The Hunt For The Butcher Of Lyon | Nazi Hunters | Timeline

my name's dan snow and i want to tell you about history hit tv it's like the netflix for history hundreds of exclusive documentaries and interviews with the world's best historians we've got an exclusive offer available to fans of timeline if you go to history hit tv you can either follow the information below this video or just google history hit tv and use the code timeline you get a special introductory offer go and check it out in the meantime enjoy this video barbie was rightly called the butcher of leon somebody who had committed awful crimes in france [Music] klaus barbie became the leader of a gang of torturers and killers he thought he was untouchable the claasvelds are the most successful nazi hunters of all i know that i endanger my life i was nervous very very much you have to pay one day for the crime to commit it [Music] [Music] september 1971 [Music] german radical vietnam leads a protest on the steps of a munich court we were very angry we had to do something she is outraged by the court's decision to drop the case against nazi war criminal klaus barbie if he would die unpunished it would be a defeat of justice barbie fled europe after the war but biata and her husband serge clarksville are prepared to hunt him down to the ends of the earth we decided one day to do something for justice not for vengeance but for justice klaus barbie the former gestapo chief in lyon has the blood of thousands of french jews on his hands it was known that he was no more in germany that he was somewhere else in south america the prosecutor in munich he said you know there's no way to pursue harvey we have not the proof we hope that with the demonstration the prosecutor would change his mind biata encourages relatives of barbie's victims to join the protest madame ben gigi who was a mother of three boys who were arrested by klaus barbie [Music] and she started a hunger strike and beaten remained close to her and explained to the people what happened exactly there was a an orphanage full of jewish children in a little village called izir not too far from lyon [Music] and uh one day in 1944 uh barbie arranges for the entire orphanage to be uh cleared [Music] out these are just very very young children they are sent to the transit camp at drawsey and from there they're dispatched to outfits foreign [Music] barbie on april 7 1944 signed a telex telling that the children orphanage was liquidated by the gestapo and that 44 children were arrested and departed the case against barbie has been dropped for lack of evidence the prosecutor can't prove that barbie knew he was sending the children to their deaths but the ada claims to have incriminating new evidence and the german television arrived also and when the general prosecutor saw that he decided to have bayata and madame ben gigi to come in his office and he said mrs clarksville what do you want i said i had papers two proofs crimes klaus barbie committed she presents a report on a witness in lyon who once heard barbie say deported jews would be killed so the general prosecutor told to beat find the direct witness who heard that and i will reopen the case when vienna asks for the prosecutor's promise in writing he says no his secretary has gone home i said you know i will write your promise he had a typewriter in his office and i said please tell me what i have to write and i wrote it and then he signed and with this letter i could go back to france biata and her husband serge have dedicated their lives to hunting down nazi criminals they're an extraordinary couple serge is french and his father had been taken away by the gestapo for being jewish and died in the camps i decided that i did not survive for nothing biata was german she was a german student and she met serge literally on the metro in france in paris we met then two or three days later and then he told me that he is jewish and that his father has been deported and gassed in auschwitz [Applause] and biata's father during the war had fought with the german army and it took serge to open her eyes and and make her aware of quite how vile and repellent the nazi regime had been when i heard the story of my husband for miss was sure that i have to do something as a german with a young couple married not a lot of money arnold was born my son i said you know we cannot say nothing so we decided to act after a few months i found a witness who was an attorney the lawyer tells serge he met klaus barbie at gestapo headquarters in lyon a group of jewish prisoners were awaiting execution and that he intervened and he told to klaus barbie please i supply ask you not to kill them deport them bobby replied deported or shot it's the same thing so that was a subjective proof so this is arguments in hand i went back to munich and the prosecutor reopens the case what beyonce does is she reminds the authorities that the victims and the victims families are still there this is a current thing it's it's only 25 26 years on the prosecutor has been won over by the klarsfell's arguments he hands viata a recent photo of a group of businessmen in bolivia one man looks suspiciously like the butcher of lyon prosecutor said you know i give you this photo you go back to france and you ask survivors to compare to see this photo and to ask them if they think it's klaus barbie it's opportunity for me to assume my responsibilities and to fight as a german in order to bring the butcher of their children to justice the clarksville's hunt for klaus barbie has begun the art brought the photo to the french police and asked is it the same man as klaus barbie in 1943 this was a very important moment two photos they analyzed and they told non-officially that it is the same man always in our work we had been motivated sure but it was with more sorrow and more i would say emotion if you think about the killing of the children you know the clarksville's learn more of barbie's dark past south barbie he went to pretty religious school where he flourished and he thought that actually he might become a priest but at age 19 barbie volunteered for the nazi party he rose quickly through the ranks from the hitler youth to the gestapo holland 1941 now a lieutenant barbie helped round up the country's 140 000 jews he was rewarded with an iron cross before becoming head of the gestapo in lyon france it was a crucial city leon at that time a hotbed of a lot of french resistance activity and the gestapo in order to counter this resistance did so with the utmost brutality and in klaus barbie they had the perfect man to do it house barbie is well know he's the butcher of lyon he was known for the crimes he committed in france during the war he was essentially a butcher and he did just see people as flesh that he could beat around cut abuse inject do what he liked with [Music] biana's next move is to go public with the barbie photos beater made such a noise in germany that's a photo of claus barbie appeared in all the new german newspapers but the reaction they're hoping for doesn't come from germany it comes from halfway around the world a phone call from lima peru and the man living in lima told us that he suspected this businessman whose name was klaus altman to be in fact klaus barbie he got a picture of klaus aldman and he sent this photo and saying you know this admin certainly barbie is living here in lima [Music] and these photos were analyzed and he was the same man so we were sure that the barbie announcement were the same there's no doubt for us no doubt at all [Music] for barbie the road to peru has been long and twisty in 1944 with allied forces closing in he fled to germany desperate to evade capture by the french [Music] barbie then just you know gets rid of his uniform at the war's end and he almost became a beggar just sort of kind of tramping the roads with a load of other nerdy wells he spent two years on the run but then with the emergence of the cold war barbie's fortunes took a surprising turn after the war he was hired by the americans as an anti-communist agent they had known that he had this time in lyon which was brutal but it was very much a case of kind of not wanting to know so he became an agent in the service of the american secret service and he was working for the cia afterwards at the beginning of the cold war the americans the british the french needed men like barbie to spy on the soviets but by 1951 his value as a spy was in doubt his contacts are drying up the americans know that the information coming in is poor yet at the same time they don't want to hand him over to the french first thing class barbie is going to say i've been working for the americas that would be deeply embarrassing so the americans think what are we going to do we can't kill him we we can't give him to the french we can't just let him lead a normal life so we're going to have to help him escape they plugged in to the escape network that was working for the rest of the nazis and they sent barbie down that red line they issued barbie with a false name false papers and barbie and his family managed to escape through to genoa and then on a boat to latin america class barbie probably looked at bolivia because it was so off the beaten track not easy to get there then and so i think bolivia was seen as a place where you know you can sort of disappear in the woodwork but even in bolivia the former gestapo chief could not escape his past when he settled in la paz in 1951 he would go to the german club and he had difficulties with a few people that's when they began to discover that he had tendencies towards national socialism and a few members didn't sympathize with him now 1971 money-making schemes have brought him to lima peru the clarksville's mission is to bring the butcher of lyon to trial in europe it's not difficult to kill but we don't want to give we want a trial it was important to bring him to justice because he had to pay for his crimes in front of an ordinary court [Music] she decides right i've got a young family doesn't matter i'm going to get on the plane i'm not just gonna sit in paris and you know issue press releases [Music] i'm going to lima to ask on the spot the exhibition of plow barbie what started out as a fight for justice in europe has become a chase across continents so she flies to lima and she arrives in the dead of night so i'm alone i have no bodyguards no secretary but nevertheless she's a woman of immense energy she decides that she's going to give you know countless statements to the press it's a protection for me in the newspapers announced my arrival peruvian authorities take action but not against piata hoping to avoid an international incident they force barbie to leave the country immediately that's when the peruvian national police escorted him to the border police he fled to bolivia as he was a bolivian citizen because there was no treaty of extradition between bolivia and france he came back to bolivia now at this stage many of us would have given up and thought well the chase is over but no bearded gets on a plane as i said my place to fight is now la paz bolivia i think it was part of him that that was daring it was like catch me if you can and it was defiant [Music] my aim was to make public who is this men they are hiding i had a file about his past and i delivered to the newspapers and also to the minister of justice the chief of the police in order to tell them klaus eisemann is slough barbie and you have to extradite them but in seeking to expose a mass murderer she exposes herself to danger there was a dictator at that time in bolivia and the head of police very strong and very cruel so beater was arrested released arrested again i know that i endanger my life but i'm not so much concentrated on this biata is not detained long but it is clear barbie has friends in high places friends who've been watching his back since the first day he came to bolivia in 1951. he was protected by the bolivians because when he entered the country it was a dictatorship and no doubt they had known about his activities in germany and in france all the nasty things horrendous things he did served him well in bolivia because he knew a lot about interrogation and he's using all his gestapo experience to advise the dictatorships and how to deal with anybody who's against the regime so there were some really shady deals going on in the 60s and the 70s involving the military barbie becomes an arms dealer and he manages to do so by setting up his own little maritime business it's called trans maritima boliviana he uses it basically to launder money sell arms he was accused of trafficking arms but he was never proven at one point he is given ten thousand dollars to take some cargo by the bolivian government but he never bothers to do anything with the cargo and just pockets the money after four days in la paz piata's campaign gained some traction members of the jewish community and many bolivians were obviously very very incensed about the fact that you know bolivia was a home to a former nazi the national press began making all sorts of conjectures and it did bother him he had been discovered but the government still refuses to extradite him the bolivian government considers that barbie under the name of altman was really a bolivian citizen biata decides to continue her fight on home turf on her way to paris she has a stopover in lima where government authorities are waiting she's in this police office she says why am i here and they goes well we're worried about your safety the peruvian police informed vienna she's received death threats having made such trouble and identifying klaus barbie and he had friends in lima it was a friend of barbie was an active pro nazi they threatened and saying you know we will take vengeance on mrs clarksville i was nervous very very much she says well just give me a gun i'm perfectly happy to go around you know looking after myself i'm more afraid about not to fulfill my work then physical fear you know police protected me until my return to france [Music] she comes back home to the paris apartment and finds that serge has left it in a mess with the children so as soon as she gets back she goes straight back into the domestic role of washing their clothes cleaning and cooking so it's extraordinary to think this sort of middle class parisian housewife is also conducting this great fight for justice [Music] that fight will soon gain an unexpected ally klaus barbie's past is about to catch up with him just one week after her media blitz piata's bold tactic appears to pay off bolivian authorities are pressured into taking action against barbie he was arrested by the bolivian security the excuse government officials claim barbie has an unpaid debt of four thousand dollars now desperate to raise cash barbie takes a huge gamble he grants an interview to french tv for two thousand dollars he speaks in german i am not klaus barbie i have never tortured and i don't know about klaus barbie i hadn't been in lyon [Music] more to know that he is a klaus barbie and he knows french and he had been lyon barbie was utterly brutal he would half drown the victims from freezing baths at one point he injected some acid into somebody's lungs one of his favorite little techniques was to shoot people in such a way at the top of a flight of stairs that when he shot them in the back of their head their dead body would do a perfect somersault and he would pride himself on getting it just right i mean it was his craft if you like [Music] one day after the barbie interview heirs serge klarsfeld joins a noisy protest in front of the bolivian embassy in paris we had to fight with a great energy to the extreme end of their strengths two days later the french president calls for barbie's extradition the bolivian government told that the reply will be given by the supreme court determined to influence the court's decision biata starts planning a return trip to bolivia we had to fight with a south american dictatorship [Music] meanwhile in la paz barbie uses his interview fee to pay back part of his government debt enough to buy his freedom two weeks later biata arrives armed with a new strategy went back to bolivia who is a mother of uh three children who were arrested in his year the only surviving brother of those children is alexandra helenbrenner my mother didn't hesitate for a second she said for the love of the children i will go [Music] we had the poster saying bolivian population i'm the mother of the children deported by klaus barbie we ask you to send klaus barbie back to justice to france the government said to beta if you speak to the press we'll put you in prison doing that in a military dictatorship takes a lot of guts especially in the 70s you don't want to end up in a prison at that point in that country but she did bolivian authorities are desperate to shut her up but realizing her arrest could lead to more media attention they decide to let her go [Music] in the three weeks they were there every day they were on the front page on every newspaper they were talking about bieta clars felt and mrs holland on their last day in bolivia biata makes her strongest stand yet they chain themselves to a bench until night time we have always to take a spectacular actions because if not the newspapers wouldn't speak about it we gave them what they wanted [Music] the police came several times and ripped up the posters and each time the bolivians remade two very brave women chaining themselves to bench i mean it was a very very brave protest biata enjoys a warm welcome home but whether klaus barbie is any closer to justice league [Music] months pass barbie remains free the bolivian supreme court still hasn't ruled on france's extradition request frustrated by the delay the clars fells hatch a daring and dangerous new plan they are going to kidnap klaus barbie and smuggle him to france saris travels to santiago chile we wanted justice he meets with the former revolutionary who once fought alongside chief rivera decided to help us in kidnapping klaus barbie first from bolivia by car crossing the border to go to chile de bray tells serge he knows just the right people for the job we arrived at the border of chile and bolivia and we met gustavo sanchez salazar who is his friend from the army he told us that an attempt of kidnapping is possible between la paz and kosha bambap because barbie had a business in kosher bamba we had to pay the money to buy a car and the car was needed in order to capture klaus barbie i gave the money five thousand dollars after weeks of planning the kidnap plot is finally underway our friend who took the money and bought the car had an accident with the car and so we had to to abandon the spread it was impossible to make the attempt it is a stunning blow for the clarksvilles barbie may never be tried for his crimes despite the setbacks saris and biata never waver through the 70s they remain determined to bring klaus barbie to trial it's very very hard during 10 years to have the same strengths and the same will their life since then has just been one long very very hardly fought campaign against injustice it's a great responsibility when you start a fight which is a fight known by the media the public opinion and so on august 1981 klaus barbie has new hunters on his trail new york times photographer marisa bell schumacher and freelance reporter peter mcferrin i began investigating the links between the nazis the paramilitary the military and cocaine traffickers barbie is now living in cochabamba a city 400 kilometers southeast of la paz in recent years he's made himself a key figure in the bolivian underworld aiding the cocaine barons who now control the government klaus barbie became the leader of a gang of torturers and killers working for the military dictatorship and they're called the fiancees of death barbie issues them with orders to go and do what they like and basically murder and pillage capturing political opponents torturing them and murdering them for a group of right-wing generals in bolivia these were criminals and barbie worked with these criminals and opened doors for them he's like a pigging clover he's made an honorary colonel and he starts becoming in charge of uh suppressing resistance movements in bolivia and it's even rumored that klaus barbie played a role in the capture and assassination of che guevara marisa schumacher and i decided to go to cochabamba to track down klaus barbie i had a friend in cochabamba who was a journalist who also worked at the local phone company and he was able to identify the area that he was living in peter mcferrin began ringing the doorbell so he would come out but he didn't feel like coming out we probably were standing in front of klaus barbie or klaus altman's home for about half an hour you know knocking on the door you know hoping for him to come out from new york he saw them through the window and realized they were journalists after a while klaus barbie came to the window and um we we told him we'd like to interview him and it was a matter of seconds later that a couple vans pulled out and people came out with machine guns military police arrived detained them and confiscated their photos a complete surprise a shock for us we were obviously terrified especially because marie savelle schumacher was expecting and they took us to the military headquarters but it just happened so fast before we realized that we were in the military barracks they basically threatened to torture us and they were obviously very threatening in their tone [Music] and their big concern was how were we able to track down barbie who was our source how did we find him the worst part was the threatening to take our fingernails out and then i think they soon realized that they made a big mistake arresting two people who were working on this story for the new york times so after a few hours we were let go we got out on the first flight we could and we went back to la paz and two or three days later the new york times published a front page story about the nazis about the paramilitary about the cocaine traffickers hours later i received a series of death threats i was advised by friends and family you better get out of living very quickly and i caught the next flight out with puerto rico bobby didn't disappear from bolivia because he did not believe that he will be arrested he thought he was untouchable and he also made sure that he had relationships that allowed him to stay in bolivia the fall of 1981 brings political upheaval to bolivia a pro-democracy movement forces out the country's authoritarian regime the president who took over was left of center hernandez and it was clear that he was not going to allow barbie to continue in bolivia when times get liberal things aren't so good for someone like klaus barbie the class felt realized that it might be possible to try and get either the french or the west germans to extradite barbie the fact that democracy returned to bolivia was the beginning of his end [Music] bolivia is no longer a safe haven for klaus barbie seizing the moment saris turns to the most powerful man in france president francois mitterrand we've convinced mitterrand to support an operation to arrest bobby and to send him back to france but to pull it off they need help from the new democratic bolivian government the bolivians realize actually they've got something they can pick barbie up on he owes them ten thousand dollars for not shipping these supplies that he was meant to have shipped and he says well i'll pay you and they go we'll pay us now and he says well i don't have the money on me he says right you're under arrest klaus didn't have that kind of money he had about five thousand dollars so he gets sent to prison and he can't quite believe this has happened ten thousand dollars not a lot of money but will be very expensive for barbie i spoke to the lawyer to find some way to solve that problem but i couldn't finally i had to ask for a loan eventually the money is paid the bolivians then say well you've paid the money but you owe us the interest and he goes well we can't get the interest it's the weekend well too bad if you can't get off the money um you're going to have to be kicked out of this country bobby knows that they're out to get him now serge finds that the new bolivian regime has some familiar faces our friend salazar who had been exiled in chile came back in this new government gustavo sanchez salazar head of the ministry of security cancelled his bolivian naturalization because he lied when he arrived on his nazi pass like that he could be expelled from bolivia and he thinks it's not a problem because in some way like barbie or white does he'll wriggle out a bit or if he's bought to trial we'll be able to convince the jury that he's innocent but klaus barbie's long exile in south america is at an end officers escort a decoy from the jail while barbie is quietly taken out a side entrance he thinks he's going to germany where he assumes he'll get a sympathetic hearing he's taken to the airport there's a bolivian justice minister says to him you know what do you think of you know all the evil you've done and barbie's very non-committal [Music] so he gets on this planet the plane lands destination unknown for barbie as yet and the only voices he heard they aren't german voices they're french voices and it's at that point he realizes that the game is up for him he is in the land of his enemy now it's not actually france it's french guyana but it's french territory on the airport tarmac in cayenne guyana klaus barbie is officially charged with crimes against humanity [Music] the final leg of the journey takes barbie to leon france scene of his atrocities 40 years before we were at home they called us to tell us that he is in japan tonight klaus barbie was brought back to the french city where he earned the name the butcher of lyon under heavy guard barbie entered mont luke prison the same prison where 40 years ago the ex-gestapo chief is said to have tortured and killed on television we saw the arrival when klaus barbie entered the place where he had committed the crimes [Music] when he was deported to lyon in 1983 my mother was happy beyond belief a police motorcade takes the ex gestapo officer to the court the barbie trial is one of the key moments in french 20th century history klaus barbie faces multiple counts of crimes against humanity among the team of prosecutors is serge klarsfeld we believe that we will be convicted because he was guilty barbie once told me they are always going to want to do something but i am in the hands of destiny his attitude did not change there was absolutely no remorse for what he had done and never never never a sign of regret never a word of regret and no word of the victims you know on july 4th 1987 16 years after the clarksvilles began their hunt barbie is found guilty the former gestapo chief showed no emotion as a sentence of life imprisonment was passed i was satisfied but i wasn't filled with hatred or vengeance it was an historic judgment and that was the goal for my mother too until then never you saw somebody a group of jews bringing to justice nazi criminals by trial i see them as as evil hunters and they were determined to track somebody down who committed so much evil and that's admirable it was important to see that this abject and awful and brutal klaus barbie in front of his judges was brought to justice you have to pay one day for the crime to commit you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 690,513

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, mossad, escaped nazis, hunting nazis, nazi hunters, after ww2, nuremberg trials, nazi war crimes, german ww2, ww2 documentary, butcher of lyon, klaus barbie

Id: 3qsWDNoqhLM

Length: 41min 57sec (2517 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021