The Butcher of Lyon

Book excerpt: The name Klaus Barbie has become synonymous with the evils of the Nazi era. As a 29-year-old Gestapo lieutenant in Lyon, France, during WWII, Barbie wielded enormous power in his brutal oppression of French Resistance fighters and Jews. Barbie is also suspected of having had a role in the Bolivian coup d'état orchestrated by Luis García Meza in 1980. After the fall of the dictatorship, Barbie no longer had the protection of the government in La Paz. In 1983, he was extradited to France, where he was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison. Although he had been sentenced to death in absentia twice earlier, in 1947 and 1954, capital punishment had been abolished in France in 1981. Barbie died of cancer in prison in 1991, at age 77. Despite the fact that Barbie could not be executed the question of complicity with those who designed and executed Nazi inhumanity remains today. Barbie's survival for almost 40 years after the commission of his crimes was made possible only by the assitance of those who would have been his natural enemies.