Death of Klaus Barbie
End of the Third Reich and the Nazi Leaders
What happened to the leading figures of the Third Reich? How and when their stories come to an end? And what kind of an end it was?
Klaus Barbie
"The Butcher of Lyon"Hauptsturmführer in the German SS and the Gestapo.
Date of death: 1991-09-25), age 77.
Cause of death: Cancer in prison - Sentenced to life imprisonment in France.
He committed a number of war crimes, including the capture and deportation of 44 Jewish children hidden in the village of Izieu, and the torture murder of Jean Moulin, the highest ranking member of the French Resistance ever captured. All told, the deportation of 7,500 people, 4,342 murders, and the arrest and torture of 14,311 resistance fighters were in some way attributed to his actions or commands. "He was caressing the cat. And me, a kid 13 years old, I could not imagine that he could be evil because he loved animals. I was tortured by him for eight days." During the following week, the man hauled Simone Lagrange out of a prison cell each day, he yanked her by her hair, beating and punching at her open wounds in an effort to obtain information.
Dispite the fact that 4,342 murders were attributed to him, he was recruited by the Western Allies and worked for the British until 1947, then he switched his allegiance to the Americans, who protected and employed him from 1945 to 1955. With American help Barbie, together with his wife and children, moved to Bolivia in 1955 to avoid prosecution in France. He lived in Bolivia as a businessman under the name Klaus Altmann.
He was identified in Bolivia 1971 by Nazi hunters Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, but it was only on 1983-01-19, that a new moderate government arrested and deported him to France.