Although you stay with the Catholic widow in Lyon, you make it very clear to her that you are proud and glad to be Jewish. She understands and even occasionally goes to the synagogue with you.
What she does not know is that you are part of a secret group in regular
contact with Simon Wiesenthal. You are particularly interested in tracing
a Nazi officer known as the Butcher of Lyon,
Klaus Barbie, who
tricked the American army into letting him escape justice. You and your
colleagues in Lyon send letters, make telephone calls, and even take trips
to find Barbie. His acts against Jews and members of the resistance were
so atrocious that he must be brought to trial and punished.
You pursue him for almost forty years. Finally, in 1984, Barbie is arrested in Paraguay and returned to prison in France. You are at the airport when he arrives. With his wrists chained, he is rushed into a police van and taken to the same prison he once commanded.
You have a strange feeling of emptiness. The hunt is now over. You had thought you would feel vengeful, perhaps would want to kill Barbie yourself. But you no longer feel that way. He is a pitiful old man, hardly the superman of Nazi legend. You realize that you, a Jew, and all decent people have won.
END