Acting
Oct 24, 1913
Bad Godesberg, Deutschland
Klaus Barbie
Acting
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Nikolaus "Klaus" Barbie (25 October 1913 – 23 September 1991) was an SS-Hauptsturmführer (rank equivalent to army captain) and Gestapo member. He was known as the "Butcher of Lyon" for having personally tortured French prisoners of the Gestapo while stationed in Lyon, France. After the war, United States intelligence services employed him for their anti-Marxist efforts, and also helped him escape to South America. The Bundesnachrichtendienst (the West German intelligence agency) recruited him, and he may have helped the CIA capture Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara in 1967. Barbie is suspected of having had a hand in the Bolivian coup d'état orchestrated by Luis García Meza Tejada in 1980. After the fall of the dictatorship, Barbie no longer had the protection of the Bolivian government, and in 1983 was extradited to France, where he was convicted of crimes against humanity. He died of cancer in prison on 23 September 1991.
Feature Films (6)
Marcel Ophuls' riveting film details the heinous legacy of the Gestapo head dubbed "The Butcher of Lyon." Responsible for over 4,000 deaths in occupied France during World War II, Barbie would escape—with U.S. help—to South America in 1951, where he lived until a global manhunt led to his 1983 arrest and subsequent trial.
Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
Reveals an alternate history of the post-war world. This is a version of history where, in contrast to what we are all told, fascist ideology prevailed. The story of Klaus Barbie, Nazi torturer, American spy, tool of repressive right-wing regimes, is symbolic of the real relationship that the "Western" governments had with fascism and makes us see the world as it is today - and the politicians that inhabit it - in a different way.
My Enemy's Enemy
A documentary on Jacques Vergès, the controversial lawyer and former Free French Forces guerrilla, exploring how Vergès assisted, from the 1960s onwards, anti-imperialist terrorist cells operating in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Participants interviewed include Algerian nationalists Yacef Saadi, Zohra Drif, Djamila Bouhired and Abderrahmane Benhamida, Khmer Rouge members Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, once far-left activists Hans-Joachim Klein and Magdalena Kopp, terrorist Carlos the Jackal, lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, neo-Nazi Ahmed Huber, Palestinian politician Bassam Abu Sharif, Lebanese politician Karim Pakradouni, political cartoonist Siné, former spy Claude Moniquet, novelist and ghostwriter Lionel Duroy, and investigative journalist Oliver Schröm.
Terror's Advocate
Florian Hartung and Dirk Pohlmann have reconstructed a previously unknown dimension of the collaboration between Nazis and the CIA in the Cold War. Drawing upon recently released documents, the film exposes for the first time a perfidious, worldwide net that reaches deep into the power structures of the Federal Republic of Germany. Lending their authority to the fact-finders’ mission are high-ranking statesmen, journalists and historians.
Nazis in the CIA
Television & Series (2)
On May 11, 1987, the trial of Klaus Barbie, former head of the Gestapo and the first Nazi officer to be tried in France for crimes against humanity, began in Lyon. Tracked down and identified by Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, he was extradited from Bolivia through intergovernmental agreements. The charges centered on three major crimes: the roundups on Rue Sainte-Catherine, the roundup of the children of Izieu, and the final deportation convoy of August 11, 1944. During 37 hearings, filmed in their entirety, the survivors’ testimonies reveal a relentless and cruel torturer. Barbie, absent on the advice of his lawyer Jacques Vergès, was sentenced on July 4, 1987, to life imprisonment. This verdict marked a key milestone in the fight against impunity for Nazi criminals. Barbie died in 1991.
The Trial of Klaus Barbie
The cocaine trade as we know it today is one of the largest and most violent criminal enterprises in the world. Based on interviews and archive material, this documentary sheds light on the incredible story of a notorious collusion: a Nazi and a narco overthrew the Bolivian government in 1980, paving the way for Pablo Escobar and today's drug cartels.