Talk:Harry Baur
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[edit]Why was Harry Baur killed by the Gestapo? Was he a member of the resistance? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jvmills (talk • contribs) 20:47, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
His death
[edit]The Gestapo torture version comes from the IMDb, which generally has a very lurid account.
French WP is far more prosaic. It says he was falsely denounced as a Jew, tortured by the Gestapo, then released some months later. (I believe it said 4 months later.) It then goes on to detail his extreme weight loss through the experience. He never recovered, and he died.
The French version sounds more plausible, but better sourcing is required either way.
Varlaam (talk) 18:52, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
The information regarding his arrest and death is just plain incorrect. He was not released in April 1943. As the French article correctly states, he was released on 19 September 1942 and one of the sources cited in the article (Dictionnaire universel de la Franc-Maçonnerie, 2011) even states that he was released after four months; since he was arrested in the spring of 1942, this should have been enough of a clue that he could not have been released in April 1943. Moreover, he was not arrested after trying to secure the release of his wife, they were arrested together. And he did not die under mysterious circumstances. As far as is known, his health never recovered from the torture and the harsh conditions during his time of imprisonment and that's what led to his eventual death a few months later. The best source I can provide is in German, however, and I have never done a substantial edit to an English-language article - would a German source be considered good enough? It's an academic book about the German policing of culture in occupied Paris in the 1940s (Kathrin Engel, Deutsche Kulturpolitik im besetzten Paris 1940-1944: Film und Theater, München: Oldenbourg, 2003, https://books.google.com/books?id=9V7pBQAAQBAJ; for the part on Harry Baur see p. 177-186).