Klaus Barbie

The Butcher of Lyon

Nikolaus Klaus Barbie was born on the 25 October 1913 in Bad Godesberg a small town next to the Rhine, south of Bonn Germany. His father also called Nikolaus who was an office worker then a primary school teacher at the Noder school, where the younger Barbie was also a pupil.

Barbie’s father fought in the First World War where he was wounded at Verdun, hit by a bullet in his neck, he returned home a bitter dejected man.

In 1923 Barbie was accepted into the Friedrich – Welhelm grammar school in Trier, he was joined by his family in Trier in 1925 when his father retired and he moved with his wife to where Barbie was studying.

In 1933 Barbie’s father and younger brother died and a year later he passed his graduation exams but with no money to continue his studies he became attracted to Nazism, and he volunteered for a six month stint in a Nazi Party voluntary work camp in Schleswig- Holstein.

On the 26 September 1935 Barbie joined the SS, membership number 272, 284 and eventually joined the SD (Sicherheitsdienst – Security Service) arm of the SS.

His first attachment was in Berlin, as an assistant in department IV –D of the SD main office and within weeks he was posted to police headquarters in the Alexanderplatz to start training as an investigator and interrogator, which he was to put into brutal effect during the Second World War.

After service in the Berlin vice squad he was transferred to Dusseldorf and in 1937 after joining the Nazi Party, and graduated from the SD school at Bernau and was sent to an exclusive leadership course in Berlin Charlottenburg. For three months from September 1938 he served with the 39^th Infantry Regiment before returning to Charlottenburg for his final training and exams.

On 20 April 1940 he graduated and was promoted to SS –Untersturmfuhrer and five days later he married Regine Willms, a stocky twenty-three year old daughter of a postal worker from Osburg. Almost immediately after the wedding Barbie rejoined his SD detachment and was part of von Runstedt’s army invading the Low Countries and France.

Barbie was officially posted to Holland on the 29 May 1940, Barbie’s SD unit was under the direct command of Willy Lages, the SD commander in the Hague, and his unit was shortly afterwards transferred to the Zentralstelle in Amsterdam, the “Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration.” Barbie’s responsibilities included rounding up German émigrés, freemasons and Jews.

On the 12 February 1941, the German authorities used the death of a Dutch Nazi, Hendrik Koot killed in a fight with Dutch dockworkers, as a pretext to seal off the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam.

On 19 February 1941 an SD raid in Amsterdam entered a tavern called Koco, run by Jewish refugees from Germany, Cahn and Kohn. In the tavern, a protective device which Cahn had installed, an ammonia flash went off by accident, spaying the Germans with ammonia.

The SD raid was commanded by Klaus Barbie and after some violence everyone inside was arrested and three days later, as a reprisal for his act of “resistance” , the SS raided the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, seized 425 Jews, most of them young men.

They were assembled on the Jonas Daniel –Meyer –plein subjected them to beatings and abuse and then on 27 February 1941 deported 389 of them to Buchenwald concentration camp and after two months 361 of them were deported to Mauthausen concentration camp and certain death.

The arrests were followed by a general strike, Barbie was ordered to execute Cahn and his associates, who had been condemned to death. Barbie was put in charge of the execution squad.

Read more about Klaus Barbie here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/barbie.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org


Copyright Chris Webb and Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009