The Barbie Tapes Gestapo executioner Klaus Barbie speaks about 'good old days' in unique audio tapes Rick Hartkamp • May 2, 2025 2:16 PM In the context of eighty years of freedom, journalist Foeke de Koe delved into the story of Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie. In previously unaired audio recordings, the war criminal speaks freely about deported Jewish children, arrests and executions. "During those hours in the hotel room, the atmosphere of the Third Reich was there again," says De Koe in Goedemorgen Nederland on NPO 1.
Summary In 1979, controversial German journalist Gerd Heidemann made audio recordings of war criminal Barbie, who was enjoying a whiskey with former SS leader Karl Wolff (for many years Heinrich Himmler's right-hand man) in a hotel in the Bolivian capital La Paz. Barbie was completely unaware that a tape recorder was recording their conversations. "In that hotel room, the SS codes were in force again. They addressed each other by their SS rank in a casual setting. Shocking."
Gerd Heidemann De Koe found the tapes in the archive of Heidemann, who died in December 2024. In the 1970s he made a splash as the war reporter for the German weekly Stern , who later became known as the journalist who allegedly found false diaries of Adolf Hitler. "He shouted that he had found the original. That's why he disappeared into prison."
Heidemann's collecting mania resulted in a massive private Nazi archive. "He had the tapes in his possession, but the man was so contaminated that no one went to look in his archive. When I heard about it, I thought: I'm curious to see what he has. Then I came across this audio material."
"He says he kicked the stool away" The audio tapes reveal that Barbie greatly exaggerated his role and that he was only too happy to portray himself as bigger than he was. "Barbie said that he looked up to Wolff enormously, who was his superior. He was only too happy to share all the stories about the war and the occupation. He wanted to show that he was a very tough guy."
Foeke de Koe Journalist “In that hotel room, the SS codes were in effect again. They addressed each other by their SS rank in a casual setting. Shocking.”
Wolff was a person who was close to the center of power, " Hitler's inner circle ," De Koe continues. "Men of this caliber who talk about war crimes, we actually only heard after the war during a tribunal or in a courtroom, often under oath. But here they poured a glass of whiskey, sat back and talked freely about the 'good old days'. They didn't mince their words. That makes the material very special, because it is unfiltered."
Barbie arrived in Amsterdam in May 1940, "where he took the hunt for Jews very seriously". On the tapes, he talks about discipline within the SS during his time in the Netherlands. "He says that at one point he heard that non-commissioned officers had committed looting and rape. He gave the order to hang them himself at his headquarters at six in the morning, in the presence of all colleagues. Barbie says that he was the one who kicked the stool away. It is ruthless and sadistic."
Unique audio tapes The documentary maker says that he found more than a hundred hours of material. "And the conversations of these two pensioners is about fifteen hours of audio." On those tapes, among other things, Barbie can be heard looking back on the raids in Amsterdam following the February strike in 1941. "We first raised all the bridges over the canals, except for one. It was a house-to-house fight. The Jews from above and us from below. They threw porcelain, full chamber pots, everything, but we had hand grenades."
Barbie also looks back on a raid on the Koco ice cream parlor in the Van Woustraat in Amsterdam on February 19, 1941, where he was injured by ammonia gas. He vented his frustration on the Jewish shop owner, Ernst Cahn. "I was hit full on. That made me so angry, so when I saw an ashtray, I grabbed it. I hit him and he flew through the whole shop. There were eleven or twelve Jews there, the staff. We arrested them."
Cahn was a Jewish man who had fled from Germany. "There, members of a Jewish resistance group would sometimes meet. Barbie had heard about it, which is why they decided to raid it," De Koe explains. Cahn was arrested along with others and he was the first resistance fighter to be shot dead on the Waalsdorpervlakte. "Barbie claims on the tapes that he was the one who led the firing squad." The arrests and imprisonment were the reason for the February strike.
As many questions as answers The audio recordings reveal much, but also raise even more questions. Wolff betrayed his SS comrade Barbie by taking journalist Heidemann with him, but why? And what surprised De Koe most is that the most gruesome details are told, but not a word is said about the Holocaust.
After the discovery, De Koe spoke to Cahn's nephews and let them hear what Barbie had to say about their uncle's death. "I thought it would be shocking, but I could tell from the two men that it didn't even affect them much. The story has been going around in the family for eighty years and that doesn't make the suffering any less bad."
Klaus Barbie's audio tapes, his war crimes, his continuation of life in South America under a pseudonym and his eventual conviction at an old age can all be seen in the WNL documentary The Barbie Tapes, on Saturday 3 May at 8:30 PM on NPO 2. The six-part podcast series can be listened to weekly in the podcast apps from Saturday 4 May.
