Unhealed Wounds: France and the Klaus Barbie Affair

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

The return of Klaus Barbie, “the Butcher of Lyons,” to France on Feb. 4, 1983, re-opened the unhealed wounds of French collaboration with the Nazi forces of occupation. During the war years, 76,000 Jews, most of them French citizens of blameless reputation, were deported to the death camps; only 3,000 even returned. Klaus Barbie was responsible for the arrest and transportation of these innocent victims.

Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, citizens dedicated to the discovery and punishment of war criminals, succeeded in tracking Barbie to his hiding place in Bolivia and were responsible for his return to face trial for his wartime atrocities. He stands accused of crimes against humanity.

This thoughtful work places the Barbie Affair in the context of French xenophobia and anti-Semitism, two factors that played a part in allowing Barbie and his kind to operate unchecked. Indeed, 90 per cent of the victims were arrested not by Germans but by French police. Now, defended by Jacques Verges, a man whose credo it is that “crime makes the world beautiful: crime advances society,” both a criminal and a régime, that of Vichy France, go on trial together.