Klaus Barbie is a Nazi criminal who was repeatedly sentenced to life in prison for cold-blooded murder and brutal torture during World War II. This man is known all over the world under the nickname "Butcher of Lyons" for his Nazi service in Lyon.
Childhood and youth
Klaus Barbie was born in 1913 in the small German town of Bad Godesberg into a family of strict Catholic views. The boy's parents dreamed that the child would follow in their footsteps - he studied the Word of God, devoted his life to the study of theology, and became a Catholic priest. The life of his son, however, did not go according to this plan: after the early death of his father from alcoholism, Klaus completely stopped devoting time to religion, and his mother was unable to influence the National Socialist views that were forming in him.
Education did not attract Klaus at all, and already in the fall of 1935 he entered the service in the SS (German "Schutzstaffeln", or "SS"), Nazi troops. Thanks to her composure and sharp mind, Barbie quickly made her way up in a military career. Two years later, at the age of 24, he became a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and later joined the Gestapo, Germany's secret state police.
The Second World War
In 1942, Klaus Barbie became the head of the Gestapo - a prestigious and responsible position for the 29-year-old young man. He became a key figure in the fight against the French resistance in occupied Lyon. There he brutally tortured prisoners and personally shot them. The few French survivors after his torment said that in the Barbie camps there was a frightening atmosphere of everyday life: during the torture, the Nazis calmly had a snack, talked with their wives, and exchanged jokes.
During the war years, the head of the Gestapo was famous for the abundance of informers: inside the French resistance he had about 20 informers, thanks to whom he was able to capture the leader of the underground, Jean Moulin. The freedom fighter was subjected to many days of cruel torture, after which he fell into a coma and died.
For his sophisticated torture, Klaus was nicknamed the "Butcher of Lyons". He filled the bathtubs with ice water and lowered the prisoners' heads into it until they lost consciousness, drove needles under their nails, clamped their hands with doors, beat them to death. He had a hand in the murder of several dozen French orphans, the execution and torture of thousands of Jews. Unfortunately, the brutality during the war was a dream of many secret services, so after the fall of the Nazi regime, Klaus immediately received offers of work in British and American intelligence.
Service in the USA
The Lyon butcher trusted the Americans more than the British, so some time after Hitler's defeat he entered the US Army's secret service (CIC). There he began to work in the national counterintelligence, where he conducted activities against the USSR and France, identified and handed over communists. In 1951, he retired from active work and took up consulting.
In the 1950s, France learned that the criminal they had convicted was not just hiding, but freely working for American intelligence. The United States did not give them Klaus Barbie, because he knew too much about the internal affairs of the country, but it was considered inappropriate to cooperate with him further. They helped the former head of intelligence move to Bolivia, where there was a large German colony and a fairly calm attitude towards the Nazis.
Life in Bolivia
The Americans made new documents for Klaus Barbie so that he could hide in Bolivia. He chose the new name himself, and according to new documents they began to call him Klaus Altmann. Altmann became a valuable advisor to the Bolivian government during the hunt for Ernesto Che Guevara. The Lyons butcher has proudly declared on several occasions that it was he who had developed the plan to capture and kill Che Guevara.
Klaus helped organize concentration camps for the enemies of the dominant political regime, consulted intelligence and the national police. During the reign of Luis Garcia Mesa became a lieutenant colonel in the army of Bolivia, was the head of the presidential security council. Of course, the representatives of the government knew that Klaus Barbie was in front of them, but he did his job so well that it never occurred to anyone to hand him over to the French. In Bolivia, he lived most of his life: as much as 40 years.
In the early 1970s, a family of political journalists from France Serge and Beata Klarsfeld began a real hunt for the national criminal, which lasted more than 10 years. They quickly discovered that the Lyons butcher lived in Bolivia, but getting close to such an important person was not so easy. In 1987, the criminal was finally captured: the Klarsfelds consider this event to be the most important achievement of their anti-Nazi activities.
Many documentaries have been filmed and several books have been written on the history of the Lyon Butcher. Klaus Barbie has forever left a fat mark in the history of several countries and became the executioner of thousands of adults and children. In the biography of Klaus Barbie, there were three death sentences on which he was absent. The courts were held in absentia, tk. the Nazi could not be found and caught. A fourth trial, held in Lyon in 1987, ordered the killer to be jailed for life for crimes against humanity. The verdict, however, turned out to be only 4 years in the Lyons prison, after which the perpetrator died of old age at the age of 77.
