Nikolaus Barbie was a German officer of the SS and SD who worked in Vichy France during World War II. He became known as the "Butcher of Lyon" for having personally tortured prisoners—primarily Jews and members of the French Resistance—as the head of the Gestapo in Lyon. After the war, United States intelligence services employed him for his anti-communist efforts and aided his escape to Bolivia, where he advised the dictatorial regime on how to repress opposition through torture. In 1983, the United States apologised to France for the U.S. Counterintelligence Corps helping him escape to Bolivia, aiding Barbie's escape from an outstanding arrest warrant.
Jean Pierre Moulin was a French civil servant and resistant who succeeded in unifying the main networks of the French Resistance in World War II, a unique act in Europe. He served as the first President of the National Council of the Resistance from 27 May 1943 until his death less than two months later.
Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie is a 1988 American documentary film by Marcel Ophuls about the life of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. The film covers Barbie's relatively innocent childhood, his time with the Gestapo in Lyon, through to the forty years between the end of World War II and his eventual deportation from Bolivia to stand trial for crimes against humanity in France. The film explores a number of themes, including the nature of evil and the diffusion of responsibility in hierarchical situations.
Izieu is a commune in the Ain department in eastern France. It lies on the river Rhône, between the cities of Lyon and Chambéry.
Lucie Samuel, born Bernard and known as Lucie Aubrac, was a member of the French Resistance in World War II. A history teacher by occupation, she earned a history agrégation in 1938, a highly uncommon achievement for a woman at that time. In 1939 she married Raymond Samuel, who took the name Aubrac in the Resistance. She was active on a number of operations, including prison breakouts. Like her husband, she was a communist militant, which she remained after the war. She sat in the Provisional Consultative Assembly in Paris from 1944 to 1945.
Michel Thomas was a polyglot linguist, and decorated war veteran. He survived imprisonment in several Nazi concentration camps after serving in the Maquis of the French Resistance and worked with the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps during World War II. After the war, Thomas emigrated to the United States, where he developed a language-teaching system known as the "Michel Thomas method". In 2004 he was awarded the Silver Star by the U.S. Army.
Drancy internment camp was an assembly and detention camp for confining Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps during the German occupation of France during World War II. Originally conceived and built as a modernist urban community under the name La Cité de la Muette, it was located in Drancy, a northeastern suburb of Paris, France.
René Hardy was a member of the French Resistance during World War II. Hardy was born in Mortrée, Orne. In spite of having rendered dedicated and valuable service as a member of the resistance group, Combat, he was still suspected of being instrumental in the arrest of Jean Moulin, General Charles Delestraint and other members of the resistance. Despite later being acquitted in 2 separate trials, those suspicions never went away.
Berty Albrecht was a French feminist and French Resistance martyr of the Second World War.
Events from the year 1943 in France.
The Hôtel Mercure Lyon Centre Château Perrache, originally Hôtel Terminus, then Pullman Perrache, then Château Perrache, is a hotel of the AccorHotels group built in 1906. It is located on cours de Verdun in the 2nd arrondissement of Lyon. The hotel was the headquarters for the Gestapo in Lyon during the Second World War.
The Centre d'histoire de la résistance et de la déportation is a museum in Lyon, France.
Montluc prison is a former prison located on rue Jeanne Hachette in the 3rd arrondissement of Lyon, France. It was known for being an internment, torture and killing place by the Gestapo during the occupation of France by the Nazis.
The Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation was an independent French organization founded by Isaac Schneersohn in 1943 in the town of Grenoble, France during the Second World War to preserve the evidence of Nazi war crimes for future generations. Upon the Liberation of France, the center was moved to Paris. In 2005 it fused with the Mémorial de la Shoah.
Dora Schaul was a German woman noted particularly for her undercover work at official offices in German-occupied France during World War II. She passed on significant information to the French Resistance. Her experiences and those of numerous other German opponents of the National Socialist (Nazi) regime in Germany were described in her 1973 book Résistance – Erinnerungen deutscher Antifaschisten. She has been honored in France by the naming of a street in Brens, Tarn, and in Germany by a plaque near her long-time residence in Berlin.
Ernst Misselwitz was an SS-Hauptscharführer who became head of the unit IV E of the RSHA – Reich Security Main Office of the Gestapo in occupied Paris, France, during World War II. In 1952 he was found guilty of having tortured French Resistance fighters. According to Serge Klarsfeld, French Intelligence employed Misselwitz after the war in helping them investigate Nazi war crimes and preparing court cases against wartime French collaborators.
Alice Vansteenberghe was a physician and a member of the French Resistance in World War II. In 1944, she was captured and tortured by the so-called "Butcher of Lyon", Klaus Barbie. She later testified against him at his trial for crimes against humanity.
Resistance is a 2020 biographical drama film written and directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz, inspired by the life of Marcel Marceau. It stars Jesse Eisenberg as Marceau, with Clémence Poésy, Matthias Schweighöfer, Alicia von Rittberg, Félix Moati, Géza Röhrig, Karl Markovics, Vica Kerekes, Bella Ramsey, Ed Harris and Édgar Ramírez.
The rue Sainte-Catherine Roundup was a Nazi raid and mass arrest of Jews in Lyon's Sainte-Catherine street by the Gestapo. The raid, ordered and personally overseen by Klaus Barbie, took place on 9 February 1943 at the Fédération des sociétés juives de France, then located at the number 12 of this street. To catch as many people as possible, the Nazis not only chose the day the Federation normally gave free medical treatment and food to poor Jewish refugees, but they also set up a trap by forcing arrested Federation employees to encourage further people to come to the 12 rue Sainte Catherine.
Gilberte Louise Champion was a Postes, télégraphes et téléphones (PTT) worker and a radio operator in the French resistance during World War II for the Jade-Fitzroy network under the auspices of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). She was captured, tortured and later transported to Ravensbrück and Mauthausen concentration camps.
