Lyon
September 20, 1992
Five years had passed since the highly publicized trial of Klaus Barbie, known by many as “the Butcher of Lyon,” and France wanted to forget it. The world was changing quickly. The iron curtain had come down three years prior, and the aged prison where the Nazi official had lived out his sentence was now free of its nuisance. With Barbie’s death the year before, many former collaborators breathed freely. The past could go back to where it belonged—oblivion.
Valérie headed for Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University. The monumental façade was darkened by soot. Despite bearing the name of a World War II French Resistance hero, everyone knew that the School of Law was a bastion of the extreme Right and anti-Semitism. Valérie planned to direct her research toward the deportation of Jews from Lyon. She vividly recalled the televised sessions of Barbie’s trial and itched to do something to recover the history of Jews expelled from Lyon to Germany.
She had an appointment with Jean-Dominique Durand, professor of contemporary history and a dedicated defender of preserving the historical memory of French Jews.
Valérie greeted the professor and took a seat at a table in the school’s cafeteria.
“Thank you so much for meeting me, Professor. I’m very interested in studying French Jews, but I can’t find anyone to advise me for my thesis.”
Jean-Dominique glanced around to see who might be listening. The extreme Right was on the rise, and the law school had become a hive for Fascists. “I’ll help you in any way I can,” he said.
“So, where should I start?” Valérie asked with a shrug and a smile. She had a beautiful face and dark, energetic eyes. Her slender frame was engulfed in baggy clothes.
“It’s a broad subject. You’ve got to narrow it down a bit.”
Valérie’s gaze wandered off as she thought. At first she had wanted to study Klaus Barbie and his role in the deportation of Jews from Lyon, but now, after several weeks of reading about the subject, she was more drawn to researching the suffering of Jewish children due to the deportations.
“The children . . .” she mused.
Durand’s forehead creased, trying to follow her train of thought. “Which children?”
“The Jewish children. They’re what really interests me. I cannot understand how a regime decides to exterminate innocent children.”
It was the professor’s turn to shrug. “Barbarism is the most primitive state of human beings. Hegel and other philosophers believed that humanity was headed for an era of goodwill and that progress was unstoppable. Marx and Darwin got on board with that positive view of progress, but after two world wars and several pandemics and economic crises, we can no longer say today that humanity is decisively marching toward progress. The narrative that spread through the Enlightenment isn’t sustainable, and Nazism and Soviet Communism are the best proof of that.”
Valérie nodded and said, “What do you think about studying what happened with the children of Lyon?”
“I’d recommend you start with Le Centre de Documentation sur la Déportation des Enfants juifs de Lyon. It’s an archive of documentation all about Jewish children and youth deported from Lyon. It was begun in 1987 during Barbie’s trial, to collect all existing data pertaining to child deportees from 1942 through 1944.”
Valérie jotted down the details. It was not much to start with, but she would surely find more to go on at the center. She sensed that the road ahead would not be easy. Too many people wanted to forget this most ignominious era of French history, but she was determined to make serious sacrifices to keep the memory of those children from dying out.