In the small village of Izieu, people still remember the day, close to 40 years ago, when German police and SS men rounded up 41 Jewish children who had been there in hiding.
One of the village inhabitants, Jeanne Collomb, used to live right next door to the war-time home for Jewish children. She still lives only a few hundred yards away from the white villa which Klaus Barbie ordered raided on April 6, 1944.
“It must have been 8:30 in the morning when I saw several cars drive up,” she recalled. “Some of the men wore civilian clothes, others wore German uniforms. Some surrounded the house, others barged in. The children were having breakfast but were kicked out before they had a chance to finish their meal. The small ones, maybe 3 or 4, did not know was happening and boarded the waiting truck with out complaining. The older children shouted out for help or burst into tears.”
Klaus Barbie, who according to documentary evidence ordered the raid and the arrest of the children, who were all deported to Auschwitz, is now in a French jail waiting for his trial on charges of “crimes against humanity.” The office of the investigating magistrate dealing with the case says none of the arrested children survived their Auschwitz ordeal.
The woman who organized the Izieu home, Esther Slatin, is still alive. She was away at the time of the Nazi raid but today, aged 80, she intends to testify at the trial of the man known as “the butcher of Lyon.”
The villa which housed the children’s home was bought by a non-Jewish couple shortly after the war. Mr. and Mrs. Georges Thibaudier did not know at the time the sinister story of the building and its flowery garden. After moving into the house and learning its sinister history they opposed a plaque recalling the April raid. Mrs. Slatin used to come every year on Remembrance Day. Now, too old to undertake the journey, she sends a bouquet of flowers.
In spite of the tragic events in which Barbie played a central role during his two years in Lyons, 1942-44, as gestapo chief, his case is rapidly turning into a French fratricidal war marked by charges and counter-charges of cowardice, collaboration or just plain indifference.
Simone Veil, a former President of the European Parliament and herself an Auschwitz death camp survivor, warned today against this development. “We should not try ourselves or even Barbie the man. The trial should concentrate on the systematic analysis of an ideology which made such things possible. “
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
