Grim career of Barbie

Press, 12 May 1984, Page 20

Grim career of Barbie

Klaus Barbie: Butcher of Lyons. By Tom Bower. Michael Joseph, 1984. 255 pp, illusts, bibliog, index. $24.95.

(Reviewed by

A. J. Curry)

It took nearly 40 years to bring the man known as the Butcher of Lyons to justice. In the process many stones were turned, and many nasty things exposed, which certain governments and officials must have hoped were hidden for ever. Klaus Barbie, born in Germany in 1913, set about earning his title by enlisting in the Hitler Youth and then in the S.S. By the time the war began he was a second lieutenant. He served first in the Intelligence section, but after a spell of rounding up and shooting Jews in Amsterdam he was transferred to Lyons in France as head of the Gestapo. Here his savage campaign against the French Jews and members of the Resistance, many of whom he personally tortured and shot to death, earned him the title of “Butcher of Lyons.” It seems almost inconceivable that when the war ended Barbie simply switched sides and began working for the American Counter Intelligence Corps as a valued informer. His knowledge of methods of interrogation, his contacts with the Kamaradenschaft (an association of former high-ranking Nazis), but above all his ability to provide information about what the Communists were doing in Germany, made the Americans protect him, even when his return was officially requested by the French.

But as the author of this wellresearched book writes: “By the beginning of 1948 there was nothing unusual about the use of incriminated Germans. The Allies had condoned the wholesale reinstatement of former Nazis to their old jobs ... the use of one insignificant Gestapo officer who could give some help against the communist threat seemed, to many, utterly acceptable.” Eventually in 1951 the Americans sent Barbie and his family down an escape route appropriately named the Rat Line. They sailed for Bolivia and soon Barbie had found his niche as an arms dealer and security adviser to the military dictatorships which are endemic to that region of the world. There he might have stayed had it not been for the Klarsfelds, international Nazi hunters who work by exploiting the media to embarrass governments or politicians who protect Germans involved in crimes against the Jews. It was not until 1983 when Bolivia had a President who cared about international opinion that a French request to extradite Barbie was met. In February, 1983, Barbie was returned to France, to Lyons, to be tried for his wartime crimes. At the time of writing his trial has not begun. But the important thing is that despite the length of time it took, and despite the help he received from various government officials, many of whom knew of or suspected his dreadful past, Barbie was brought to book. Ends had triumphed over means.