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The Trial of Klaus Barbie: Reader Opinions If you have any comments about the trial of Klaus Barbie or anything else on this site, please feel free to send them to the following address:
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On February 3, 2000 Ann_Lindeamn@fis.edu wrote:
I am interested in investigating a tale of Barbie having been apprehended in Santa Cruz, Bolivia while reposing at his favorite restaurant on the main plaza. Every account I have encountered refers only to his expulsion from La Paz. Can you shed any light on this, or direct me to a source? Reply: According to Tom Bower, author of Klaus Barbie, Barbie was arrested on January 25, 1983 in La Paz when he went to a government office there to haggle about a $10,000 debt his company had incurred. Barbie was charged with immigration fraud and with creating a private army, neither of which were directly connected to the charges he faced in Lyon. The arrest came as an utter surprise to Barbie, who was at this point a minor celebrity, and who just days before had held a meeting in La Paz publically denied running away or trying to elude authorities. On February 4, 1983 the Bolivians handed Barbie over to the French; in order to keep Barbie calm and cooperative the Bolivians told him that he was being flown to Germany. The next evening Barbie was in a cell in Montluc prison in Lyon. There is little doubt in my mind that if Barbie had seen his arrest coming he would have retreated to Santa Cruz. Barbie's family estate was in Santa Cruz and he had many powerful friends there as well. If Barbie had been warned about the arrest he probably would have disappeared into a Santa Cruz hacienda, never to be seen again. From one of these haciendas, many of which had private airfields, Barbie could have sneaked away to any place in the world. That Barbie voluntarily left the safe haven of Santa Cruz to settle a trifling $10,000 debt speaks volumes of the man's confidence that the Bolivian government would protect him. On January 23, 2000 peterbjel@hotmail.com wrote: It reminds me a little about what happened to Josef Mengele after the war. He was captured by the US Army under his own name for two months before he was released. Shortly before his capture, he handed his medical experiment research notes -- damning evidence against him -- over to a nurse friend of his who was caught but immediately released by the Allies. It took the US government some time to disclose this fact! Talk about charmed luck at the hands of a wretch! Reply: The Allies let hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Nazis slip through the cracks following WWII. Most of these criminals lived normal lives, pretending that 1933-1945 never occured. Once in awhile one of these Nazis is exposed, but usually they are spared justice because of their advanced age. Maybe 10% are prosecuted. -- JN On December 2, 1999 inca@crewnet.com wrote:
I am a Peruvian citizen and I can remember when I was a pre- teenager, in Lima, in the middle sixties, people were shocked by a crime affair. A beautiful young married woman, murdered a Spanish count (apparently her lover) a night in a quiet street far from Lima. When police and journalists inquired about the murder, they found this young woman was German and her father a former Wehrmacht officer. This former officer, named Schwend, lived in a big house near Lima, in the district of Chaclacayo, surrounded by high walls and dogs. When television people came to Schwend's house, they discovered a strange character there: a guest by the name of Klaus Altmann. This was the beginning of the end for Barbie. If this story could be interesting to you, you can contact The Peruvian magazine Caretas. I am sure they have more information. Regards Reply: Thanks for this fascinating morsel of information! I don't remember reading anywhere that Barbie had spent any time in Peru and I've always been curious about the details of his time in Latin America. As soon as I get ahold of someone who knows Spanish, I'll contact that magazine. I ran a www.google.com search for "Schwend" + "Altmann" and it came up with a page that confirmed that Don Federico Schwend was indeed a good friend of Barbie. A further search on the subject brought me to a newsgroup post that contended that Schwend was part of a larger CIA/drug trafficker/money laundering/JFK assassination conspiracy. However, I have doubts about the veracity of conspiracy theories.... But with that disclaimer, here is a quote on Schwende I found on www.drugwar.com: Ricord, a former Gestapo agent, was particularly powerful in Argentina, Peru, Paraguay and Bolivia, strongholds of his old Nazi-Gehlen allies. These included arms dealer Klaus Barbie, who boasted the Bolivian Army's Chief of Staff, Alfredo Ovando Candia, on the board of his shipping company Transmaritima. Ovando became Bolivian president on Gen. Barrientos' convenient death in a 1969 helicopter crash. Ricord could also count on Frederich Schwend in Peru, who had been involved in Operation Bernhard, the SS attempt to forge enough Bank of England notes to turn itself into an independent economic power. Like Barbie, Schwend was a post-war beneficiary of the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps. Schwend and Barbie teamed up to keep South America's right-wing death squads well-supplied with high quality German arms - from Merex and Gemetex. These were first-line NATO heavy arms - tanks, rocket launchers, air cannon - the works. That this was an American, French and German-driven effort, or at least an effort of their cooperating secret services, is demonstrated by the fact that the Israelis worked right alongside the Nazis. Ovando of Bolivia, Laugerud of Guatemala, D'Aubuisson of El Salvador and countless others had Israeli training and were loyal customers of the Israelis as well as the Germans. Well, I've my doubts on this one too... I do know that in Bolivia in the 1970s, Barbie did not exactly keep a low profile. He was once expelled from the German Cultural Club in La Paz for shouting "Heil Hitler" at a dinner party. And this reminds me... a Uruguayan friend once informed me that everybody in Montevideo knew about Barbie when his son died in glider accident.
On November 20, 1999 sabine@fickewirth.com wrote:
The book got published by Albin Michel in the '70s in French and German. It is called "Le Renard" in French (My grandfather's name was Gottlieb Theophile Fuchs, Fuchs (German) = Renard (French) = Fox in German). The French resistents knew him as Dr. Rochat. I agree that the Swiss role should definitely be researched more! My grandfather mentions in the book that he often over-heard Barbie mentioning that they had "friends" in the Swiss government. Switzerland (which by the way I am a Citizen of!) never recognized my grandfather's role (he gave them numerous tips about where the German troops were at, what they were about to do next, where some nazis where hiding, etc.) he even got imprisoned for a short while after he came back from several concentration camps (Barbie somehow got tipped off that he wasn't a loyal interpreter...). He passed away when I was very young but I definitely remember his crooked nose, his finger nails missing, etc. from the nice treatments he got in the camps. Reply: I wish you the best of luck with your book. I'm thrilled to hear that someone is examining the Swiss role in the Klaus Barbie affair and I assure you that I'll be among the first in line to buy it when it is published. Someone ought to look into why Maurice Papon fled to Switzerland. -- JN On October 21, 1999 AACTchrNet@aol.com wrote:
Reply: Thanks! I'm honored to be part of your impressive Holocaust Web collection (see above link). On August 3, 1999 n0zama@hotmail.com wrote:
Our medical experiments on minorites here in this country in this century. Our refusal to except boat loads of jewish(many of them being children) refugees from Hitler's Germany only to send them back to be exterminated and knowing that was their fate. Dropping 2 nuclear bombs on civilian targets, brushing it of as a necessity to end the war. And our shady involvements in South America which have cost countless lose of innocent life. All this by a country which has asked for an internationally independent court to be formed to try crimes against humanity. But we're not that stupid. The main stipulation is that the USA will never be held accountable to this court, though all the rest of the nations of the world would be. We as a nation need to open our closets take responsibility for our actions and once and for all acknowledge that the evil vileness of Hitler's Germany lurks in every single human being on this earth. Bravo!.. to France for being the first to take steps towards understanding that. And Bravo!..to Verges for seeing beyond nationalism and right to the core of imperialism..BRAVO!!
Reply: I'm glad someone saw that we Americans have just as much trouble reconciling the historical record with popular history as the French do. As for Vergès, well, to be fair, he had plenty of ulterior motives going into the Barbie trial; he didn't want to just expose France's inconsistencies he wanted to attack France and his political enemies. -- JN On August 3, 1999 hawsd1@yahoo.com wrote:
Reply: I don't know my way around Lyon too well, but I can tell you this: the Hotel Terminus building is near the train station (it was a railway hotel at the end of the Lyon line, hence its name) but it no longer goes by its original name. -- JN On July 7, 1999 mgroth@webtv.net wrote:
Reply: I've heard speculations about this one too, but I've yet to come across any written record of Barbie's involvement in Che's demise. I do know this though: Barbie was in the employ of Che's enemies when Che was killed, and Barbie did take part personally in the anti-guerilla operations against leftist cells like that of Che. --JN On May 27, 1999 Sterry156@aol.com wrote:
Could you please tell me how I could obtain more information on the trial itself? Maybe some transcripts and other documents. Thanks
Reply Please look at my Obtaining More Information About the Barbie Trial page. -- JN On May 10, 1999 CROBB1946@aol.com wrote:
And Verges... Verges! Only France can turn up these extreme radical intellectuals who live the life of the grand bourgeois. Anyway, thanks for help. On May 5, 1999 CROBB1946@aol.com wrote:
I am writing a book on Michel Thomas, who was a witness at the trial. He claims to have been at the UGIF when Barbie was there. His was recused by Pierre Truche who felt the anecdotal style of his evidence was unreliable. Do you have anything on this? I would be most interested.
Reply: Michel Thomas -- that name rings a bell but I can't remember where I saw it. I'm sure he's mentioned in Paul Gauthier and René Diaz. Chronique du Procès Barbie (Les Éditions du Cerf, 1988) a gigantic collection of newspaper clippings taken during the weeks of the Barbie Trial in 1987. It's in French and unfortunately there aren't many copies of it here in the U.S. But most big universities should have a copy. Erna Paris's Unhealed Wounds (New York, Grove Press, 1985) has a lot of information about the UGIF. On April 29, 1999 s.fodor@akg.de (Sylvie Fodor) wrote:
May I comment on two points? 1) It may be that the Barbie trial was a turning point which made the general public in France aware of the involvement of the French into the Final Solution. However, it would be fair to say that among historians and intellectuals, and perhaps an interested part of the French population, the process had already begun years before - at the beginning of the seventies. It is at the beginning of the seventies namely that an excellent book on the Vichy government was published in France : "La France de Vichy" from R.Paxton (I don't see this book in your bibliography and I highly recommend it to anybody interested in this period / Edition du Seuil 1973). Paxton , as a matter of fact and how could it be otherwise, is an American author, and he brought the truth of their history to the French people. The book goes in detail into the Vichy regime and shows that this counter-revolutionary regime did much more than just carry out the orders of the German occupant. The exportation of the Jews was either Vichy's own initiative and/ or supported by a non inconsiderable part of the population. Starting with the publication of this book a number of historians, but not only historians, started to question French past. In his memoirs (Le spectateur engagé - published 1982) Raymond Aron recognises that "all documents of the time point with certainty to a share of the blame" ; he recalls a "Minister of the Fourth Republic" "whose name he would not reveal" telling him that "if it was not for the Germans, he'd pretty much agree with Vichy's policy." Truly, what missed until very recently was the official recognition of the harm done and this happened only after the death of a prominent proponent of this ambiguous time : François Mitterand. 2) The second point concerns the comparison of the Algerian War and of the Holocaust. Quote chapter 7 : "From 1987 on, whenever the French would think of crime against humanity, they would think of more than just the Holocaust. Now they would conjure up the atrocities in Algeria alongside those of the Nazis ..." You seem to support the opinion of J.Vergès that the crimes committed during the "guerres de décolonisation" and in particular during the "Algerian War" are to be likened with the destruction of the Jews in Europe. I don't know what the "French" think, but for my part I think that this idea is not only ridiculous, it is also dangerous. The Algerian War opposed the "French" on the one side and the "Arabs" on the other, it was bloody and the cause of thousands of innocent victims (on both sides). However, the French army in Algeria was fighting against a real and dangerous opponent ; terror and violence begot violence and harsh counterrevolutionary methods. The Jews on the other hand were purely innocent, peaceful, civilian victims, whose only "crime" had been to be Jewish. Whereas the "Algerian War" was a real war started on the initiative of the FLN the "War against the Jews" was in the sole insane imagination of the Nazis. The destruction of the Jews, of the "Jewish race", was coldly decided and systematically carried out. Neither the French army, nor the French government, nor the French colons had the slightest intention of destroying the Arabs as a race. This is not to say the crimes committed during the Algerian War (on both sides) are excusable, simply not "crimes against Humanity". I also think that such an idea is dangerous : by levelling out the content of the concepts, it has the same effect as the "revisionist" theories. All the best - SF
Reply: Thanks for your interest in my webpage on the Barbie trial. I appreciate your taking the time to read it so carefully and send me your comments. Comments from careful readers like you are valuable to me because they help make this webpage better. I am familiar with and deeply respect most of Paxton's work on Vichy, but I didn't put "La France de Vichy" in my bibliography because I didn't ever cite it. As for Aron, I will have a look at Spectateur because its 1982 publication should provide an interesting window into France just before the whole Barbie trial began. About a year ago L'Express put out an article about secret files from the Mitterand administration. Several of these were related to the Barbie trial but none of them reveal anything that historians had not already guessed, for instance, that French politicians planned to use the Barbie trial to make the Mitterand government more popular. I'm glad you've been able to distinguish between what the Nazis did in France and what the French did in Algeria; Vergès'whole defense of Barbie depended on people not making that distinction. There is a wonderful cartoon in a 1987 French paper that illustrates a French juror asking Vergès why so many Algerians had immigrated to France the French had truly tried to exterminate them. I do not condone Vergès'argument, but I do try to immerse the reader into enough so that he or she can see why France struggled with the case in 1987. When I revise the Barbie webpage, I make an effort to better differentiate between what Vergès claims and what I think. I also think that the line between the Holocaust and the Algerian war is not as clear cut as you argue it is. While the French government certainly never wanted to exterminate the native Algerians, there were plenty of colonials and army officers who had exactly that in mind. The French Foreign Legion also employed unrepentant Nazis treated the Algerians in much the same way as they treated the Jews. For a fair, intelligent discussion of French atrocities in Algeria, I recommend: Leulliette, Pierre, St. Michael and the Dragon: Memoirs of a Paratrooper (trans. John Edmonds. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. 1964)
On April 11, 1999 cw46902@integrityonline32.com wrote:
Also, is the wife of Reinhard Heinrich still alive and receiving pension benifits from the German Government almost 60 years after his death? Reply: 1. I find that looking up "Klarsfeld" on various search engines provides an up-to-date list of war criminal sites. Also, try searching for names of people considered war criminals by vocal groups, like Pinochet. 2. Last time I checked Germany gave everybody old age benefits, regardless of their backgrounds, as long as they or their spouse held a steady job in the post-war era.
On August 27, 1998 rufried@ibm.net wrote:
I am looking for how to contact prosecutors and others connected with the cases who can speak authoritatively about the legal lessons learned in these cases, make connections to the prosecutions of modern war criminals and individuals suspected of crimes against humanity. Would you have any names/addresses of individuals who would be suitable as speakers or participants? Thank you.
On May 9, 1998 Penninoap@aol.com wrote:
I just wanted to take the time to thank you for your efforts to bring this very complex and dangerous individual to the attention of a wider public. Too quickly, I think, we forget how easily we lose what Lincoln described as "the better angels of our nature" and how quickly we can descend into darkness.
Reply: I wish you luck on your play, I can't wait to hear or read it! You have some competition, though. A few months ago a movie about Lucie and Raymond Aubrac, a married couple who were Resistance fighters in Lyon, came out in France. -- J.N.
On May 3, 1998 manuela.wyler@hol.fr wrote:
p.s the name of the witness at the Barbie Trial was Julien Favet he was working in the farm close to the home of the children
Reply: I have put information about Izieu in Chapter 3. There is also a link to the official Izieu Web Site located in the "Related Sites" part of the page. -- J.N.
On December 19, 1997 slazar1@green.net wrote:
Reply: I know, I know. Quality graphics related to this subject are hard to find in digitized form and I'm waiting until after X-mas for the price of scanners to drop. You should also keep in mind that I get letters complaining about the site's pokiness. Graphics slow sites down. -- J.N.
On December 13, 1997 floss@babbage.jmc.com wrote:
Reply: There are not too many substantial sites about Klaus Barbie out there. Worse, I'm not sure of their URLs, but I will try to find them and put links in where appropriate. These links should be in by early January. In the meantime, use a Google search to find the FBI documents on Barbie. Those documents refute reports that Barbie was working as a U.S. intelligence agent after 1951. Before 1951 is another matter altogether. -- J.N. (reply updated 11/1/1999)
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