In 1972, television showed the portrait of an old man, wanted since the end of the war: Klaus Barbie.
Upon seeing him, 42-year-old Simone Lagrange was initially stunned, before a painful past resurfaced.
She recognized the man. This old man was her torturer, the one who had tortured her in Lyon, starting on June 6, 1944… She remembered the young girl she had been, the shift of France towards the Vichy regime, before the Free Zone was occupied. She remembered her years in the Resistance, as a liaison agent.
Simone was then known as Simy Kadosche; she was Jewish and knew that her life and the lives of her loved ones were in danger. Denunciation was commonplace, but no one could have expected to be betrayed by someone so close to them. It was there, at the Gestapo headquarters, that she crossed paths with the head of Section V: The Butcher of Lyon, Klaus Barbie.