.
Barbie's escape and capture
Barbie returned to Germany, and at the end of the war burned off his SS identification tattoo and assumed a new identity. With former SS officers, he engaged in underground anti-communist activity and in June 1947 surrendered himself to the U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) after the Americans offered him money and protection in exchange for his intelligence services. Barbie worked as a U.S. agent in Germany for two years, and the Americans shielded him from French prosecutors trying to track him down. In 1949, Barbie and his family were smuggled by the Americans to Bolivia where he lived for many years under the protection of the Bolivian dictatorship.
Assuming the name of Klaus Altmann, Barbie settled in Bolivia and continued his work as a U.S. agent. He became a successful businessman and advised the military regimes of Bolivia. In 1971, the oppressive dictator Hugo Banzer Suarez came to power, and Barbie helped him set up brutal internment camps for his many political opponents. During his 32 years in Bolivia, Barbie also served as an officer in the Bolivian secret police, participated in drug-running schemes, and founded a rightist death squad. He regularly travelled to Europe, and even visited France, where he had been tried in absentia in 1952 and 1954 for his war crimes and sentenced to death.
In 1972, the Nazi hunters Serge Klarsfeld and Beatte Kunzel discovered Barbie’s whereabouts in Bolivia, but Banzer Suarez refused to extradite him to France. In the early 1980s, a liberal Bolivian regime came to power and agreed to extradite Barbie in exchange for French aid. On January 19, 1983, Barbie was arrested, and on February 7 he arrived in France. The statute of limitations had expired on his in-absentia convictions from the 1950s; he would have to be tried again. The U.S. government formally apologized to France for its conduct in the Barbie case later that year.
In 1983, he was extradited to France, where he was put on trial for crimes against humanity. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Finally, in September 1991, at the old age of 77, the “Butcher of Lyon” died of cancer.