Roger de Weck's report on the Barbie trial for the Time He also mentioned the author of the father novel at that time. Enfant de salaud"Sorj Chalandon, the brilliant reporter of Release, despaired over the “thousand questions” that should have been asked in the Barbie trial, but mostly were not asked, and in exceptional cases were not allowed to be asked. 1 The novel now intertwines Chalandon's engagement with grand history – the Butcher of Lyon, Klaus Barbie – and with intimate family history – his own father, who died in 2014 and was already the subject of the novel in 2015. Fathers profession was. According to his own account, the author went to the trial at the suggestion of his father and together with him:
Serge Klarsfeld is not available for plaid. Il n'avait pas jeté ses Manches vers les moulures du ceiling, n'avait use d'aucun effet de voix. It is available to everyone with sadness. This is not an avocado. Lui, the game is available in a rafle, masqué par le mince rempart d'une armoire à double fond. Lui l'historien, le militant, le hunter de Nazis hanté par les children Juifs d'Izieu, n'avait fait que prononcer leurs noms. 44 noms sanctifiés, l'un après l'autre, récités dans un silence de mort. […]
« Sami Adelsheimer is available for 5 years. I'm here, Laura, ready to be transported on November 20, 1943, with new convoys ahead of you. Sami n'est pas revenu. »
— Tu as vu que les mains de Klarsfeld tremblaient lorsqu'il lisait?
Mon père a hoché la tête. Oui, it is available again.
Sorj Chalandon, Enfant de salaud
Serge Klarsfeld had not pleaded. He had not thrown his sleeves against the ceiling beams, had not used any vocal effects. He had spoken sadly. He was no longer a lawyer. He, the boy who had escaped a raid, disguised by the thin protective wall of a double-bottomed wardrobe. He, the historian, the fighter, the Nazi hunter, haunted by the Jewish children of Izieu, had only spoken their names. Forty-four sacred names, one after the other, recited in a deathly silence. […]
My father nodded. Yes, he had noticed.
In May 1987, Klaus Barbie, who as Gestapo chief of Lyon between 1942 and 1944 had ordered the murder of thousands of French resistance fighters and Jews, went on trial. Barbie was then able to live undisturbed in Bolivia until 1983. But the Klarsfeld couple pursued him, and in 2015, at the age of 80, they appeared in court. Memories, in which they summarize and evaluate their research:
Notre traque a été longue ; Elle a duré de juin 1971 à juillet 1987 : seize ans pendant lesquels, même si beaucoup d'autres actions ont été menées, il nous a fallu rester concentrés sur les moyens d'atteindre notre objectif: obliger les justices angemande et française à poursuivre Barbie, the repérer nous-mêmes, the démasquer, the exposer sur place aux Boliviens comme criminal nazi, tenter de l'enlever, the surveiller de près, aiguillonner l'opinion publique et les autorités françaises, pousser à l'expulsion, retrouver the télex d'Izieu, documenter l'instruction et plaid for the children of Izieu.
Barbie, c'était le criminal nazi type: celui qui arrêté et torturé Jean Moulin, qui a envoyé à la mort les quarante-quatre enfants juifs d'Izieu, qui fuit au plus loin pour éviter le châtiment.
Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, Memoirs, Ch. “Le criminal nazi type: Klaus Barbie”
Our hunt was long; it lasted from June 1971 to July 1987: sixteen years in which, despite many other actions, we had to concentrate on the means to achieve our goal: to force the German and French justice systems to prosecute Barbie, to track him down ourselves, to expose him, to denounce him on the spot in front of the Bolivians as a Nazi criminal, to try to kidnap him, to keep a close eye on him, to incite public opinion and the French authorities to push for his deportation, to find the Izieu telex, to document the investigations, and to advocate for the children of Izieu.
Barbie was the typical Nazi criminal: the one who arrested and tortured Jean Moulin, who sent the forty-four Jewish children of Izieu to their deaths, who fled as far as possible to escape punishment.
Annette Wieviorka has summarized how the Nazi tribunals established a relationship between literary treatment and coming to terms with the past. 2 And Walter Fekl has done this France Encyclopedia The investigations against Barbie were linked to those of Bousquet, Touvier and Papon. 3 Recently, a graphic novel was dedicated to the Klarsfelds; allegorically, the cover shows the couple with a law book, megaphone, masses of files, typewriter, and, most importantly, in the background, the victims of the henchmen, looking directly at us.
Thirty years after the Barbie trial, an exhibition was opened at the Mémorial de la Shoah, which... Rudolph Walther ua showed: “The investigators, as well as the judges and prosecutors who later presided over the trial, wanted to punish Barbie as an example for the crimes committed, but avoid any charges against French collaborators. For example, the circumstances that led to the arrest, torture, and murder of the Resistance hero Jean Moulin were to be explicitly excluded from the trial.” The curator of the exhibition, Dominique MissikaHe pointed out how problematic these findings were for the city of the trial and for the post-war Resistance myth. “It was the first trial in France against someone accused of crimes against humanity. And it was the first trial that – 43 years later – suddenly transformed Lyon, previously considered the capital of the Resistance, into the city of ‘collaboration,’ of French complicity. France was suddenly confronted with its past – for the first time since the war.”
François Azouvi argued against this thesis of the Klarsfelds and Annette Wieviorka in The Myth of the Great Silence Henry Rousso summarizes: “After the war, in his opinion, there was no silence about the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis, neither on the part of the Jews themselves (apart from the special case of the survivors, some of whom, as is well known, had spoken out), nor on the part of the French in general, nor on the part of certain circles who were more than others suspected of avoiding the question out of embarrassment, incomprehension, or guilt, especially the Catholic intellectuals. On the contrary, the uniqueness of this crime was widely recognized and very quickly identified as unprecedented in history, without any real comparison being possible with the other mass crimes committed by the Nazis.” 4
In his first novel about his father, Chalandon had already recounted the heroism and legends of his own father figure, fictionalized in short, dialogue-driven scenes that avoid pathos, through the character of his son, Émile. His father had claimed, among other things, to be a singer, soccer player, judo instructor, paratrooper, spy, pastor of an American Pentecostal church, and, until 1958, a personal advisor to General de Gaulle. Here, too, these stories were casually interwoven with acts of resistance.
In April 1942, mon père est passé professionnel. Il available vingt-deux ans. Son équipe marchait bien. It is available from Avignon 4 to 2 champions of the war. The son's name, after this, was in Metz, from the Racing Club, champion of France in 1936, winner of the Coupe de France with 24 selections and 14 buts marques in the National Team, Veinante entraînait Paris. Et voulait Choulans dans son équipe.
— Je ne joue pas en zone occupée, avait répondu mon père.
Alors Veinante a levé une main. Il avait compris.
— Qu'est-ce qu'il avait compris ? j'ai demandé.
Mon père est revenu à moi. Même gesture, main levée, sans répondre.
Sept mois plus tard, les troupes allerandes envahissaient the zone libre. Et mon père a range ses crampons.
Sorj Chalandon, Fathers profession
In April 1942, my father started working. He was twenty-two years old. His team did well. In the wartime championship, they even beat Avignon 4-2. After his time in Metz, with Racing Club, the 1936 French champions and French Cup winners, with 24 caps and 14 goals for the national team, Veinante was a coach in Paris. And he wanted Choulans on his team.
“I don’t play in the occupied zone,” my father replied.So Veinante raised a hand. He understood.
"What had he understood?" I asked.My father came back to me. The same gesture, raised hand, without answering.
Seven months later, German troops invaded the free zone. And my father put away his spikes.
Chalandon reports, however, that the discovery of a dossier about his father made him realize that his father had chosen "the wrong camp" early on:
Chalandon only finds the key to understanding his father's guilt—his father having accepted wearing five different uniforms in four years, including the German uniform in Lyon—after his father's death during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. This profound realization gave rise to his second novel about his father. Enfant de salaud. After their joint participation in the Barbie trial, a heated argument breaks out between father and son, with the father accusing the prosecutors of engaging in revenge, victor's justice, or even lynching.
It's like the presence of Klaus Barbie is available again from the force, from the morgue, from the forest. Voir le SS, observer son sourire, écouter sa tranquille assurance l'avait galvanisé. Au premier jour du procès, j'avais espéré qu'il entendrait raison. The young collaborator was 22 years old and was born in 1945. Qu'il mesure le chemin parcouru. Et qu'il me parle. Qu'il m'entraîne après l'audience pour quelques beers de vérité. Not dad, you don't go to Berlin in 1945. You don't go to battle with the back of the Charlemagne battalion. Tu étais en taule, imbécile ! Moins Français que n'importe qui. Et c'est que tu aurais pu m'avouer entre deux audiences de ce procès. Ça, que tu aurais dû me raconter. J'ai besoin de savoir qui tu es pour savoir d'où je viens. Je veux que tu me parles, tu m'entends, je l'exige ! Je n'ai plus l'âge de croire mais j'ai l'âge d'entendre et d'accepter. This vérité, tu me la dois.
Sorj Chalandon, Enfant de salaud
It was as if Klaus Barbie's presence had given him back his strength, his sullenness, his hatred. Seeing the SS man, seeing his smile, hearing his quiet confidence had shaken him up. On the first day of the trial, I had hoped he would come to his senses. That the young, 22-year-old collaborator, convicted in 1945, would face his own judges. That he would put the distance he had traveled since then into perspective. And that he would talk to me. That he would take me out for a few beers of truth after the hearing. No, Dad, you weren't in Berlin in 1945. No, you didn't fight with the last remnant of the Charlemagne Battalion. You were in prison, you idiot! You were less French than anyone else. And you could have admitted that to me between hearings in this trial. You should have told me that. I need to know who you are to know where I come from. I want you to talk to me, do you hear me? That's what I demand! I'm not old enough to believe it anymore, but I'm old enough to listen and accept it. You owe me that truth.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- Roger de Weck, “Silence in the Face of the Suffering of the Victims”, Time and patience, 3. July 1987.>>>
- Annette Wieviorka, “Observations on the Nazi Process: from Nuremberg to Klaus Barbie,” in Tribunals: literary representation and legal processing of war crimes in a global context /, ed. by Werner Gephart et al. (Frankfurt, M. : Klostermann, 2014), 29–38.>>>
- Walther Fekl: “Affairs Barbie / Bousquet / Touvier / Papon”, in Bernhard Schmidt et al. (Ed.): France Encyclopedia. 2nd edition. (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2005)), 39 ff.>>>
- “Après la guerre, il n'y a eu, selon lui, aucun silence sur l'extermination des Juifs par les Nazis, ni de la part des Juifs eux-mêmes (au-delà du cas particulier des survivants dont certains, on le savait, s'étaient exprimés), ni de la part des Français en général, ni meme de certaines franges suspectes plus que d'avoir cherché à éviter la question, par gêne, incompréhension ou sentiment de culpabilité, notamment les intellectuels catholiques Bien au contraire, on a largement perçu la singularité de ce crime, identifié très vite comme sans précédent dans l'histoire, et sans réelle comparison possible avec les other crimes de masse commis par les Nazis.” Henry Rousso, “La France at-elle eu la mémoire qui flanche?” MarianneNovember 3, 2012.>>>
