Klaus Barbie

Nikolaus Barbie (25 October 1913 – 25 September 1991) was a German officer of the SS and SD who worked in Vichy France during World War II.

He became known as the "Butcher of Lyon" for having personally tortured prisoners—primarily Jews and members of the French Resistance—as the head of the Gestapo in Lyon.

After the war, United States intelligence services employed him for his anti-communist efforts and aided his escape to Bolivia, where he advised the dictatorial regime on how to repress opposition through torture.

Nikolaus "Klaus" Barbie was born on 25 October 1913 in Godesberg, which is today part of Bonn.

The Barbie family came from Merzig, in the Saar near the French border.

In 1914, his father, also named Nikolaus, was conscripted to fight in the First World War.

He was wounded in the neck at Verdun and captured by the French, whom he hated, and he never recovered his health.

Until 1923, when he was 10, Klaus Barbie attended the local school where his father taught.

Afterwards, he attended a boarding school in Trier, and was relieved to be away from his abusive father.

In 1925, the entire Barbie family moved to Trier.

In June 1933, Barbie's younger brother Kurt died, at the age of 18, of a chronic illness.

Later that year, their father died.

The death of his father derailed plans for the 20-year-old Barbie to study theology, or otherwise become an academic, as his peers had expected.

While unemployed, Barbie was conscripted into the Nazi labour service, the Reichsarbeitsdienst.

On 26 September 1935, aged 22, he joined the SS (member 272,284), and began working in the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the SS security service, which acted as the intelligence-gathering arm of the Nazi Party.

On 1 May 1937, he became member 4,583,085 of the Nazi Party.

After the German conquest and occupation of the Netherlands, Barbie was assigned to Amsterdam.

He had been pre-assigned to Adolf Eichmann's Amt (Department) IV/B-4.

This department was responsible for identification, roundup and deportation of Dutch Communists, Jews and Freemasons.

On 11 October 1940, Barbie arrested Hermannus van Tongeren, Grand Master of the Grand Orient of the Netherlands.

In March 1941, van Tongeren was transported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp where, in freezing conditions, he died two weeks later.

On 1 April, Barbie summoned Van Tongeren's daughter, Charlotte, to SD headquarters and informed her that her father had died of an infection in both ears and had been cremated.

In 1942, he was sent to Dijon, in the Occupied Zone of France.

In November of the same year, at the age of 29, he was assigned to Lyon as the head of the local Gestapo.

He established his headquarters at the Hôtel Terminus in Lyon, where he personally tortured adult and child prisoners.

He became known as the "Butcher of Lyon".

The daughter of a French Resistance leader based in Lyon said her father was beaten and his skin torn, and that his head was immersed in buckets of ammonia and cold water; he could not sit or stand and died three days later from burns to his skin.

Other tortures included training German shepherds to bite and using them to rape naked women.

Historians estimate that Barbie was directly responsible for the deaths of up to 14,000 people, personally participating in roundups such as the Rue Sainte-Catherine Roundup which saw 84 people arrested in a single day.

He arrested Jean Moulin, a high-ranking member of the French Resistance and his most prominent captive.

In 1943, he was awarded the Iron Cross (First Class) by Adolf Hitler for his campaign against the French Resistance and the capture of Moulin.

In April 1944, Barbie ordered the deportation to Auschwitz of a group of 44 Jewish children from an orphanage at Izieu.

Although he had been sentenced to death in absentia twice earlier, in 1947 and 1954, capital punishment had been abolished in France in 1981.

In 1972, it was discovered he was in Bolivia.

While in Bolivia, the West German Intelligence Service recruited him.

Barbie is 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 lost the protection of the government in La Paz.

In 1983, the United States apologised to France for the U.S. Counterintelligence Corps helping him escape to Bolivia, aiding Barbie's escape from an outstanding arrest warrant.

In 1983, he was arrested and extradited to France, where he was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison.

Barbie died of cancer in prison in 1991, at age 77.