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The Holocaust History Project.
The Holocaust History Project.

WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
 
 
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Dr. Dugoujon, who was arrested at the same time as Jean Moulin, angrily declared: "I have prayed to Heaven to give me the grace never to sit in judgment, but if I were a judge or a member of a jury, I would sentence Klaus Barbie to death."

Alban Vistel, who had fought for the Liberation, said: "We who fought as volunteers in the Resistance firmly believe there should be no time limit on the trials for war crimes."

Also on July 29, I telephoned both Marcel Rivière, a former member of the Resistance and the top reporter on Progrès, and the Lyon radio-television station to say that I would be in Lyon in three days. I could already count on the principal newspaper and the television news program of the area to persuade the local people not only to protest but also to fight.

On Sunday evening, August 1, I arrived. I stayed with the parents of Serge Hajdenberg, who had been with us at the Essen protest. On Monday I made a strong bid to the radio-television people, the Progrès people, the former Resistance people in Lyon, and Dr. Dugoujon to convince them to organize a group to go to Munich.

Progrès headlined Marcel Rivière's editorial: "The Klaus Barbie Case Must Be Reopened, Says B.K." It went on to say:
Citizens of Lyon, you cannot accept the Munich prosecutor's decision to suspend the prosecution of Klaus Barbie, the former Gestapo chief who caused so much blood and so many tears to flow in your city and your district. A German woman speaks to you….

Her proposal, emotional yet strongly supported by incontrovertible documentary evidence, produced a singularly overwhelming response in Dr. Dugoujon's Caluire villa, where we met her, for it was this house that Klaus Barbie's men brutally raided on June 21, 1943, and, after savagely clubbing them, arrested several members of Jean Moulin 's Resistance headquarters.

The papers B.K. has given us speak for themselves. They are photocopies of orders that Klaus Barbie signed or countersigned for the arrest and deportation of hundreds of Jews who had been rounded up in Lyon and its environs, notably in Haute-Savoie. Still other documents deal with arbitrary arrests, tortures, massacres, shootings, and summary executions . . . . But more than these are needed to convince the Munich prosecutor!

Agence France Presse gave my campaign nationwide exposure. I also contributed a full page to Combat, in which I said:
Barbie, the chief of the Lyon Gestapo, was born on October 25, 1913, and sentenced to death in absentia on November 22, 1954, by
     
   
 
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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