Klaus Barbie (1913-1991), was the SS-Obersturmfuehrer and the Gestapo Chief of Lyon in German occupied France. Barbie was born in Bad Godesberg, Germany on October 25, 1913. Following a stint in the Hitler Youth, Barbie joined the SS and SD after September 26, 1935. He joined the NSDAP later, in May 1937. In Lyons, he was head of Section IV, the Gestapo, at SD headquarters. From 1942 to 1944, Barbie allegedly committed numerous war crimes which earned him the name"The Butcher of Lyons" Most notably, he was responsible for the torture of French Resistance hero Jean Moulin and the deportation of the children from the village of Izieu. A military court in Lyons sentenced him to death in absentia in 1954. Both French and German authorities sought to track Barbie down, but after the war the United States helped him escape to South America in return for information he had. He lived under the pseudonym Klaus Altmann. He was discovered living in La Paz, Bolivia in 1960, but extradition attempts to Germany and France failed. In 1983, he was expelled from Bolivia and captured in French Guiana. On July 4, 1987 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Rhone Court of Assize after a highly publicized trial. [Source: Zentner, Christian."Encyclopedia of the Third Reich" MacMillan, 1991.]
Abbreviated transcript with real time code idents available in departmental files.
Lise Lesevre: Resistance member. She was arrested by the Gestapo on March 13, 1943 while she carried a letter addressed to Didier, the false name of a Resistance leader. She was then interrogated and tortured by Barbie: hung by hand cuffs with spikes, forced under freezing water in a bathtub, and beaten with a spiked ball against her back which broke a vertebrae. She was condemned to death by a German military tribunal for"terroris" but was placed in the wrong cell and deported to Ravensbruck instead. Her husband died at Dachau and her son was killed in a detention center in Neuengamme at the age of 16. [not discussed on this tape] At 15:07 Asked by Cerdini how she recognizes Mr. Barbie as the man who tortured her, Lesevre says:"Oh, I recognized Barbie all right. He had astonishing eyes, very blue, very clear, full of movement. I recognized him without effort, first on television when he was discovered in Bolivia, and then, when I was confronted with him, I recognized him in person" 15:19 She turns to the empty defendant's box and says:"Why is Barbie not here? Should he be here to protest against what is being said against him" Ennat Leger, who lost her sight at Ravensbruck, was hoisted to the witness stand in her wheelchair by four policemen. She was a Resistance fighter and nearly 50 years old when she was arrested in 1944. She says Barbie and his men"were savages, brutal savages, who struck, struck and struck again""Have you heard of the Gestapo kitchens?" she quoted him as saying, in an allusion to the torture chambers. She says Barbie"had the eyes of a monster. He was savage. My God, he was savage! It was unimaginable. He broke my teeth, he pulled my hair back. He put a bottle in my mouth and pushed it until the lips split from the pressure"
Barbie Trial -- Day 10 -- Victims testify