THE DAY BEFORE our departure for Munich, I was invited to dinner by one of the delegates. It was all very convivial until my host explained to me that I would not be part of the next day’s delegation. The French foreign minister had asked the delegation not to damage Franco-German relations in any way and had told them the only way to achieve anything was through diplomacy.
There were forty-eight of us in Munich the next day, mostly former Resistance fighters, plus a few young activists from LICA. Mrs. Benguigui met us there. As the bus arrived at the French consulate, one of the delegates pulled me aside and whispered, “Please don’t enter the consulate. We’ve arranged it that way with the consul.”
“All I have to say,” I replied, “is that I have a French passport, I am not under anyone’s orders, and I have just as much right as you to enter the French consulate.”
The names of the twelve “official” delegates were announced, and they stood up and walked into the courthouse. I could not hold back my indignation, knowing that German journalists would be there and that they would be expecting about fifty protesters. “It would be shameful for some of us to stay here,” I told the others. “We must all go in together.” Nobody was convinced. The chosen twelve went in.
The young activists and I did manage to at least herd the others out of the bus so that they could stand in front of the door of the courthouse, but the effect of this protest was so much less than it could and should have been.
Inside the office of the prosecutor general, Dr. Manfred Ludolph, the delegates handed him a memorandum “formally requesting” that he reopen the investigation.
While this was happening, Mrs. Benguigui and I went into the courthouse and, prevented from seeing Dr. Ludolph, gave his secretary the dossier containing copies of the documents signed by Barbie and Dr. Schendel’s witness statement.
When the other delegates went back to Lyon, Mrs. Benguigui and I remained in Munich, determined to act because the situation demanded it. Two women: one Jewish, the other German. Our sole weapon: the only photograph of her three children that Mrs. Benguigui possessed, which I’d had blown up, and two signs that I’d made in our hotel room. Our plan was simple: tomorrow, we would take up position on the steps of the courthouse, and Mrs. Benguigui would go on a hunger strike while holding the photograph of her children.
The next morning at nine, in the cold and rain, we were outside the courthouse, standing on some crates that I’d found in a grocery store. I’d also bought Mrs. Benguigui some thick socks and warm slippers. Above Mrs. Benguigui, her sign, written in German, read: I WILL GO ON A HUNGER STRIKE UNTIL YOU REOPEN THE CASE FILE AGAINST KLAUS BARBIE, THE MAN WHO MURDERED MY THREE CHILDREN. My sign read: PROSECUTOR RABL REHABILITATES WAR CRIMINALS.
Our photograph was in all the German newspapers the next day, accompanied by long articles in favor of our initiative. The French consulate was alerted, and the vice-consul brought Mrs. Benguigui a blanket. The police came to tell me that my sign constituted a criminal offense. I didn’t take it down. In the end, the prosecutor general decided to negotiate with us. The police escorted us to his office.
Dr. Ludolph was a very well-dressed man in his early forties who greeted us with cordial politeness.
“What is it that you want?”
“The case against Barbie to be reopened.”
“For that, I would need conclusive proof.”
“Have you read the dossier I gave to your secretary yesterday?”
“I have not yet had time.”
“Well, you should do that now.”
When the prosecutor general read Dr. Schendel’s witness statement, he exclaimed, “This is important! If Dr. Schendel’s informer can be found and can confirm that Barbie used those words, then I promise I will reopen the case.”
“Give us that commitment in writing.”
“My secretary has already gone home for the day.”
“That’s all right—I used to be a secretary myself.”
I sat behind the typewriter as Dr. Ludolph dictated the official letter confirming his promise. I immediately communicated this letter to the German press, which published it the next day:
Dear Mrs. Benguigui,
[…] Concerning Dr. Schendel’s statement of September 8, it seems to me necessary to find the witness who reported the accused’s words—“Shot or deported—what’s the difference?”—to Dr. Schendel. If this witness can be found and he confirms that these words were spoken by Barbie, I will reopen the case, as that would prove that the accused knew that the Jewish victims were going to be killed.
For the first time since the death of her children, Mrs. Benguigui felt she had done something for them. She had proved that she could take action, better than many others, who merely gave speeches.
* * *
LUCK WAS STILL on our side. Serge found the key witness in the phone directory. His name was Raymond Geissmann, and he was a lawyer at the court of appeal who worked for both the Israeli and West German embassies, a fact that only strengthened his value as a witness. And, yes, he was the same Raymond Geissmann who, in 1943 to 1944, had been director of the UGIF’s southern zone in Lyon.
Geissmann received us in his office. Did he remember Barbie? Of course, and it was indeed to him that Barbie had spoken that terrible sentence after the summary execution of several Resistance fighters in the Gestapo’s cellars. And, yes, he had been to UGIF board meetings. He immediately dictated a statement to his secretary:
Some of my colleagues and I were summoned to the Gestapo or went there ourselves when we were trying to save such or such a person from the claws of the Sicherheitsdienst after they had been arrested.
In that way, we met either Barbie or his subordinates […]. We all shared the absolute conviction that those torturers knew exactly what happened to our fellow Jews once they were arrested. I remember seeing Barbie foam at the mouth as he expressed his hatred for the Jews, and the expression “Shot or deported—what’s the difference?” was indeed spoken by him. I heard him say it myself and I reported it to my Parisian colleagues.
On October 1, I went to Munich with Jean Pierre-Bloch, the president of LICA, and the two of us gave Dr. Ludolph the German translation of this statement. The prosecutor general immediately dictated his decision to his secretary and gave us a copy of it:
Munich, October 1, 1971
Case number 123 Js 5/71
Subject: Criminal investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office of the Landgericht of Augsburg against Klaus Barbie as an accessory to murder.
The case will be reopened on the point that he is accused of having participated in the homicide of French citizens of Jewish origin by deporting them from France toward the East.
On the point of Barbie’s repression of the Resistance, Dr. Ludolph remarked that the Lyon Resistance fighters had not yet sent him the witness statements they had promised, but that, for him, “it was time to turn the page.” In the name of the French Resistance, Jean Pierre-Bloch replied that the page would only be turned when Barbie was put on trial for the crimes he had committed in France.
Dr. Ludolph had no choice but to reopen the investigation. I tried to guess what strategy he would adopt next. Barbie’s case was highly unusual: he was one of the few criminals to have fled Germany. In helping to find him in the country where he had taken refuge, the German courts essentially handed the matter over to the French authorities, the only ones in a position to demand extradition, as the German courts were not competent to try him until the February 2, 1971, agreement was ratified. So as far as the Germans were concerned, this was a test of the French government’s determination to pursue German war criminals. If the French failed the test, then why should the Bundestag bother to ratify the agreement? And even if it did ratify it, why should the German courts demonstrate severity in punishing the country’s war criminals?
Dr. Ludolph handed us two photographs of Barbie taken in 1943, one in profile and the other face-on. He also handed us a photograph of a group of businessmen sitting around a table. One of them looked very much the way you might expect Barbie to look twenty-five years later. “This was taken in La Paz in 1968,” the prosecutor general told us. “That’s all I can tell you for now. You have proved yourself very efficient so far, so why don’t you help me identify this man?”