The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas

by Christopher Robbins

  French intelligence demanded the right to interrogate Barbie. After first feigning ignorance of his whereabouts, two CIC officers took him to a rendezvous with French agents. He denied that he was Klaus Barbie, and the Americans warned the French not to ask unauthorised questions, breaking off the interview after only ten minutes. A second meeting was demanded, during which the French agents formed the clear opinion that Barbie had been given immunity by the Americans. No questions regarding his whereabouts or activities were allowed, although he did admit his identity. ‘He is very important to the United States,’ the CIC officer accompanying Barbie said. ‘He does dangerous things.’

  A third unproductive meeting convinced the French that Barbie had been offered full American cover. CIC’s reaction to a statement by the French government charging him with ‘murder and massacre, systematic terrorism and execution of hostages’ was to hide him from French war crimes investigators. They decided to keep Barbie under wraps, claiming that the French security services were ‘thoroughly penetrated by Communist elements’ who wanted to ‘kidnap Barbie, reveal his CIC activities, and thus embarrass the United States’.[233]

  Barbie was moved to Augsburg, where he worked with spy networks designed to penetrate the French intelligence service, and employed agents to infiltrate right-wing Ukrainian émigré organisations inside Germany. He also used German agents to penetrate the local KPD (German Communist Party) and was paid a bonus of one hundred Deutsch Marks when he obtained a list of the Augsburg membership. However, his overall contribution to American intelligence was insignificant in comparison to his crimes.[234]

  Continued pressure from the French government persuaded CIC HQ that Barbie should be quietly dropped as an informant without being told of his altered status. He continued to be paid for writing worthless reports while CIC made plans to spirit him out of Germany along a ratline -espionage jargon for a clandestine route used to smuggle out agents. They chose the Monastery Line, run by a certain Monsignor Kruoslav Dragonovic, a high-ranking prelate in the Croatian Catholic Church. Dragonovic, known inside CIC as the ‘Good Father’, was himself a war criminal. He had been a ‘relocation’ official with the Croatian Fascist Ustachi in Yugoslavia, a regime responsible for the murder of at least four hundred thousand Serbs and Jews. The priest fled to the Vatican in 1944 and created an escape route out of Croatia for members of Ustase.

  Monsignor Dragonovic knew his business as the man in charge of the single largest and most important ratline, and the CIC used his services extensively over a number of years. In particular, CIC in Vienna used the Monastery Line to ‘establish a means of disposition of visitors’ - meaning prisoners - whose continued residence in Austria constituted a security threat as well as a source of public embarrassment to the commanding general. A deal had been struck with the monsignor, who agreed to provide false IDs, visas, safe houses and transportation to South America for a thousand dollars a head. In exchange, CIC helped certain fugitive Ustachi selected by Dragonovic to leave the US zone, even though many of them appeared on Allied lists of war crime suspects.

  Barbie was duly given his new ID - Klaus Altmann - and Dragonovic was paid his usual fee to arrange papers and passage to South America. When Barbie went to say farewell to his mother, CIC agents took elaborate security measures in case she was being watched by French agents in search of her son. Then, together with his wife, son and daughter, Barbie was driven by CIC agents from Augsburg to Salzburg and escorted by train to Genoa, where the party was met by the Good Father. The family was issued with substitute passports from the International Committee of the Red Cross and given immigration visas to Bolivia. Then, on 23 March 1951, Barbie and family sailed on an Italian liner to Buenos Aires, Argentina. CIC HQ congratulated themselves on a job well done. Those involved were commended for the ‘extremely efficient manner in which the final disposal of an extremely sensitive individual was handled. This case is considered closed.’[235]

  Klaus Barbie took up residence in Bolivia, where at first he was reduced to begging from fellow Germans and took on the appearance of a tramp. Later, he obtained a job managing a remote sawmill in a tropical mahogany forest where he attempted to indoctrinate bemused local Indian workers with ‘good Nationalist Socialist ideas’. Barbie had been working on the estate for a month when he found out the German owner, who had emigrated to Bolivia before the war, was a Jew. Untroubled by his previous convictions, he remained in the man’s employ for a further three years.

  Barbie was sentenced to death in absentia by French courts in 1952, and again in 1954, for the murder of members of the ftesistance. He was granted Bolivian nationality in 1957 and made himself useful to subsequent right-wing military regimes. He became financially solvent after founding his own sawmill and began to boast of his more acceptable wartime experiences to fellow members of the town’s racially exclusive German club. His open enthusiasm for Nazism was not even dulled when Mossad commandos from Israel kidnapped Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. And when the West German ambassador visited the German club in La Paz, Barbie responded to a toast by shouting, ‘Heil Hitler!’[236]

  The Vietnam War temporarily turned Barbie into a rich man when there was a large demand for chinin, the bark used to make quinine. In 1965 US Army intelligence remembered their embarrassing asset and moved to reactivate Barbie as an agent. The plan was scotched by the CIA after enquiries made by Senator Jacob Javits regarding America’s employment of war criminals as intelligence agents. But although the CIA, US Army and State Department all knew that Klaus Altmann was Klaus Barbie, neither body felt obliged to inform the French or German governments, both of which had outstanding legal files on him.

  No one informed US Immigration either, and in 1970 Barbie visited America on two occasions. As a partner in the state-owned Transmaritima shipping line, he had developed close connections with the Bolivian military and was suspected of transporting large quantities of arms. He was granted a diplomatic passport by Bolivia and used it to visit Germany. Barbie’s particular expertise was called upon when Hugo Banzer, a notoriously oppressive military dictator even by South American standards, took over the government in 1971. Barbie was given power to create internment camps for the regime’s political enemies where torture and execution were common. He also served in the Bolivian secret police and was involved in drug smuggling.[237]

  The public prosecutor in Munich recommended dropping the Barbie case in 1971 on the legal grounds that a German court could not prosecute cases involving Nazi crimes against France. News of this reached Serge and Beate Klarsfeld in Paris, a couple who had dedicated their lives to hunting down Nazi war criminals.

  Serge Klarsfeld had lived as a child with his family in Nice during the war, where five thousand French Jews and as many as twenty thousand Jewish refugees had taken refuge under the tolerant jurisdiction of the Italians. The Rlarsfelds themselves were refugees from Romania. The fall of Mussolini and the armistice meant the withdrawal of the Italians from occupied France, as the army demobilised and fled across the border. The Nazis entered Nice and began a ruthless manhunt during which they searched hotels and Jewish homes, and stopped trains and cars leaving the city.[238] On the night of 30 September 1943, the Gestapo raided the home of the Klarsfelds. The father had built a false space in the rear of a cupboard to hide the family in just such an event, and they squeezed into the airless refuge the moment they heard the Gestapo pound on the apartment door. To refuse to answer meant that the Germans would break the door down. The father let them in and explained that his wife and children were away in the country. The Gestapo searched the apartment and actually opened the door to the cupboard, but suspected nothing. The last that Serge Klarsfeld saw of his father was a hand appearing in the cupboard to take the front door keys from his wife. Their hands touched in the dark. The father was careful to lock the front door after him so that nothing would seem out of order. The Gestapo sent him to his death in Auschwitz.

  Beate, a German Protestant, felt a profound need t
o expiate the crimes of her country, one of which was the murder of the father of the man she loved. She was enraged that known Nazis were allowed to remain free ‘because of the apathy of governments’.[239] Her father had served in the Wehrmacht and she felt that her parents’ generation appeared indifferent to the crimes of the Nazis and had learned nothing from the great disaster that had overcome them.

  Serge and Beate Klarsfeld launched a relentless publicity campaign against Klaus Barbie that gathered increasing momentum over time. Beate organised a successful demonstration outside the court house in Munich to get the case reopened. The couple researched the assumed name that Barbie lived under and obtained photos of him. Two taken in 1943, and another in La Paz in 1968, were given to anthropometric experts - scientists who determine similarities in people by minute analysis of facial features. Once it had been established that Klaus Altmann was definitely Barbie, the next step was to persuade the French government to demand extradition. The Klarsfelds released the photos to the press to put pressure on the bureaucracy in France to make a move. As a result, journalists in South America swarmed around Barbie, who protested, ‘I am not Klaus Barbie but Klaus Altmann, a former lieutenant in the Wehrmacht. I’ve never heard of Klaus Barbie and I’ve never changed my identity.’

  Beate Klarsfeld travelled to La Paz to publicise the case, which became an international issue. Barbie was paid two thousand dollars to appear on French television, where he changed his previous story and admitted to being a member of the Waffen-SS who had served in Holland, Bussia and France. He said he had been in Lyon, but not as Klaus Barbie. He claimed not to be able to speak French, but then said fluently in the language, ‘I am not a murderer, I am not a torturer.’

  A change of government in Bolivia removed Barbie’s protection, and France finally demanded his extradition. This was problematical as there was no formal extradition agreement between the countries, besides which Barbie was not French. But Beate travelled once more to La Paz to keep the issue alive, accompanied by a woman who had lost a husband and three children as a result of Barbie. The women chained themselves to a bench outside his office.

  The Bolivians arrested Barbie on charges that he had defaulted on a contract with the state-owned mining corporation, owing ten thousand dollars. He was hustled on to a Bolivian military jet and flown to French Guiana, and transferred at dawn under tight security to a French military transport plane. He was flown directly to Lyon and taken to Monluc, the prison where he had incarcerated and tortured so many of his victims. He remained unrepentant. ‘I did my duty. I have forgotten. If they have not forgotten, that is their business.’[240]

  While Barbie sat in jail awaiting trial in Lyon, an extraordinary report of his dealings with US intelligence was delivered to the US attorney general. It was the result of a highly unusual six-month investigation triggered by Barbie’s abrupt expulsion from Bolivia. ‘As the investigation of Klaus Barbie has shown, officers of the US government were directly responsible for protecting a person wanted by the government of France on criminal charges and in arranging his escape from the law. As a direct result of that action, Klaus Barbie did not stand trial in 1950; he spent thirty-three years as a free man and a fugitive from justice.’ The US issued an unprecedented formal diplomatic apology to France.

  The original death sentences passed upon Barbie in the 1950s were no longer valid under French law because of the statute of limitation. He was now charged with eight new counts of crimes against humanity. These included the liquidation of Jews arrested at the UGIF in Lyon on the day Michel had been present; the deportation of six hundred and fifty men, women and children on the last French transport to Auschwitz; the torture and execution of scores of Lyon’s Jews; and the deportation of fifty-two Jewish children from an orphanage in the village of Izieu.

  Of all Barbie’s monstrous crimes, the murder of the orphans was the most heartless and pointless, carried out only weeks before the end of the war. Izieu, a tiny, remote village of grey stone houses and thirty inhabitants, had scarcely been affected by the war. A Jewish couple who had fled the anti-Semitism of Poland in 1939 had rented an old manor house there at the end of 1942 and converted it into an orphanage. The village initially came under the jurisdiction of the Italian zone and the orphanage was left alone throughout 1945. Most of the children had spent time in French prison camps from which their parents had been deported to their deaths. A young teacher, who came fifteen kilometres each day from the nearest town, noticed how old the children were for their years. ‘They were children who had already lived... they never talked about themselves, their families or their lives. They never said anything. They were very secretive. They were used to being distrustful. They explained nothing, they said nothing.’[241]

  The orphans had suffered horribly, but found refuge in the shabby, rambling manor house that became their new home. In summer, they swam in the rivers and walked in the mountains, and in winter enjoyed snowball fights and tobogganing. They drew pictures for their murdered parents and wrote letters to them. The children retreated into a quiet rural life despite wartime scarcity and hardship.

  The Italians left in September 1943, and when the Germans took over there was concern. A Jewish doctor from a neighbouring village was deported, but the orphanage remained untouched. Life continued its tranquil and uneventful course, although the adults lived in a state of permanent anxiety. Madame Sabin Slatin, co-founder of the orphanage with her husband Miron, left for a few days to search for safer premises, and while she was away a dozen German soldiers arrived from Lyon. They drove up in two trucks, followed by Gestapo officers and Milice in an open convertible, and pulled into the courtyard of the manor house. The children were dragged from a breakfast of hot chocolate and bread.

  A local farmhand witnessed what happened next: ‘The Germans were loading the children into the trucks brutally, as if they were sacks of potatoes. Most of them were frightened and crying. The little ones who didn’t know what was going to happen were frightened by all the violence. But the older ones knew well where they were going. I knew it was finished for them.’ The children called out to the farmer, and he walked towards them, but a soldier blocked his way and slammed him in the ribs with the stock of a rifle. One of the older boys tried to jump from the back of a truck but was grabbed, beaten and kicked. ‘A German came up to me,’ the farmer said. ‘I’m sure it was Barbie. It’s simply a face one does not forget. For a moment he looked at me, spoke to another German, then said, “Get out!” I left, walking backwards.’[242]

  The children and the adult staff from the orphanage were driven to Montluc prison. That night a telex was sent to SD HQ in Paris: ‘This morning, the Jewish children’s home Colonie d’Enfants in Izieu (Ain) was closed. Forty-one children in all, aged three to thirteen, were pulled from the nest. In addition, the arrest took place of all the Jewish personnel, that is to say ten persons, including five women. We were not able to find any money or other valuables.’ The telex was signed ‘Klaus Barbie’.[243]

  The following day the children were put on a passenger train to Drancy. They were under guard and the older boys were manacled. Miron Slatin and two of the most senior boys were shot at the French fortress Revel. Less than a week later thirty-four of the forty-four children were deported to Auschwitz, along with three hundred other children, on a train carrying a total of fifteen hundred Jews. The journey took two days, and when they arrived they were lined up hand-in-hand on the ramp of the concentration camp in rows of five. The children were all gassed later the same day.

  It took four years of legal wrangling after Michel’s first confrontation with Barbie before the actual trial finally got under way. It was not until 11 May 1987 that the defendant stepped into the Lyon courtroom to face his accusers. Michel approached his own day in court with feelings both of fore-boding and high expectation. He dreaded the emotion and memories that Barbie would inevitably stir, but nurtured the simple hope that the trial would force France to face a dark side of its rec
ent history. Even though Vichy was not in the dock, Michel believed that the shameful story of collaboration and betrayal could not fail to be exposed.

  The actual experience in court, and the trial itself, were to prove a bitter disappointment. Michel arrived to find an empty chair instead of the defendant. ‘It was a terrible anticlimax for me. I had prepared myself both intellectually and emotionally for the confrontation with Barbie. But the whole trial was conducted with Barbie absent, which was his right under French law. He remained in his comfortable double cell.’

  At first, the absence of the man himself confused and threw Michel. Then, as its significance sank in, he became enraged. ‘Where is the defendant?’ he cried out angrily. ‘I expected to confront him! But what I see is an empty chair behind bullet-proof glass. Empty! While the defendant Barbie is comfortable in his two-room apartment next door. To me this is unacceptable!’

  Michel then gave a detailed account of the visit in February 1943 to the UGIF offices in Lyon and his subsequent encounter with Barbie. The single exchange Michel had with Barbie’s defence lawyer, Jacques Vergès, was when the attorney asked for the names of people arrested in the office. Michel explained that the only people he recognised were café acquaintances, and even if he had once known their names he could not remember them after almost fifty years.

  ‘I believed Michel’s evidence absolutely,’ Serge Klarsfeld, who was one of the prosecuting attorneys, said. ‘I knew it was true, and the police knew it was true, because when at the very beginning Michel came to us in Paris he gave us accurate details about the raid on UGIF. He could not have known them unless he was there on that day. But I feared a catastrophe when he gave his testimony in court before a jury, and there was a catastrophe. The jury wanted to see a meek, modest man with sad stories about treatment by Barbie - they wanted a victim. They did not want somebody who was aggressive and defiant and who challenged the procedure of the court. It was not a truth some of them were prepared to believe. There were some witnesses for the prosecution who were lying. But they were old, or crying, or seemed broken, so they were believed. It is a great lesson about the truth people are prepared to believe.’