France: Exorcising Old Ghosts

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Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon, "brings back the past

Few Nazi war criminals have been so hated in France as Klaus Barbie, the infamous "Butcher of Lyon." While serving as head of the Gestapo in Lyon from 1942 to 1944, Barbie ordered the execution of more than 4,000 people and the deportation of 7,000 French Jews to concentration camps. His hands were also stained with the blood of Jean Moulin, France's most revered Resistance leader, who is believed to have died under torture in 1943. Twice Barbie was tried in absentia for his crimes and sentenced to death by French tribunals. But for more than three decades the Nazi managed to escape punishment and, indeed, prospered in Bolivia under the alias Klaus Altmann.

Last week Barbie, 69, was back in Lyon, locked away in Montluc, the prison where he tortured and jailed thousands. The full details of his heinous past and his flight from justice have yet to be told, but when he is brought to trial a third time, a Pandora's box of incriminating evidence against a number of French collaborators may be opened. The trial could even provide embarrassing details of a U.S. scheme to enlist the former Gestapo officer as an intelligence source after World War II.

Word of Barbie's expulsion from Bolivia stunned France. BARBIE: THE GHOSTS RETURN, read the headline of Le Quotidien de Paris. An equally macabre banner was printed by Le Figaro: THE DEVILS EXHUMED. Even before Barbie's arrival in Lyon, relatives of some of his victims began to gather in front of the heavy green wooden doors of Montluc in silent vigil. "I just want to get a look at his face," said a woman who survived Dachau. In the end, there was nothing to see. Closely guarded by French security agents, the prisoner flashed I past in a blue armored police van.

France had previously demanded the return of Barbie, but Bolivian military leaders with close ties to the ex-Nazi businessman had refused. When leftist civilians took office in Bolivia last October, President François Mitterrand's government decided to try again. This time the Bolivians agreed to cooperate. In an apparent effort to pave the way for Barbie's expulsion, Bolivian police picked him up on Jan. 25 and charged him with fraud in connection with a $10,000 loan from the state. Barbie immediately repaid the debt, plus interest, but it did him little good. Instead of releasing him, Bolivian officials put him on a plane bound for Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana. When told he had been handed over to French authorities, the Butcher of Lyon made a gesture, as if slitting his throat.

The French government did everything it could to ensure that Barbie was hustled out of Latin America without incident. The Elysée dispatched a presidential DC-8 jet to Cayenne to fly him back to France. West Germany had also sought Barbie's extradition, but the Bonn government decided to let the French have him. Cynics were quick to point out that the Mitterrand government's dogged effort to bring the Nazi to trial could only win votes for the Socialists in the French municipal elections set for next month.