Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie

Hotel Terminus was Nazi-officer Klaus Barbie' s headquarters. In 1987, this man, who received the surname 'Butcher of Lyon' during the Second World War, was put on trial in France, after he had finally been expelled by Bolivia, the country in which Barbie had taken refuge.

Hotel Terminus is less a biography of Barbie than an inquiry into the way humanity deals with evil. It were the indifference of so many to the past and the alarming ease with which people tend to forget which shocked Ophüls and made him decide to make this documentary. He spoke with 80 people in France, Germany, Bolivia, Peru, and the U.S.A. who at one time or another were involved with Barbie's life or career. Ophüls allows the interviewed people to give their own versions of history but does not refrain from putting them under pressure with tart questions, if necessary. As his investigation progresses Ophüls grows angrier, more ironic and impatient which is also expressed in the montage when he makes very rapid cross-cuts that actually are comments upon each other. We see friends from Barbie's youth, tortured people from the Resistance, collaborators, former C.I.A.-agents, nazi-hunters, and former Bolivian politicians. Besides, Ophüls lets a few commentators speak, including Claude Lanzmann, director of Shoah.