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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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the Lyon military tribunal for
participating in 4,342 murders, sending 7,91 Jews to Drancy and the Auschwitz
gas chambers, and arresting 14,311 Resistance fighters, often torturing them
abominably.
He was in charge of deportations of Jews from the Lyon
region. They were arrested on his orders and shipped to Drancy, where they were
herded into the death trains. According to Prosecutor Rabl, the Gestapo chiefs
were completely in the dark about the "Final Solution." For them it was merely
a matter of "evacuation to labor camps in the East." But a telegram dated April
6, 1944, has been found in which Barbie reports the arrest of forty-one
children between the ages of three and thirteen from the Izieu camp, and their
shipment to Drancy on April 7. In April 1944, even the public no longer
believed the explanation about labor in the East; certainly the Gestapo chiefs
in France could not have believed it. Moreover, children between the ages of
three and thirteen obviously could not have gone to the East to lend a helping
hand to the German economy. Even Prosecutor Rabl must concede that. But he
surmounts the difficulty by reasoning that is so impertinent that Jews,
Frenchmen, and Germans must all be outraged by its total lack of logic, of
justice, and of any moral values. Rabl writes:
"The mere fact that on
April 6, 1944, the defendant arrested forty-one children who were obviously not
destined for the labor camps and had them shipped to the concentration camp at
Drancy cannot be interpreted to mean that he knew the eventual destination of
those children. At least not one sure proof of this subjective interpretation
of his act can be produced."
Prosecutor Rabl has taken no thought of
the sufferings of those children or of the abomination itself. It's not his job
to have pity on their fate, or to help Germany sincerely rise above her Nazi
past. Prosecutor Rabl is only interested in what may not have entered Klaus
Barbie's mind: the so-called "subjective interpretation." In discharging the
Barbie case, Rabl has condemned those children all over again. If the French
people accept today that denial of justice, then each of the Nazi criminals
whom France sentenced in absentia will be rehabilitated in his turn, and with
them the Nazi police system.
Is there no one who will speak for those
young Frenchmen against their executioner? A spokesman with a desire to be
effective and not just to make one more of those official statements to the
press that are less and less frequently published in France now, and never
published on the other side of the Rhine? Are there so few Frenchmen who grasp
how relevant to the future of Europe it is that Germany has taken this attitude
toward her Nazi past? When can a public demonstration in Munich take place?
Will the vacation season take precedence over a time for sorrow and pity even
with those who call themselves victims of Nazi barbarism?
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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Page 227 |
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