Hotel Terminus via the "Vélodrome d'hiver": Collaboration and the Aesthetics of Denial

Author(s): Richard J. Golsan

Source: L'Esprit Créateur , Spring 1993, Vol. 33, No. 1, The Occupation in French
Literature & Film, 1940-1992 (Spring 1993), pp. 75-84
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26286599

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 Hotel Terminus via the Vélodrome d'hiver:
Collaboration and the Aesthetics of Denial

Richard J. Golsan

IN can
ANFilm, Marcel Ophuls describes "Hotel Terminus: The Life and
INTERVIEW published in the September 1988 issue of Ameri
Times of Klaus Barbie" as a film about "one man who comes to
justice," a man Ophuls hastens to add, who is "guilty as hell."1 While
not inaccurate, these remarks are curiously abrupt, and hardly do justice
to a film which brilliantly portrays many of the historical complexities as
well as the moral, ethical, and political ambiguities surrounding the case
of Klaus Barbie. After scrupulously exploring the intricacies and ironies
of the case over forty years and three continents, it is as if, in the inter
view at least, Ophuls wishes to return to sure ground himself and close at
least some of the doors he has opened.
One explanation for Ophuls' narrow assessment of "Hotel Ter
minus" is evident in comments made elsewhere in the same interview.
According to Ophuls,

the enemy that is bigger than Barbie ... is moral relativism: the refusal to see what is
specific about the Holocaust, the stupid idea that prosecutors are necessarily bad people
and that criminals are always the underdog. These are things I find more and more disgust
ing. . . . ("Joy" 42)

Despite the views of Jacques Vergés, Barbie's lawyer, who carps con
stantly in the film on the inhuman treatment of his client and compares
Nazi atrocities to French abuses during the Algerian War, Ophuls in no
way wishes the horror or uniqueness of the Holocaust to be obscured by
the misguided humanitarian or relativist impulses occasionally voiced on
screen. As the film amply demonstrates, such attitudes, in fact, frequent
ly serve as smokescreens for unspoken sympathies for Barbie and his
racist and xenophobic views.
A second reason for Ophuls' terse assessment of "Hotel Terminus"
and its subject can be gleaned from two other comments made during the
same interview. Discussing the lessons of the trial, Ophuls speaks of the
"decency" of the French people and notes that the trial "can give you a
decent sense of what human justice should be about" ("Joy" 43). Later,

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 L'Esprit Créateur

when asked if "Hotel Terminus" is related to Ophuls' earlier film,

"Sorrow and the Pity," and if, as film maker, he has not become "a
specialist in French guilt trips," Ophuls replies that he is tired of the
accusation of being a muckraker of France's past and considers "Sorrow
and the Pity" to be a "patriotic act" ("Joy" 42).
These comments suggest complementary motivations on the part of
Ophuls which, I believe, clearly affected the making of the film and sub
sequently influenced Ophuls's assessment of his work. Despite French
compromises during the Occupation, compromises which are so vividly
portrayed in "Sorrow and the Pity," in "Hotel Terminus" Ophuls
wishes to emphasize the fundamental decency and, in many cases, the
heroism of the French people as a whole. The French have, after all, had
the courage to bring Barbie to trial. Accordingly, when addressing
French complicity with Nazi brutalities and genocide, Ophuls focuses for
the most part on marginal elements including criminals, traitors and
various "small fry." He fails to deal with more significant figures whose
own activities raise the ominous specter of crimes against humanity on
the part of the French themselves. In this sense, "Hotel Terminus"
might be considered a "patriotic act" for its omissions, and while
Ophuls would apparently approve the designation, he would hardly con
done the reason given.
In order to understand the ways in which the French are presented in
a favorable light in "Hotel Terminus," it is first necessary to consider
the "backdrop" against which they are portrayed. In an essay in Pre
miere published in November 1988, Ophuls speaks of the technique of
"investigative sarcasm"2 used in the film, a technique appropriately and
effectively employed in interviews with Germans, Americans, and South
Americans who either knew or worked with Barbie or who offer com
ments on the whole affair. At best, these witnesses come across as
ignorant, indifferent, or misguided in their sympathies and affections.
At worst, their testimonies reveal deception, hatred, or the "orchestrated
amnesia of the perpetrators" ("SL" 112).
All of these attitudes are in evidence in the interviews conducted in
Germany. Former neighbors speak affectionately of young "Sonny"
Barbie and praise his vitality and courage in growing up in a troubled
family. They refer to his brutal, alcoholic father, his strict Catholic
upbringing, and his feeble-minded brother, who as one neighbor inno
cently suggests, was "better off to have died young." A former class
mate and later an officer in the German army speaks admiringly of

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 Golsan

Barbie's leadership qualities and of his having made the Nazi Party
acceptable to his classmates by becoming a member himself. Anoth
former officer expresses no regret for his own role in the war, sin
despite their defeat, the Nazis did "save the west" from Communism
More troubling are the interviews and exchanges with those who d
not know Barbie and for the most part are not even of his generati
Ophuls visits the Catholic school Barbie attended as a boy and intervie
a student, who finds it impossible to believe Barbie was ever enroll
there. An instructor intervenes and, when told of Barbie's status as
former student, professes ignorance. The whole episode speaks of a
older generation which wishes to remain wilfully ignorant of the N
past and tries to shield the next generation from that memory as we
In seeking to interview Barbie's subordinates at Lyons now living
retirement in Germany, Ophuls encounters open hostility not only from
the men themselves but neighbors who are not even of their generati
These neighbors openly express their indifference to the Nazi pasts
those with whom they live, accuse Ophuls of sensationalism and gre
and, in one instance, threaten to have Ophuls thrown off their property
Striking a humanitarian pose, some argue that these aging Nazis sho
be allowed to live out their days in peace. In one of the more bitte
ironical moments in the German interviews, one witness wonde
"Whatever happened to human rights?"
In many of these interviews, Ophuls remains largely detached an
objective, and the subtle compromising of the witnesses occurs either as
function of what they say or as a result of the natural hierarchy, which
according to Bill Nichols, obtains between interviewer and interviewee in
the interactive mode of documentary film. As Nichols explains, the inter
viewer is "initiator and arbiter of legitimacy" and the dialogue wh
ensues is really a "pseudo-dialogue" since the interview format "pro
hibits full reciprocity or equity between participants."3 Ophuls doe
exploit his superior position on occasion when, for example, he asks t
neighbors of Barbie's former cohorts if they care about the pasts of thes
men. It is already clear from their previous remarks that they do not, or
that they wish to forget them, and Ophuls' disingenuous questions on
serve to make them look worse.

In several segments shot in Germany, Ophuls abandons all pretense

of objectivity. His anger and sarcasm boil to the surface, affecting not
only his interviewing techniques but his editing of the film itself. In
approaching the residence of Barbie's former subordinate in charge of

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 L'Esprit Créateur

Jewish affairs in Lyons, Erich Bartelmus, Ophuls mockingly calls out

"Herr Bartelmus" and pretends to look for him under objects lying
about in the garden. Bartelmus, of course, fails to appear. In another
episode, Ophuls stages a phone conversation with the imaginary wife of a
former German officer. Ophuls plays the role of the wife, who shows a
great deal of interest in the film until she is told that it deals with Barbie.
The woman suddenly develops amnesia, and the conversation is ter
minated. In another segment, Ophuls ironically juxtaposes a magistrate
announcing the German court's decision not to try Barbie for "lack of
evidence" with shots of people in the streets with painted faces and wear
ing costumes to celebrate Carnival. In such a festive atmosphere, Barbie
and the Nazi past seem an unnecessary and unwelcome intrusion.
The most damning evidence against Germany past and present is,
however, provided by two Germans. Ophuls includes a speech by the
writer Gunther Grass in which Grass speaks of the lack of resistance
within Germany throughout Hitler's rule. Commenting on his fellow
countrymen, Dany Cohn-Bendit, the former leader of the Paris student
uprisings of May 1968, remarks: "It is easier to get 200,000 Germans to
protest the killing of 6,000,000 trees than 6,000,000 Jews."4
The Americans in the film fare no better than their German counter
parts. Those interviewed consist primarily of former CIC operatives who
hired Barbie following the Nazi defeat to work as a counterintelligence
agent against the Communists. These men betray a remarkable gullibility
and at the same time a certain deviousness which hardly disguises their
basic indifference to Barbie's crimes. They confess to not having cared
about the political background of the agents they hired. As to Barbie
himself, one states that he did not feel Barbie was particularly anti
Semitic. He doubts as well that Barbie ever resorted to torturing his cap
tives because he would not need to, since he was "a damned skillful inter
rogator" who could get the information he wanted by other means.
Another former agent, seated next to his German wife to whom he defers
on a number of questions, admits that Barbie was allowed to recruit his
own operatives, many of whom were blackmarketeers. When asked why
Barbie was not turned over to the French, the excuses given are either
lame or shocking in their ideological narrowmindedness and paranoia.
One agent, Erhard Dabringhaus, claims the French were not insistent
enough in their demands for Barbie, while another, Eugene Polk, asserts
that French intelligence at the time was infiltrated by Communists, and
that any information Barbie might have about the Americans would
eventually end up in the hands of the Russians.

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 Golsan

The interviews with the American agents are carefully staged against
comfortable backdrops which suggest a profound psychological and
emotional distance from the brutal realities of the Occupation and Cold
War years. Dadringhaus sits by his swimming pool and Polk next to his
Christmas tree. Other Americans interviewed are sitting at the dinner
table and sipping wine as they talk. The comfort and ease of the situa
tions of the American witnesses seem almost obscene when Ophuls juxt
poses them with the graphic descriptions of torture undergone by
Barbie's victims, the Jewish woman Madame Lagrange and the résistant
Lise Lesèvre.
In the interview in American Film Ophuls expresses doubt concerning
the reliability of the CIC agents, stating: "If you ask me, those former
American agents . . . are carrying out some mysterious assignments—
perhaps self-imposed, but more likely not—of preventing media atten
tion from expanding sideways, and more particularly upwards" ("Joy"
43). The implied link between the Nazis and those at the highest level of
American government is suggested by footage of Ronald Reagan's visit
to Bitburg Cemetery and long shots of presidential wreaths on the graves
of SS members.5
When Ophuls and his crew arrive in South America, the combined
weight of German and American denials, forgetfulness, and misplaced
sympathy and admiration for Barbie make the viewer completely lose
patience with the expression of similar attitudes and sentiments, even
when they are apparently sincere. When, for example, one of Barbie's
former business associates praises him for having done his duty during
the Second World War, or when a local Indian who worked for Barbie
praises him as a "good man," the viewer is forced to wonder how any
one, no matter how naive, could entertain such sentiments. Other wit
nesses confirm Barbie's close links with former governments in Bolivia as
well as his ties to Nazi and neo-Nazi paramilitary groups thriving in
South America. One is hardly surprised, then, when Ophuls and his crew
are physically attacked by one of Barbie's former neighbors while
attempting to shoot footage of the building in which Barbie lived before
his extradition.
The final sequences of "Hotel Terminus" are shot in France itself
and deal with events leading up to and following Barbie's trial. These are
not, however, the first scenes taking place in France. Earlier, Ophuls
interviews former members of the Resistance, several of Barbie's Jewish
victims as well as the occasional small-time collaborators. He also speaks

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 L'Esprit Créateur

with Albert Rosset, the leader in Lyons of the Front National, and, in the
sequences dealing with the trial, Barbie's lawyer, Jacques Vergés.
As opposed to the interviews conducted in Germany, the United
States and South America, the majority of those conducted in France are
characterized by the dignity, courage and honesty of Ophuls' interlocu
tors. The résistants Raymond Aubrac and Lise Lesèvre speak of their
emprisonment and torture at the hands of Barbie. Lucie Aubrac
describes her courageous bluff to free her husband, Daniel Cordier,
Jean Moulin's secretary in the Resistance, speaks almost reverently of his
former boss.
The setting and tone of these interviews stands in sharp contrast to
the American and German interviews. No "investigative sarcasm" is evi
dent on the part of the film maker, and the surroundings underscore the
decency and modesty of those being interviewed. The Aubracs, for
example, are interviewed in the quiet comfort of their living room, which
serves as an appropriate backdrop for conversations revealing their calm
heroism during the war. The Christmas trees and lingering shots of swim
ming pools that ironize and ultimately discredit the American witnesses
are completely absent.
When Ophuls interviews unsympathetic witnesses, including former
collaborators, the FN spokesman Rosset, and Jacques Verges, his
"investigative sarcasm" occasionally returns in the form of probing and
repeated questions and deliberate misquoting of earlier remarks made by
his interlocutors. For the most part, however, the witnesses discredit
themselves either in word and gesture or, in the case of Vergés, simply in
the choice of personal surroundings. Rosset's rigid and arrogant bearing
and his dismissal of the Barbie trial as a "vieille histoire," a remark
which is clearly ludicrous at this stage in the film, alienate the viewer and
make the résistants all the more sympathetic. Vergés' opulent office, his
elegant, oily manner, as well as his refusal to discuss his mysterious past
and denial of any knowledge of François Genoud, the Swiss Nazi who
financed Barbie's defense,6 all serve to compromise him and make
Ophuls' hostile presence almost unnecessary.
Considered together, these last interviews make any defense of Barbie
seem not only implausible but obscene. In the process, they discredit the
efforts of Barbie's defenders to extend his guilt or to challenge the notion
that his crimes and those of the Nazis as a whole were unique in their
horror. This is, of course, a dangerous conclusion to draw, not because
the Holocaust was not unique but because in "Hotel Terminus" it fore

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closes discussion of Frenchmen whose brutality during the Occupation

rivaled Barbie or who were as efficient and coldblooded as he as cogs in
the mechanism of the deportations. No comparison is made in the film,
for example, between Barbie and Paul Touvier, the "French Barbie."
An officer in the Milice in Lyons, Touvier's background and career bear
a striking resemblance to Barbie's. Both were raised in right-wing nation
alistic Catholic families, both were anti-Semitic, anti-democratic zealots,
both were good fathers and husbands, both were crooks following the
war, and both were helped after the war by right-wing elements within
the Catholic church. When first published in early 1992, René Rémond's
Paul Touvier et l'Eglise sent shock waves through France by revealing
the full extent of Catholic complicity in sheltering Touvier from justice.7
The dismissal of charges of crimes against humanity against Touvier by
the high court in the spring of 1992 further outraged many French
citizens, especially since the decision entailed whitewashing the Vichy
Régime.8
The case itself, however, is old news. Touvier's name first caused
scandal when he was inexplicably amnestied by then-president Georges
Pompidou in 1971, and the government's dubious involvement with
Touvier has included inexplicable gestures of leniency, including his
mysterious release from prison during the summer of 1991 on "humani
tarian grounds." All of this is common knowledge, and Pompidou's
pardon, at least, was certainly known to Ophuls when he made "Hotel
Terminus."9
The case of Paul Touvier is only one of several in recent years which
involve charges of crimes against humanity against French citizens. In all
cases, the French government and judiciary have been accused of drag
ging their feet10 or worse, actively seeking to block the trials of the indi
viduals accused on the dubious grounds that such trials would upset la
paix civile. The active role in the deportation of Jews played by Jean
Leguay, Maurice Papon, a former minister in the government of Valéry
Giscard d'Estaing, " and René Bousquet have been the subject of press
releases and legal battles for more than ten years. The case of Bousquet,
Secretary-General of Vichy police in 1942 and 1943, is the most recent
and in many ways the most illuminating. Tried in 1949, Bousquet was
sentenced to five years in prison, but the sentence was immediately com
muted for "acts of resistance" against the Germans. Bousquet went on
to become a successful businessman and banker, and in 1965 supported
François Mitterand's presidential bid by securing backing for Mitterand

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 L'Esprit Créateur

in the newspaper he controlled, "La Dépêche du Midi." When charge

against humanity were brought against Bousquet in 1988, they invol
actions not brought up in the original trial, and specifically Bousque
crucial role in organizing the infamous roundup of thousands of Jew
Paris in July 1943, who were taken to the Vélodrome d'hiver.12 The f
that these actions were brushed over in the original trial are stunning no
only for what they reveal about the purge courts but about attitud
towards the deportations in France at the time. Equally disturbing
recent developments in Bousquet's case before the courts at the prese
time. In October 1990, the Prosecutor General, Pierre Truche, who
prosecuted Barbie's case and is interviewed in "Hotel Terminus," asked
the Chambre d'accusation to declare itself incompetent to judge the case,
stating that it could only be tried by the purge court that originally
handled Bousquet's dossier. This was, of course, technically impossible,
since the purge court was no longer in existence. The demand itself was
clearly a subterfuge, designed apparently by George Keijman, Mit
terand's newly appointed minister of justice who, with the blessing of the
president himself, wished to delay Bousquet's trial indefinitely for the
sake of la paix civile. Public outcry following Keijman's demand was
immediate and intense. Mitterand's debt to Bousquet was raised as was
Mitterand's own service at Vichy before becoming a member of the resis
tance. 13 Bousquet's social status was also discussed as the real reason for
his lenient treatment.14 Despite the wishes of Mitterand and Keijman, the
Chambre d'accusation has declared itself competent to handle the case,
and the instruction continues.
What the Bousquet Affair suggests is that France is as divided as ever
by the Occupation, that collaboration at its worst was not the exclusive
purview of criminals and fanatics, and that the "decency" of the French
people has not permitted them, in institutional terms at least, to come to
grips with crimes against humanity by their fellow citizens. The Bousquet
affair is not mentioned in "Hotel Terminus," and this is only natural,
since it hit the press in 1988 after the completion of the film.15 Neverthe
less, its presence can be felt obliquely in the discussion of Meyer Bulka,
one of the children of Izieu mentioned in the film, whose parents had
already been taken to the Vélodrome d'hiver in the roundup ordered by
Bousquet and carried out by French police. It can also be felt in Régis
Debray's comment that he had sought Barbie not as the murderer of the
Jewish children of Izieu but as the killer of the French hero, Jean
Moulin, and in Mitterand's reported comment to a New York Times

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 Golsan

writer, quoted in "Hotel Terminus," that Vichy was not collaboration

ist, although he admits that there were "some collaborators there." Last
ly, it is present in a newsreel in which Bousquet himself is shown welcom
ing Reinhard Heydrich and other SS officials to Paris. These are the
doors, I believe, that Ophuls opens but does not enter, and so he fails to
exhaust the final ramifications of the Barbie Affair in France. Unlike
"The Sorrow and the Pity," "Hotel Terminus" offers a reassuring and
ultimately misleading portrait of the French and their efforts to come to
terms with the Occupation. For this reason, Ophuls' film is less an anti
dote for the "Vichy syndrome" than a symptom of its continued pres
ence in French public life.16

Texas A&M University

Notes

I would like to thank Lynn Higgins, Jean-François Fourny and P. M. Wetherill for their
help in earlier drafts of this essay.

1. "Joy to the World!: An Interview with Marcel Ophuls," American Film (September
1988): 39. Hereafter cited in the text as "Joy."
2. "The Sorrow and the Laughter," Premiere (November 1988): 113. Hereafter cited as
"SL."
3. Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Blo
ton: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 52.
4. In an article entitled "Marcel Ophuls on Barbie: Reopening the Wounds of War"
published in the New York Times on October 2, 1988, Ophuls is quoted as saying that
he does not believe in collective guilt. He points out that his wife, a German native,
was in the Hitler Youth and that his brother-in-law was in the Herman Goering Divi
sion. Ophuls' comments appear to be at odds with the very negative portrait of the
Germans as a whole in the film, a portrait which does seem to imply some form of a
national collective guilt.
5. For an excellent discussion of the Bitburg incident and its place in the German
national memory of the Nazi period, see Anson Rabinach, "Beyond Bitburg: The
Place of the 'Jewish Question' in German History after 1945" in Coping with the
Past: Germany and Austria after 1945, eds. Cathy Harms, Lutz R. Reuter, and Volker
Dürr (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), pp. 187-218.
6. For a discussion of the role of Genoud in the Barbie affair, see Erna Paris, Unhealed
Wounds, esp. pp. 140-43.
7. See René Rémond et al., PauI Touvier et l'Eglise (Paris: Fayard, 1992).
8. For a discussion of the court's decision, see Le Monde, 15 avril, 1992.
9. For a good general discussion of the "Touvier Affair," see Ted Morgan's article,
"L'Affaire Touvier: Opening Old Wounds" in the New York Times Magazine of
October 1, 1989. For the report on the Catholic Church's involvement with Touvier,
see Libération, January 7, 1992. For Touvier's recent release from prison, see Libéra
tion, July 12, 1991 and Le Monde, July 13, 1991.
10. This, at least, was the opinion of a group of international jurists who reviewed the
cases of Touvier, Papon, and Bousquet. See their report in Actes (avril 1991): 29-37.
11. For an account of the activities of Papon during the Occupation, see Michel Slitinsky,
L'Affaire Papon (Paris: Alain Moreau, 1983). Little has been written about Leguay,
whose case has not caused as much controversy as the others.
12. The extreme Right has had a field day exposing Bousquet's connections on the Left,
claiming that these contacts, and especially Mitterand himself, are using their power

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 L'Esprit Créateur

to protect their old friend. See Le Choc du mois 35 (Décembre 1990): 6-8. The fact
that the 1949 court essentially ignored Bousquet's role in the Vel d'hiv round-up has
been reported in a number of sources. I am indebted to Annette Lévy-Willard of
Libération for showing me the original transcript of the trial, which confirms these
reports.
Le Choc du mois has also recently attempted to link Mitterrand to the Cagoule, a thir
ties right-wing terrorist group, and dredged up his brief association with Action
française before the war. See the July-August issue of 1991.
See "Les vacances de M. Bousquet" in Humanité, 17 July 1990.
It is true, however, that as early as 1979 Serge Klarsfeld announced his intention to
pursue Bousquet for crimes against humanity at the time Klarsfeld announced his
charges concerning Bousquet's subordinate, Jean Leguay. See Henry Rousso, The
Vichy Syndrome (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 149.
For a definition of the "Vichy syndrome," see the introduction to Henry Rousso's Le
Syndrome de Vichy de 1944 à nos jours (Paris: Seuil, 1990). An English translation
has recently been published by Harvard University Press under the title The Vichy
Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944 (1991).

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