The Center for the History of the Resistance and Deportation (CHRD) in Lyon, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, is working to update the historical images of the 1987 trial of the Nazi Klaus Barbie, "the butcher of Lyon", a challenge .
It will take more than a year of work to finalize a new version of this first trial in France for crimes against humanity, based on the highlights summarized on six DVDs, extracted from the 185 total hours of hearings kept at the INA.
Since 1993, a small CHRD auditorium plunged into darkness has offered a 45-minute documentary broadcast at the time on the program
La Marche du siècle
.
Completed with the six DVDs, these are the only images shown to the general public of the trial, where the former Gestapo official will be sentenced to life imprisonment on July 3, 1987, after having fled justice for 36 years.
Read alsoKlaus Barbie in Bolivia, the Nazi who was not hiding
A heartbreaking film, centered on the testimonies of the victims of the former SS before the Assize Court of Lyon.
Unpublished visual coverage at the time: it was the first time that a trial was filmed in France, under the Badinter law of 1985 on "the interest in the constitution of historical archives of justice".
“
We have long wanted to update these extracts, by showing more of the actors in an assize trial.
The current arrangement
puts a lot of emphasis on the victims, but we no longer really see what is at stake in the trial, which is to judge
, ”explains Isabelle Doré-Rivé, director of the CHRD, installed in the former premises of the Gestapo.
“
It's certainly not about losing the emotion!
“, she assures however, “
but to put it in context, and show that it was a “normal” assize trial, judging acts that were not
”.
"Strength of Testimony"
In this didactic project, she was able to count on help as precious as it was unexpected: that of a high-flying trainee, Guillaume Mulsant, former vice-president of the administrative tribunal, passionate about history to the point of having taken up the studies upon retirement.
In 2021, he applied to the CHRD as part of his master's degree.
“
I had no reason to be exempted from this professional integration course!
», Says this 69-year-old enarque.
His dual magistrate-historian profile immediately catches the eye.
Here he is, therefore, responsible for proposing a new editing framework, centered on six points: the course of the trial, its various actors, the notion of crime against humanity, the four charges, the words of the witnesses, the accused and the verdict.
The six DVDs will serve him as material: he dissects these twenty hours of film - “
for the 185 hours, it would be a thesis work!
» - recording in tables, time coding in support, the selected themes.
From this painstaking work, he retains 70 significant excerpts, or 66 minutes, and a differently structured editing proposal, more chronological in particular, even if extracts are common.
This is for example the case of the powerful testimony of the academician and resistance fighter André Frossard: “
An old Jew, an SS man had learned by force to say in German “The Jew is a parasite which lives on the skin of the people Aryan, and it must be rooted out”.
This sentence, he recited it even in front of the firing squad.
This is the crime against humanity.
Read alsoKlaus Barbie: the archives of the “Boucher de Lyon” trial open to the public
After this dive into the trial “
of a shameful Nazi who no longer dares to look into his past
”, Mr. Mulsant also retains a series of memorial, media, historiographical issues centered on the status of victims.
It is now up to the CHRD to finalize the imaging.
An assembly work, which should not be completed “
before 2024
” according to Ms. Doré-Rivé.
Another challenge: not to “
propose an overly legal presentation that would restrict the field of interest to the general public.
The usefulness of the current presentation is the strength of the testimony!
“Warns Alain Jakubowicz, former lawyer for civil parties to this trial.
Former deputy mayor Michel Noir
".
Inaugurated in 1992, this site retraces, particularly in the former cells where the Nazis tortured, this memory that is part of the history of Lyon.
