On the night of 4 February 1983, Klaus Barbie was sitting on the cold metal floor of a transport aircraft. Kidnapped in Bolivia, the former head of the Gestapo in Lyon was being flown back to French territory, to be charged with crimes against humanity. As the hours passed, Barbie answered some of the questions put to him by a journalist. Much of his talk was a sulky protest about the illegality of his seizure. But he also meditated:

Death is cruel, and that is how it has been in the history of the world, beginning with Cain who murdered Abel . . . The first part of my life was my youth, the second the war, the third Bolivia. The balance is that I have suffered a lot . . . Whoever wins the war was right. If you know history, you know the words vae victis - woe to the conquered - from the Romans. Who wins the war, wins everything; who loses, loses everything.

LRB 30 April 2009 | PDF Download