She had confronted Barbie during the pretrial proceedings—what the French call l’instruction—and when he was asked if he recognized her, he said, “When you have been in prison for seven months it’s always agreeable to see a desirable woman.” When Simone Lagrange said that his remark insulted her, he said, “The trouble with you is you can’t take a joke.” —Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon,” in exchanges with Simone Lagrange, who, at the age of thirteen, was beaten and interrogated by him at Gestapo headquarters in Lyon before being sent to Auschwitz (from “Voices from the Barbie Trial” by Ted
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