This document is unprecedented, of rare richness. Thirty-four years after death from the Lyon butcher Klaus Barbie, La Tribune on Sunday And other international media unveil this Sunday recordings put online by The Californian University of Stanford. The former SS officer returns to it in particular on the death of Jean Moulin, one of the most emblematic figures of the French resistance died in 1943.
” It is The biggest discovery on Klaus Barbie Since his trial in 1987, ”wants to believe the historian Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon, specialist in the Second World War, interviewed by La Tribune on Sunday.
Fourteen hours of recordings made over six days and dating from 1979, in German language but also transcribed in English, which are made public. At that time, the German journalist Gerd Heidemann pretended to be a German memorialist and questioned the former chief of the Gestapo of Lyon, who lives in exile in Bolivia. Klaus Barbie was then colonel in the Bolivian army, took the name of Klaus Altmann and undoubtedly feels untouchable.
“He said to me, You will lose the war »
Among his memories, Klaus Barbie returns in particular to the case of Jean Moulin, who died on a train taking him to Germany. “He makes no sense to say that it was I who put him in this state. I did not tortured him. He was not tortured, ”says the ex-Nazi about French. “On the contrary, I conversed at length with him. We talked about politics and other things. You could discuss politics as long as you wanted with him, he was open -minded. »»
“What I wanted is that he talks to me about London (where free France was founded by Charles de Gaulle, editor’s note), his departure, his activities, etc. He said to me, You will lose the war. Obviously… You will not succeed. (…) He did not speak. Not a word, that’s why I respect it, “said Klaus Barbie also. In this recording, the latter assures that Jean Moulin had declared to be an “artist” before admitting his true identity. “Jean Moulin wanted to become president of France. (…) He was him, the man of the situation ”.
According to the one who is nicknamed the butcher of Lyon, Jean Moulin would have killed himself. This is the version still adopted by Klaus Barbie but disputed by historians. “He missed. One of my soldiers did not pay attention. (Moulin) was attached. But I hadn’t hampered her feet. He took his momentum and threw himself against a wall “for” three hours for “. “He has partially split his skull. Did he die because of this? Yes, ”says the old SS, still according to extracts from the recordings unveiled by La Tribune on Sunday.
A flower deposit
“The oldest version was that Jean Moulin would have taken advantage of his trips to Montluc prison, leaving or returning from interrogations, to throw himself the first on the stairs,” explains the historian Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon to the franceinfo. “This version raised questions for the connoisseurs of this prison, because the stairs of this prison are not very high, they are half-palkers, so it was hard to see how materially it seems possible,” she admits.
Quite paradoxically, Klaus Barbie says he asked for a flower to be deposited on the grave of Jean Moulin. “I had an Austrian businessman friend. He spent fifteen days in Paris. He called me (from the neighborhood) Saint-Georges and said to me: Klaus, I was today on the tomb of Moulin, and in your name, I did as you asked me, I dropped a flower “He said. An act deemed plausible by Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon with franceinfoaccording to whom “Klaus Barbie had a sense of acute provocation and a very special form of humor”.
