Klaus Barbie

Nazi war criminal

  • Born: October 25, 1913
  • Birthplace: Bad Godesberg, Germany
  • Died: September 25, 1991
  • Place of death: Lyon, France

Major offenses: Crimes against humanity, specifically torture, “deportation,” and murder

Active: 1941-1945

Locale: Lyon, France, and Amsterdam, Holland

Sentence: Life imprisonment

Early Life

Three months following the illegitimate birth of Klaus Barbie, his parents married. His alcoholic father was first an office worker but later became a schoolteacher. In 1923, after Barbie moved away to the Friedrich-Wilhelm school in Trier, he was relieved finally to be free of his disciplinarian father. Two years later, however, his entire family moved to Trier, and Barbie moved back in with them. In 1933, the year Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, both Barbie’s father and younger brother died.

Barbie, with average marks, passed his final exams in 1934. He had an affinity for languages and was fluent in French, German, and Spanish. At the age of twenty, he joined the Hitler Youth and became an assistant to his local party leader. He also volunteered for a six-month stint at a work camp in Schleswig-Holstein.

On September 26, 1935, Barbie joined the Schutzstaffel (SS). He was then posted to Berlin as an assistant at the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) main office, then trained as an interrogator and investigator at police headquarters in Alexanderplatz. His next post was on a vice squad which carried out raids and arrested prostitutes, homosexuals, and Jews. In 1936, he was transferred to an SD squad in Düsseldorf. Barbie was automatically enrolled in the Nazi Party in 1937. He graduated from the SD school in Bernau and was sent to the leadership course in Charlottenburg, Berlin.

Beginning in September, 1938, Barbie served three months in the Thirty-ninth Infantry. On April 20, 1940, he graduated from the leadership course and was promoted to second lieutenant (SS Untersturmführer). Five days after graduating, he married Regine Willms, a twenty-three-year-old maid. Barbie was then assigned to the intelligence section within the SD (section VI). He was subsequently posted to Amsterdam, to the Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration.

Criminal Career

While in Amsterdam in 1941, Barbie was responsible for rounding up Freemasons, German émigrés, and Jews. For his hard work and dedication he was promoted to first lieutenant. Barbie was awarded the Iron Cross, second class, for his management of the Jewish resistance to relocation in Holland. Exemplary of his style, Barbie politely approached members of the local Jewish Council and asked for a list of three hundred Jewish boys who had been forced to leave their training camp by the German authorities. He said that the Germans had decided that the young apprentices should return to the camp, and that he needed to write to the boys to tell them. The Jewish leaders promptly handed over the list. They later discovered that all the boys had been arrested as a reprisal for a bomb attack on a German officers’ club. All the boys were executed at Mathausen.

The following year, as Gestapo chief in Lyon, France, Barbie ordered the deportation of forty-four Jewish children. He was also involved in the capture and torture of some influential members of the French Resistance movement, including Jean Moulin, the highest-ranking member of the Resistance ever to be caught by German authorities. Barbie took part in a sting operation that resulted in capturing at least eighty-six Jews, who were then deported to Auschwitz. Barbie personally interrogated people at the École de Santé Militaire, which opened as a torture center in June, 1943. Many of his victims claimed that Barbie would often be smiling, quite enjoying the torture of others. Through either his actions or orders, he was responsible for deporting approximately 7,500 people to death camps, torturing 14,311 Resistance members, and killing a total of 4,342 people.

After World War II ended, the American Counter-Intelligence Corps hired Barbie to spy on German Communists and those who resisted American and British occupation in Western Europe. In 1955, Barbie assumed the name Klaus Altmann and moved to Bolivia. There he disappeared.

In France, Barbie was twice tried and sentenced to death in absentia. His whereabouts in Bolivia were finally discovered by Serge and Beatte Klarfeld in 1971. Barbie was not extradited until 1983, thanks to the protection of the Bolivian military dictatorship. By this time, his two prior convictions were void under a statute of limitations; he was tried again in May, 1987. His lawyer, Jacques Vergès, argued that Barbie’s actions were no worse than those undertaken by any colonizing nation, including France. Nonetheless, Barbie was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on July 4. He died of cancer in the prison hospital four years later.

Impact

Klaus Barbie’s impact upon all the families of those murdered, tortured, and deported is impossible to quantify. However, his trial did raise interesting questions as to the policies of the French government in its colonies and the tactics employed as well as historic questions about French and American collaboration with the Nazis during and after the war.

Bibliography

Bower, Tom. Klaus Barbie: The Butcher of Lyons. New York: Bookmoat, 1984. An account of the life of Barbie, his exploits in the Nazi Party, his hiding and trial, and the possible reasons for his barbarity.

Finkielkraut, Alain. Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes Against Humanity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. A complete account of the Klaus Barbie trial as well as some of the revelations that the trial brought to light.

Murphy, Brendan. The Butcher of Lyon: The Story of Infamous Nazi Klaus Barbie. New York: Empire Books, 1983. Accounts for Barbie’s acts in Lyon and the events that occurred after World War II as well.