English source-aligned edition
Klaus Barbie
Klaus Barbie served as head of a Gestapo section in Lyon, responsible for repression, interrogations and deportations. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in France through documented office, decisions, supervision or operational conduct. It does not assign every crime committed by an institution or region to one individual.
Confirmed findings
- From November 1942 Barbie headed a Gestapo section in Lyon; the USHMM links him to personally interrogating and torturing prisoners, including Jean Moulin.
- On 6 April 1944 German officers arrested forty-four Jewish children and seven carers at the children's home in Izieu. The Mémorial de la Shoah identifies the surviving Barbie telegram as documentation of his order and report on the operation.
- After being extradited from Bolivia to France in 1983, Barbie stood trial in Lyon. In 1987 he was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment.
- He died of cancer in 1991 while serving his sentence in France.
Place in the chain of responsibility
Barbie's profile shows local Sipo and SD command as a link between interrogation and torture, a police operation against children and deportation. His own telegram concerning Izieu and the French trial make it possible to move from a familiar epithet to specific acts and their late legal classification.
Key events and mechanisms
- taking charge of the Gestapo section in Lyon in November 1942
- the arrest of children and carers in Izieu on 6 April 1944
- extradition from Bolivia to France in 1983
- the life sentence in Lyon in 1987
The circle records authority, function and agency. Several profiles may describe different parts of the same persecution chain, so profile-level totals must not be added together.
Postwar accountability
After the war Barbie used the name Klaus Altmann, among others, and lived in Bolivia. Following years of disputes, he was extradited to France in 1983. The trial ended in 1987 with a life sentence for crimes against humanity; he died in prison in 1991.
Limits of the evidence
The 1987 judgment concerned crimes against humanity within the French proceedings, not automatically every offence committed by the security apparatus in Lyon. The surviving telegram individualises the Izieu operation, but does not justify assigning Barbie the personal execution of every act during the arrest and transport. The profile does not uncritically repeat every postwar claim about his activities.
Sources
The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.