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Bibliography: Baer, Studien, 146; Baer, Urkunden, 1 pt. 1
(1929), index; Baer, Spain, 1 (1961), 55, 142, 426; Neuman, Spain, 1
(1942), index; del Arco, in: Sefarad, 7 (1947), 273, 280–1, 329; Rius,
ibid., 12 (1952), 339–40, 348–9; Cabezudo, ibid., 23 (1963), 265–84.
Add. Bibliography: E. Martín Padilla, in: Homenaje a Don José
María Lacarra de Miguel, 4 (1977), 213–33.
[Haim Beinart / Yom Tov Assis (2nd ed.)]
BARBIE, NIKOLAUS (“Klaus”), TRIAL OF, trial in Lyons,
France, of SS Hauptsturmfuehrer (captain) Klaus Barbie (b.
1913). Known as “the Butcher of Lyons” for his wartime activities
in France, Barbie joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and in
1935 became the personal adjutant to the head of the local Nazi
Party office in Trier. In late September 1935 he also joined the
SS, working in the SD (Security Service) main office and then
as a specialist in the Duesseldorf region. On April 20, 1940,
he was made an SS second lieutenant (Untersturmfuehrer).
On May 29, 1940, shortly after the fall of the Netherlands.
Barbie was assigned to the “culture” section of the SD in Amsterdam.
His job was to monitor anti-Nazi tendencies in the
fields of science, education, religion, sport, entertainment,
and propaganda. In November of that year he was promoted
to SS first lieutenant (Obersturmfuehrer); exactly two years
later he would reach the rank of Hauptsturmfuehrer. During
the disturbances in Amsterdam in February 1941, Barbie had
acid thrown into his face by the Jewish owners of the Koko
ice cream parlor. In reprisal over four hundred young Jewish
men were arrested and sent to Mauthausen, where most
of them perished.
Barbie was made the head of the Gestapo (KdS) in Lyons
in November 1942 and remained in that post for nearly two
years. To foil the Resistance, Barbie ordered that raids be conducted
against arbitrary targets as well as places suspected of
underground activity. His work was characterized by a combination
of guile and cruelty. He was apparently responsible
for the arrest of René Hardy, a resistance leader. Twice tried
after the war, Hardy was found innocent of charges that he
had divulged the names of French underground leaders to
Barbie. Nevertheless, shortly after Hardy was interrogated,
Barbie arrested Jean Moulin, Charles de Gaulle’s representative
in southern France. Moulin had unified the major undergrounds
and resistance movements under the National Resistance
Council, which was founded on May 27, 1943. During the
course of Barbie’s interrogation, Moulin was brutally tortured,
but apparently gave away nothing before he died. Barbie was
involved in the deportation of at least 842 other people from
Lyons and its environs. Half of them belonged to the Resistance,
and half of them were Jews. He also personally shot a
number of persons and was responsible for the death of others
from the villages of St. Rambert-en-Bugey, Evosges, Nivollet-
Montgriffen, the Montluc prison in Lyons, and other places.
Perhaps his most ignominious act was the seizure and
deportation of 41 children and five women who were found
hiding in Izieu, a village about 44 miles (70 km.) east of Lyons
on April 6, 1944. They were sent to Auschwitz on August 11,
barby, meir ben saul
1944. Barbie also was responsible for the deportation of 85 Jews
taken in a raid on the headquarters of the Union Générale des
Israélites de France (UGIF), on February 9, 1943, in Lyons.
In the spring of 1947, Barbie began working for the Counter
Intelligence Corps of the U.S. Army in Germany. He became
such a valuable informant that his superiors protected
him from French attempts to extradite him and helped him
escape to Bolivia. Arriving in Bolivia in 1951, he assumed the
alias Klaus Altmann, eventually becoming an important advisor
to several Bolivian governments. Barbie was tried in
absentia in France in 1952 and in 1954. In the first trial he was
charged with atrocities committed in the Jura region against
the civilian population and the underground. In the second
trial he was charged with committing a massacre at St. Genis-
Laval and numerous shootings at the Montluc prison in Lyons.
Both trials led to his conviction and sentences of death. In 1971
Barbie was found in La Paz, Bolivia, by Beate and Serge *Klarsfeld,
French hunters of Nazis. It was not until 1983, however,
following repeated appeals by the French, that he was expelled
from Bolivia and brought to France for trial.
Barbie was charged with the raid on the UGIF office and
the deportation of the Jews from Izieu, two acts for which he
had not been previously tried. Coming under the rubric of
“crimes against humanity,” these acts were not subject to the
statute of limitation in France. The main proceedings against
Barbie took place between May 11 and July 4, 1987. The trial
aroused a great deal of interest in France and the rest of the
world. Many Frenchmen had mixed feelings about the trial or
opposed it. Some Jews thought it might arouse antisemitism
or become a forum for the denial of the Holocaust. Extreme
right-wingers actually advanced the claim that Barbie’s behavior
was no worse than that of the Allies, who had bombed
German cities and caused the death of civilians. Some feared it
would raise the question again of events surrounding the death
of Jean Moulin and of French collaboration with the Nazis.
Barbie himself, after making an early appearance in the
courtroom, refused to be present for most of the trial. He was
found guilty on July 4, 1987, and given the maximum penalty
under French law, life imprisonment. He died in 1991.
Bibliography: T. Bower, Klaus Barbie, “Butcher of Lyons”
(1984); A.J. Ryan, Jr. (ed.), Klaus Barbie and the United States Government
(1984).
[Robert Rozette]
BARBY, MEIR BEN SAUL (1729?–1789), rabbi of Pressburg.
Barby took his name from his birthplace, Barby, a small town
near Halberstadt. He studied under Ẓevi Hirsch b. Naphtali
Herz Bialeh (Ḥarif) of Halberstadt and Jacob Poppers, rabbi
of Frankfurt. On his return from Frankfurt, he was appointed
dayyan of Halberstadt, was rabbi of Halle for a year, and was
then appointed rabbi of Pressburg in 1763. In Pressburg he
established a large yeshivah. Barby issued many community
takkanot, some of them designed to prevent laxity in Jewish
life – such as frequenting the theater and card playing. A vehement
opponent of the *Shabbateans, he excommunicated one
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