Original subtitles

[Music]

barbie was rightly called the butcher of

leon

somebody who had committed awful crimes

in france

klaus barbie became the leader of a gang

of torturers and killers

he thought he was untouchable

the claasvelts 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 vienna clarksville

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

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

[Music]

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 darby we have not the proof

we hope that with a demonstration

the prosecutor will 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

beato 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 out

these are just very very young children

they're sent to the transit camp at

drawsey

and from there they're dispatched to

outfits

madame bengigi never saw her boys again

[Music]

keski

barbie on april 7 1944

signed a

telex

[Music]

telling that the

children orphanage was liquidated by the

gestapo

and that

44 children were

arrested

and deported

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 other claims to have

incriminating new evidence

[Applause]

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 biata 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 garcia

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 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 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 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

clarksville's arguments

he hands viata a recent photo of a group

of businessmen in bolivia

one man looked 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 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

[Music]

the art brought the photo to the french

police

and ask is it the same man as klaus

barbie in 1943

this was a very important moment

[Music]

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 clarksvilles learn more of barbie's

dark past

south barbie 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

[Music]

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

klaus barbie is well known 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 the 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 a 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

and these photos were analyzed

and he was the same man

so we were sure that barbie and aldman

were the same

there's no doubt for us no doubt at all

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 gonna 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 issue 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

klaus 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

[Music]

the klars fell'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

she decides right

i've got a young family doesn't matter

i'm gonna 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

plough barbie

[Music]

what started out as a fight for justice

in europe has become a chase across

continents

[Music]

so she flies to lima and she arrives in

the dead of night

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

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 nobody 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

man 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 sell them klaus

eisman is slough barbie

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 biato 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

[Music]

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 uh

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 then 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

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 than 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

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

and at one moment he asked him a

question in french

[Music]

he replied you know so

was one element more to know that he is

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 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

one day after the barbie interview airs

serge clarksville 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

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 the 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 beyeta 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

in the three weeks they were there

every day they were on the front page on

every newspaper they were talking about

bieter clare's felt and mrs holland

on their last day in bolivia

biata makes her strongest stand yet

they chained 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

the police came several times and ripped

up the posters and each time the

bolivians remade them

these 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

no

[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

sarris travels to santiago chile we

wanted justice

he meets with the former revolutionary

who once fought alongside che guevara

register

decided to help us in kidnapping klaus

barbie first from bolivia by car

crossing the border to go to chile

dubray 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 we had a business in

kosher bombay

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 this plan

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 sarish 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 marissa 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 um he's made an honorary

colonel

and uh 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 police were from new

york

you saw them through the window and

realized they were journalists

after a while

klaus barbie came to the window

and

we told him we'd like to interview him

and it was a matter of seconds later

[Music]

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 madison schumacher was expecting

and they took us to the military

headquarters

but it just happened so fast before we

realized that we were in military

barracks

they basically threatened to torture us

and they were obviously very threatening

in their tone

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 in 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

[Music]

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 realised 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

bolivia is no longer a safe haven for

klaus barbie

seizing the moment sarish 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

libyan 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 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

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 always does

he'll rig her out of it or if he's

bought to trial he'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 bobby'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 hears 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

[Music]

we were at home

they called us to tell us that he is in

the play

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

[Music]

on television we saw the rival when

klaus barbie entered the place where he

had committed the crimes

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

[Music]

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 as evil hunters and

they were determined to track somebody

down who'd committed so much evil

and that's admirable

it was important to see that this object

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

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

you