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

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Despite Mogens enjoying watching every postman suffering in Smeerensburg, he seems a bit concerned about Jesper's depression towards leaving the town and indirectly inspires his father to talk to him. Soup Is Medicine: When the Krum father hurt his leg, the kids carry him home and treat him with soup. Dr Reifmann said he saw three men in civilian clothes during the raid. Confronted with Barbie, he said the resemblance between one of the three and the defendant was “striking.” Feuding Families: This is the main reason Smeerensburg is the way it is. The Krums and the Ellingboes have hated each other for millennia and fighting one another, every single day, has integrated into the town's culture.

As the investigation of Klaus Barbie has shown, officers of the United States government were directly responsible for protecting a person wanted by the government of France on criminal charges and in arranging his escape from the law. As a direct result of that action, Klaus Barbie did not stand trial in France in 1950; he spent 33 years as a free man and a fugitive from justice.

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Nikolaus Barbie (25 October 1913 – 25 September 1991) was a German officer of the SS and SD who worked in Vichy France during World War II. He became known as the " Butcher of Lyon" for having personally tortured prisoners—primarily Jews and members of the French Resistance—as the head of the Gestapo in Lyon. After the war, United States intelligence services employed him for his anti-communist efforts and aided his escape to Bolivia, where he advised the dictatorial regime on how to repress opposition through torture. In 1983, the United States apologised to France for the U.S. Counterintelligence Corps helping him escape to Bolivia, [2] aiding Barbie's escape from an outstanding arrest warrant. [3] If you listen carefully, during Jesper and Klaus's first ride using reindeer to pull the wagon, you can hear the latter almost slip into his traditional "ho ho ho" laugh.

Signs of Disrepair: As Mogens is showing Jesper his post office, the "S" from the POST sign up front falls off. But it was the testimony of the witnesses, all the more incredible because nearly all of them were delivered without a trace of hate or anger in their voices, that made impressions that last to this day. Eventually, Jesper and Klaus begin running out of toys. With Jesper's deadline approaching, he tries persuading Klaus to make more toys in time for Christmas. Klaus initially refuses, but then works with Jesper to build a sled for Márgu, a small (and adorable) girl living in an isolated settlement with her people. Klaus tells Jesper about his wife Lydia and explains he had made the toys to give to the children the couple hoped to have but could not conceive, and Lydia died from an illness. Realizing their work is spreading joy to the children, Klaus agrees to the Christmas plan with Márgu and the rest of her people arriving to help. As the town and his relationship with Alva flourish, Jesper finds himself wanting to stay in Smeerensburg.Zlatin’s accidental survival in April 1944 meant that, decades later, she could give damning testimony against a remorseless Barbie during his trial. In the proceedings, she recalled the lives of the children’s home—and its liquidation. What she said was unforgettable for those in attendance in Lyon. Never Learned to Read: Thanks to the Feuding Families refusing to let their children go to school due to a dislike of of their children "mingling" together in the same place, most of the children from both families are illiterate. Jesper eventually has to redirect them to Alva to teach them how to read and write, which in turn allows him to collect more letters. Additional adult voices provided by Brad Abrell, Catherine Cavadini, Bill Chott, Daniel Crook, Brian Finney, Stephen Hughes, Neil Kaplan, Sam McMurray, Amanda Philipson, Alyson Reed, Dee Dee Rescher, Dwight Schultz, Lloyd Sherr, Helen Slayton-Hughes, and Travis Willingham.

By the time the French government requested extradition of Barbie from American officials in 1949, it was public knowledge that Barbie was living freely in the American zone under a false identity. As the French demands for extradition escalated, the CIC decided it was too risky to continue using Barbie as an informant. However, the CIC was not willing to hand Barbie to the French, fearing that Barbie knew too much about CIC intelligence operations. In 1951, the CIC helped Barbie escape to South America with his family via the American “Rat Line” that smuggled escaped Nazis and other Axis fugitives out of postwar Europe. Life and Recognition in South America She realized what had happened to her boys one day at the Auschwitz infirmary. On that day, she saw the son of one of the German doctors wearing a sweater that she had knitted for one of her boys. As part of her testimony, she read a letter that one of her sons had written to her just before being deported. The " Great Mooning of '86" that Mr. Ellingboe speaks of ended up being displayed as a woodwork artifact. Klaus Barbie, who was raised in a town outside Bonn, served earlier in his career as an SS officer in The Hague and Amsterdam, where Dutch investigators believe he helped deport 300 Jews to the Mauthausen concentration camp. He was transferred in 1942 to Lyon, the major Resistance center in France's "unoccupied zone."

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Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Once Mrs. Krum and Mr. Ellingboe out Jesper and his selfish intentions before his friends, Alva is furious and sees his kindness as one big lie. And Klaus? He coldly cuts ties with Jesper and literally slams the door in his face. This forces Jesper to realize what he had just lost, and prompts him to later make up for it. Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Klaus's late wife Lydia remains as a mystical presence around their home as the magical wind that sometimes guides Klaus to where he needs to go. Klaus himself is implied to have gone the same way at the end and, in the process, become the magical figure of Santa Claus to continue the tradition of Christmas Eve gift deliveries he and Jesper started. The editor of Le Monde newspaper, Andre Fontaine, said: "It's a time in France where people are more and more conscious of the necessity of knowing something about history and especially about recent history." Visuals, 3D Effects: While the majority of the movie is hand-drawn on tablet with computer-aided lighting and texturing, certain objects and characters like Jesper's wagon and some of the reindeer are 3D models, lit the same way as the 2D characters to blend in seamlessly. Klaus Barbie, 77, the former Gestapo official who evaded justice for four decades before being condemned to life in prison four years ago for crimes against humanity, has died of cancer in a prison hospital in Lyon, French officials announced yesterday. The announcement did not give the date of his death.