by Yehudit Shendar and Keren Katsir-Stiebel

A new display of drawings drawn by the French artist René Diaz at the trial of war criminal Klaus Barbie opened in the foyer of Yad Vashem’s main auditorium on 17 October 2006. The opening coincided with a symposium focusing on the influence of the Klaus Barbie trial on Shoah remembrance in France, with the participation of the artist, Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, who identified Barbie’s hiding place in 1983, French Cultural Counsellor in Israel Prof. Tobie T. Nathan, and the Chairman of the French Society for Yad Vashem Richard Prasquier.

Klaus Barbie was born in 1913 in Bad Godesberg, Germany. He joined the Nazi party in 1932, and in 1935 the S.S. and the S.D. When the Germans invaded southern France in 1942, Barbie was appointed head of the Gestapo in Lyon, where he commanded operations involving the arrest, torture, murder and deportation of thousands of Jews and underground fighters. Barbie’s inconceivable cruelty earned him the infamous title “the Butcher of Lyon.” After the war, Barbie worked as an agent for American counter-intelligence in Germany. In 1951, he immigrated to Bolivia and settled in the capital, La Paz, adopting a false name, Klaus Altman.

In 1952 and 1954, Barbie was tried in absentia in France, and found guilty on both counts. In 1971, Nazi hunters Beate and Serge Klarsfeld tracked him down. Unfortunately, requests for extradition were denied several times. Only in 1983 was Barbie successfully deported from Bolivia to France. He was charged with crimes against humanity, crimes for which the statute of limitations does not apply. They included responsibility for: the February 1943 raid on the General Union of French Jewry, during which 85 Jews were arrested and transported to Auschwitz; the deportation of 44 Jewish children hiding in the village of Izieu, near Lyon; and the last transport of Jews from Lyon to Auschwitz in 1944. Barbie was also accused of deporting 842 members of the French underground (the Résistance) – half of whom were Jewish – from Lyon, as well as for the torture and the murder of Jean Moulin, a prominent member of the Résistance.

On 4 July 1987, Klaus Barbie was found guilty of crimes against humanity, and sentenced to life in prison, the maximum penalty permitted under French law. In 1991, Barbie died of cancer, in prison.

The drawings on display are part of a larger collection belonging to the René Diaz, which he drew for over eight weeks at Barbie’s trial in 1987. With his unique ability to “capture the moment”, Diaz succeeded in relaying the intensity of the facial expressions, the dramatic hand movements and the deep feelings of each witness as the drama unfolded around him. The drawings were previously displayed at the Musee de la Déportation et Résistance de Lyon. After the exhibition closed, Diaz generously donated them to the collection of the Museum of Holocaust Art at Yad Vashem.

Yehudit Shendar is Senior Art Curator, Museums Division, and Keren Katsir-Stiebel is Collection Manager, Museum of Holocaust Art.

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