Barbie, Klaus (1913–1991)

German Nazi, a member of the SS paramilitary organization from 1936. During World War II he was involved in the deportation of Jews from the occupied Netherlands from 1940 to 1942 and in tracking down Jews and Resistance workers in France from 1942 to 1945. He was arrested in 1983 and convicted of crimes against humanity in France in 1987.

His work as an SS commander, based in Lyon, included the rounding-up of Jewish children from an orphanage at Izieu and the torture of the Resistance leader Jean Moulin. His ruthlessness during this time earned him the epithet the ‘Butcher of Lyon’. Having escaped capture in 1945, Barbie was employed by the US intelligence services in Germany before moving to Bolivia in 1951. Expelled from there in 1983, he was returned to France, where he was tried by a court in Lyon. He died in prison.