No ‘Trial of Collaborators’ Expected With Barbie Away From Court

French commentators now believe that there is almost no chance that the trial of former Gestapo lieutenant Klaus Barbie will evolve into a trial of France’s record in World War II.

If there was a chance, the commentators agree, it slipped away when Barbie refused earlier this week to attend any more sessions of his trial in Lyon. Even if he is brought back to the courtroom by force, as some lawyers demanded in vain Friday, many analysts now believe that he has nothing to reveal.

“What has become of the famous revelations, so long awaited, with which Barbie was supposed to frighten us?” asked lawyer Charles Libman after Barbie announced Wednesday that he would exercise his right under French law to remain in jail rather than listen to and reply to witnesses against him. Libman is taking part in the trial as the representative of the families of some of the Jewish victims cited in the “crimes against humanity” charged against Barbie.

Libman’s words, in a less mocking tone, have been echoed by several newspaper analysts.

In Le Monde, France’s most influential newspaper, Jean-Marc Theolleyre wrote that Barbie’s boycott of the court sessions hardly fits with what defense lawyer Jacques Verges has been saying for months, that he and Barbie would turn the case into a trial of French collaboration and treason during the war.

Many French, Theolleyre wrote, believe that Barbie intended to reveal who betrayed Jean Moulin, the leader of the French Resistance. Barbie is known as the Lyon Gestapo chief who arrested Moulin in 1943 and allegedly tortured him to death. Although that crime is not included in the charges being heard in the present trial, Barbie would have had ample opportunity to bring up the matter, since French court procedure allows a defendant to comment after the testimony of every witness.

“But without him, assuming he can be regarded as a credible witness, on what can these revelations be based?” Theolleyre asked. “ . . . Barbie has left us above all with the impression that he wanted to flee the awaiting test of replying to the accusations against him.”

Jacques Julliard, an editor of the leftist weekly news magazine Nouvel Observateur, derided all the defense claims about revelations.

“What revelations are we supposed to dread?” he wrote. “What is the mud that threatens us? That there were weaknesses and betrayals in the Resistance? That France was divided during the war between two small active minorities (Resistance fighters and collaborators) and a large majority of fence-sitters waiting to see what would happen? Big news! That there were good men and bastards in both camps? Fancy that!

” . . . No matter how many traitors, profiteers and cowards were in the Resistance, it would still be a noble cause . . . because it was the Resistance to Nazism.”

Comment of this sort represents a reversal of thinking by many French intellectuals in the four years since Barbie was expelled to France from his sanctuary in Bolivia. When Barbie was put in prison in Lyon in 1983, many French were worried.

A number of commentators insisted that France must not let Barbie, a Nazi known as “the Butcher of Lyon,” become the arbiter of who was loyal and who was traitorous in the Resistance. Some French thought the government would never let the case come to trial.

Although lawyer Verges insisted that he intended to put France itself on trial, and many foreign newspapers suspected that he would succeed, the mood in France actually became less fearful as the trial approached.

This mood was reinforced when the trial began. In the first three days, Barbie described himself as a low-ranking officer, one of 120 Gestapo agents in the Lyon area who took orders from their superiors, a loyal party man who believed that Nazism was the same as comradeship, a Nazi without any hate in his heart, a hard worker with no knowledge of what other Nazis were doing about “the Jewish question.”

This defensive self-deprecation hardly suggested that he could be a credible witness to the wartime record of the French. How, for example, could he accuse French policemen of rounding up Jews if he never concerned himself with “the Jewish question”? How, if he were only a low-ranking member of a 120-man unit, would he know who betrayed Jean Moulin?

Even if he comes back to the courtroom, few French now expect to hear anything shocking from him about themselves.