Serge and Beate Klarsfeld
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Serge (born September 17, 1935, Bucharest, Romania) and Beate (born February 13, 1939, Berlin, Germany) Klarsfeld are French activists known for engaging in Holocaust documentation and anti-Nazi activism.
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[edit] Early years
Serge Klarsfeld, a Jew, spent the war years in France. In 1943, his father was arrested by the SS in Nice during a roundup ordered by Alois Brunner, and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he died. Young Serge was cared for in a home for Jewish children operated by the OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants) organization; his mother and sister also survived the war.
Beate was born Beate Künzel, the daughter of a Wehrmacht soldier. The couple got married in 1963 and made their home in Paris.
[edit] Activism
In 1966 Beate was fired from her job at the Deutsch-Französisches Jugendwerk (Franco-German Alliance for Youth) after she started campaigning against the West German Chancellor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger. She gained international attention when she slapped Kiesinger in 1968. Beate Klarsfeld was sentenced to one year in prison for insulting the Chancellor.
In August 1970 Beate was arrested in Warsaw by the Polish authorities and deported from Poland for protesting against Polish antisemitism.
In 1971, Serge and Beate tried to abduct Kurt Lischka, a former Gestapo chief, and hand him over to the French authorities (his prosecution in Germany being prevented by legal technicalities resulting from a prior conviction). The Klarsfelds were convicted and sentenced to two months in prison in 1974. Due to international protests, the sentence was eventually suspended. This incident, and later activities by the Klarsfelds and by descendants of Lischka's victims, eventually resulted in a revision of the legal situation and, in 1980, in Lischka's conviction and sentence.
The Klarsfelds were involved in finding and seeking prosecution for Klaus Barbie, René Bousquet, Jean Leguay, Maurice Papon and Paul Touvier for their war crimes.
The Klarsfelds were the targets of car bombing at their home in France on July 9, 1979. No one was in the car when the bomb detonated, and no one was injured in the blast. Individuals purporting to represent the pro-Nazi ODESSA secret international organization took credit for the attack and demanded that the Klarsfelds stop pursuing (former) Nazis.
In 1984, Serge and Beate Klarsfeld were awarded France's Legion of Honor by President Mitterrand.
The Klarsfelds campaigned against former United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, elected President of Austria in 1986 amid allegations that he covered up his war time activities as an officer in the Wehrmacht.
Beate Klarsfeld was arrested and deported from Syria in 1991 after she traveled to Damascus publicize Syria's harboring of Alois Brunner,[1] who, as commander of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris from June 1943 to August 1944, was responsible for sending some 140,000 European Jews to the gas chambers. He was condemned in absentia in France in 2001 to a life sentence for crimes against humanity.
In 1996, they joined the outcry against Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić for alleged war crimes and genocide in the former Yugoslavia.
[edit] Film treatment
The Klarsfelds' activities of finding and pursuing Nazi war criminals was made the object of a 1986 film entitled Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story.
The documentary La traque des nazis regarding Simon Wiesenthal's and the Klarsfelds' history appeared in 2007 La traque des nazis on vodeo.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Bernard A. Cook. Europe Since 1945: An Encyclopedia, "Klarsfeld, Beate (1939-)", Routledge, 2001, p. 48.
[edit] Bibliography of works in English
- The Children of Izieu: A Human Tragedy. New York: Harry N. Abrams Publishers, 1985. ISBN 0-8109-2307-6 Translation of Les enfants d'Izieu (1985)
- French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial. New York: New York University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8147-2992-3 Translation of Le mémorial des enfants juifs déportés de France (1995)
