The Nazi Gestapo chief who made Lyon a center of terror
At his 1987 Lyon trial, he denied the Izieu roundup and said: “I fought the Resistance. It was war.”
Klaus Barbie was an SS and Sicherheitsdienst officer who commanded the Gestapo in occupied Lyon, organizing systematic persecution of the French Resistance and Jews. He arrested and tortured Jean Moulin at Caluire and was responsible for deporting 44 Jewish children and their teachers from Izieu to Auschwitz. After the war, U.S. intelligence used him in anti-communist operations and helped him escape to Bolivia, where he avoided justice for decades before his 1987 Lyon trial and life sentence for crimes against humanity. His case exposes both the continuity of Nazi criminal networks and the impunity produced by Cold War anti-communism.
Career Timeline
- 1935Joined the SS and began service in the Sicherheitsdienst
- 1940–1941SD service in Amsterdam, targeting Jews and communists
- 1942Assigned to Dijon for security work in occupied France
- 1942–1944Head of the Lyon Gestapo, repressing the Resistance and deporting Jews
- 1947–1951Agent of the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps
- 1951–1983Lived in Bolivia as Klaus Altmann
- 1987Lyon trial, convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life
- 1991Died in Lyon prison