Why My Father Died: A Daughter Confronts Her Family's Past at the Trial of Klaus Barbie

The daughter of a Jewish Resistance fighter murdered at the hands of Klaus Barbie examines her father's life as she witnesses the trial of his murderer years later

The author was two years old in 1944 when her father, a Jew and a French Resistance fighter, was murdered by Nazi Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon." Forty-three years later, as chief political reporter for the magazine Le Point , she was assigned to cover Barbie's trial. Performing a balancing act between the roles of detached journalist and outraged, grief-stricken victim's daughter, Kahn skillfully interweaves courtroom drama, testimonies of Holocaust survivors, an account of Barbie's sordid career path and the wrenching story of her parents' ordeal. Her mother, sent to Auschwitz, was rescued, a near-skeleton, at the war's end. This gripping document, a singular addition to Holocaust literature, speaks with calm clarity of the century's worst crimes. Kahn provides shocking detail on how U.S. intelligence bureaucrats protected Barbie after the war and how the CIA helped him escape to Bolivia in 1951.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kahn is a well-known French courtroom journalist. Her parents were in the French Resistance, and her father was a Jew. Her father was shot by the Germans while in captivity shortly before France was liber ated; her mother survived Auschwitz. Barbie was responsible for the plight of Kahn's parents, and she confronts his story, and theirs, at his 1987 trial in France for crimes against humanity. Her book interweaves the two stories, as she listens to horrible tales of inhumanity, learns of what her mother never wanted to tell her and Kahn never wanted to hear, and confronts her memories of her father, whom at the end she still doesn't know. Vivid and compelling, the book is a useful portrayal of Barbie and his crimes. Recommended for academic and public libraries.
- Pat Ensor, Indiana State Univ. Lib., Terre Haute
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.