World War II
After the National Socialist conquest and occupation of the Netherlands, Barbie was assigned to Amsterdam. In 1942, after the fall of France, he was sent to Dijon in the Occupied Zone. In November of the same year, at the age of 29, he was assigned to Lyon as the head of the local Gestapo.
He established his headquarters at the Hôtel Terminus in Lyon. Evidence suggests that he personally tortured prisoners: men, women, and children alike, by breaking extremities, using electroshock, and sexually abusing them, including with dogs, among other methods. He became known as the "Butcher of Lyon".
Historians estimate that Barbie was directly responsible for the deaths of up to 14,000 people. He arrested Jean Moulin, one of the highest-ranking members of the French Resistance and his most prominent enemy figure.
In April 1944, Barbie ordered the deportation to Auschwitz of a group of 44 Jewish children from an orphanage at Izieu. After his operations in Lyon, he rejoined the SIPO-SD of Lyon in Bruyeres-in-Vosges, where he led an anti-partisan attack in Rehaupal in September 1944.
Read more about this topic: Klaus Barbie
Famous quotes containing the words world war, world and/or war:
“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)