The Klaus Barbie Trial: Traces and Temporalities

How does an historical event achieve closure?¹ At what point can it be considered part of a past that was but no longer is? If such closure could be achieved, in what form would the temporal continuum of the event's occurrence be given to perception, making it graspable in its entirety? What are the conditions of its living presence? For the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, traces are determining factors insofar as they function as placeholders, "which German expresses well by distinguishing between Vertretung and Vorstellung":

Vorstellung is the relationship through which a representative takes the place of that which it represents in the latter's absence. Such is the case of the trace. Insofar as the past leaves a trace behind, the trace fulfills a vicarious [vicaire] function with regard to the past. It stands in its place; it has the function of standing for-taking the place of. This function characterizes the indirect reference specific to knowledge derived through traces and distinguishes history's referential mode in relation to the past from all other referential modes.²

Before it was historical, the main reference to Klaus Barbie's presence in postwar France was juridical. As of 1944 Barbie's name appeared among German and French war criminals in the secret directory compiled in Algiers by Colonel Paillole's special services and then later on the list of the U.N. War Crimes Commission.³ In 1945 he was cited in the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects as being "sought by France for the murder of civilians and the torture of military personnel." The French authorities subsequently accused him of war crimes and issued a warrant for his arrest. One of the crimes for which he was especially pursued took place in the Jura and Rhône departments, but it was only in 1952 that he was finally tried, in absentia, by a military tribunal in Lyon. He was sentenced to death. Barbie had left France for Germany, where he worked for the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps from 1947 to 1951, and then he emigrated to Bolivia, where he lived under an assumed name.

His death sentence came at a time when the wave of domestic legal proceedings against former Vichy officials was drawing to a close. The significance of the proceedings as well as the reasons for their termination have been discussed in detail by the historian Henry Rousso.⁴ The two amnesty laws passed in 1953 effectively marked the end of legal action against the Vichy regime. The laws did not, however, directly affect prosecution of those who had carried out criminal Nazi policies; indeed, the end of legal proceedings proved only temporary as the specter of Vichy would return again and again to haunt collective memory.

For the most salient characteristic of the "Vichy syndrome" in French society was its longevity and its recurrent juridical form. Thanks in no small part to the tenacious efforts of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, Barbie was located in Bolivia and finally extradited to France, where he was brought to trial in 1987. As prosecution for war crimes was no longer allowed as of 1964, he was charged with crimes against humanity. In 1983, the prosecutor in Lyon at first announced that only those crimes relating to "the arrest, torture, and deportation of civilians, especially Jews," would be considered in the indictment. However, in response to the anger and concerted pressure coming from associations of former Resistance members, which acted as civil plaintiffs [partie civile] in the case, the prosecution, relying on a questionable reinterpretation of the legal definition of crimes against humanity, ended up including wartime crimes committed against the Resistance among the charges against the defendant. Since Barbie had been labeled "the butcher of Lyon," the memory of his crimes would indeed have to be accounted for in the proceedings against him as would their impact on French society. Given a life sentence, Barbie died in prison in 1991.

Legal action and memory work converged, and yet the temporality of the Barbie trial is more complex than the simple chronology of...