Simone Lagrange was imprisoned by Klaus Barbie before her 13th birthday. She was Jewish, and her parents had been involved in Resistance work. They were turned in by a neighbour and taken to Gestapo Headquarters in Lyon. In the video- an extract of Simone's confession at the trial of Klaus Barbie- she describes the mental and physical torture he inflicted on her during her imprisonment.
Barbie then deported Simone and her mother to Auschwitz in 1944. She hadn't seen her father since their initial imprisonment at this point. On 19th January 1945, Simone was being led in a march to Ravensbruck, another concentration camp in Germany. On this day, she saw her father within a group of men on a similar march. She describes this experience:
"An S.S. officer approached me and smiled. "Who is that?", he asked me, "is that your father?"
I was happy, broken with emotion, and in one breath I said "yes", because it was my dad.
"Do you want to hug him?" he asked.
I couldn't speak, I replied with a nod of my head. Smiling again, the officer motioned for my father to approach, while at the same time pushing me in his direction. Of course, I ran. My dad, meanwhile, held out his arms. That is when the S.S. officer, who had followed me up to him, made my father drop to his knees and shot him in the head. He did that here, right in front of my eyes! How can I describe my horror, my fear? My dear father was assassinated, coldly, while the war was coming to an end, struck down by a "man", a Nazi, perhaps a father himself..."
