Wiesel, Barbie’s Lawyer Clash at Trial

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel clashed Tuesday with Klaus Barbie’s defense lawyer while testifying at the trial of the former Nazi Gestapo chief of Lyon during World War II.

The clash came when lawyer Jacques Verges asked Wiesel to comment on French atrocities in Algeria, the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by American troops in Vietnam in 1968 and the killing of 200 Palestinians by the Irgun, a Jewish extremist organization, at the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin in 1948.

Wiesel said he had protested the My Lai massacre and opposed injustice wherever he saw it, but he objected to the question relating to Israel.

“I find it regrettable that the defense attorney, defending a man accused of such crimes, dares to accuse the Jewish people,” he said.

Verges responded loudly, “Why should there be a trial of France and only France?” The audience began to murmur, but Presiding Judge Andre Cerdini demanded quiet and told Wiesel he could leave.

During his testimony, Wiesel, a death camp survivor, delivered a stirring condemnation of the sufferings inflicted on the Jews by the Nazis.

The 58-year-old Jewish writer, plucked from a Hungarian village in 1944 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp along with his parents, told a hushed courtroom:

“I believe in justice, in French justice, but for me there is far more at issue, for there is no justice possible for the dead.”

He said in French: “The killer kills twice, once to kill and the second time to erase the traces.

“We must talk, we must bear witness to what happened. This is why this trial is so important. This is why I am here. To stop the killer from killing a second time.”

Wiesel had never met Barbie or his alleged victims. He was called to testify as an expert on the Holocaust.