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Beate Klarsfeld: The Never-Ending Work of a Nazi Hunter Page 21-THE NEWS-December 1990 Israel Bond Campaign to Help Meet Cost of Soviet Immigrant Absorption By Aliza Marcus (JTA) With her well-coiffed blond hair and pink wool sweater, Beate Klarsfeld looks more like a chic French housewife than the famed Nazi-hunter. Her efforts have unearthed and brought to trial people such as Klaus Barbie, serving a life sentence for deporting more than 7,000 Jews to death camps; Kurt Lischke, former chief of the Gestapo in France now fmishing a 10-year sentence; and Josef Schwammberger, currently on trial in Germany for allegedly supervising and participating in the deaths of hundreds of Jews at forced labor camps in Poland. It is the stuff from which movies have been made — and one about her life was — yet she recounts the tales in a soft- spoken voice with a hint of a smile, as if her actions, those of a German-born Christian wom an, were not uncommon. Names and dates and arrests and demonstrations tumble over each other, from protests against Austrian President Kurt Wald heim, linked with deportations in Yugoslavia, to her agitation in Chile against Walter Rauff, the now-dead Nazi who devised the mobile gas vans that killed 97,000 people. She identified Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s chief aide who has been hiding in Syria for over 30 years; traveled to Beirut to offer herself in place of Lebanese Jews held hostage; and campaigned against anti-Semit- ism on almost every continent. She dismisses as unimportant the arrests, the nasty phone calls, the threatening letters, the parcel bomb police safely neutralized and the car bomb they did not. “We came into this business because it was necessary, be cause there wasn’t anybody else doing it, because it was some kind of obligation,” says 51- year-old Klarsfeld, who together with her husband. Serge, has spent decades uncovering the very lives former Nazis and their collaborators have worked to bury in their post-war rise to respectability. Their tactics start with metic ulous research and documenta tion and, when the facts are known, the survivors located and the identity assured, they move in with public protests, something that often embar rasses the host country into starting extradition or criminal proceedings. “A lot of people get embar rassed over what we do even though they admire us for our work, but this is our way to act, and as a German, I am showing the type of responsibility my generation should have had,” she explains, sitting in a New York office. What brought her out of Paris this time was a series of lectures and plans to organize demon strations against Fred Leuchter, a self-proclaimed engineer and expert on executions who had published a book claiming that, based on scientific evidence, the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Majdanek were really disinfec tion booths. The State of Massachusetts has arraigned him on charges of practicing engineering without a license, which observers believe was partly a response to pressure from Holocaust groups that had worked to make his revisionist sentiments known, and in so doing, exposed his lack of en gineering qualifications. Klarsfeld, along with about 50 people trailed by 15 journalists, stood outside the courthouse Oct. 23, placards in hand. Soon after Leuchter entered a plea of innocent, Klarsfeld left to give her lectures before flying back to home, with plans on returning for the pre-trial hearings Dec. 11. This Nazi-hunter, this woman who shocked the world in 1968 by publicly slapping German Chancellor Kurt-Georg Kiesin- ger after uncovering his work for Nazi radio propaganda, began her ascent into activism as a 21- year-old au pair in France who caught the eye of a 25-year-old political science student in 1960. What might have seemed an unlikely pair — she, a German Christian whose father served in the Wehrmacht; he, a French Jew whose father died at Ausch witz — now seems to be the most likely of teams. The 55-year-old Serge Klars feld, a lawyer and currently director of the Jewish Documen tation Center in Paris, was her first teacher pf the Holocaust, and together they have come to signify a battle between good and evil. “For over 20 years they have done this because they can’t accept that Nazis won’t some how become responsible for their earlier actions,” says.Shelly Shapiro, director of the Holo caust Survivors and Friends in Pursuit of Justice, an education al and documentation group whose list of honorary directors includes Beate Klarsfeld. “They can’t just sit back and allow these former Nazis to go unpunished.” The former director of the Office of Special Investigations, which was formed in 1979 as part of the Justice Department to coordinate efforts to search for Nazi war criminals in the United States, complimented the Klars- felds’ abilities to back up their claims with meticulous docu mentation and research. “This puts them in a very different class from people inter ested in just publicity,” said Allan Ryan Jr., who now works works as a lawyer for Harvard University. Still, the Klarsfelds are not without their detractors, and their public methods have earned them criticism from Simon Wiesenthal, the legend ary tracker of Nazis, who prefers a more low-key approach to exposing such crimes. Beate Klarsfeld is quick to acknowledge Wiesenthal’s im portant role, and explains their differences are ones of means and not ends because, in the end, all three believe former Nazis should be called to account for their crimes against humanity. Klarsfeld and others who have devoted their lives to tracking down Nazi war criminals speak of that time — maybe in 10 years, maybe in five — when few of the perpetrators will still be alive, or those alive will be judged too elderly and ill to stand trial. With this end in mind, an important part of Klarsfeld’s work is documenting, with Nazi- prepared reports, lists of Jews deported to concentration camps and gassed, as testimony against those who would deny that the Holocaust, the mass extermination of six million Jews during World War II, actually occurred. Klarsfeld, whose work has always been focused on searchng for German and French Nazis, accepts the upcoming deaths of long-sought Nazi war criminals — and an end to her searching — with equanimity: “Even if they die peacefully, it’s better than having them alive, because the victims are always offended that they (Nazis) are living free. “I’ve spoken to a lot of Nazi war criminals and faced them, and I think the most awful thing is that they have no regrets, that they make you feel like a crim inal for troubling their quiet life,” says Klarsfeld. “They are always so secure, believing that nothing will happen to them.” She smiles for a moment: “But we have always hoped, and sometimes it has been true, that one day something would hap pen and when it does, when they have to go to jail, I hope they remember that moment of pro testing their innocence.” Charlotte Israel Bond Chair man, Mark Goldsmith, an nounced that the Jewish leader ship of North America has resolved to implement an accel- crated Israel Bond campaign to help Israel meet what is antic ipated to be massive costs in absorbing hundreds of thou sands of Soviet immigrants. The plan was adopted at the annual Israel Bond Fall Lead ership Conference held Oct. 25- 28 at the Chicago Hyatt Regency and attended by 300 North American Jewish leaders. Conference delegates heard a number of prominent speakers, including Israel Ambassador to the United States Zalman Sho- val and Israel Bond President and Chief Executive Officer Ambassador Meir Rosenne, report that the unprecedented Soviet emigration could cost Israel as much as $30 billion over the next five years. Immigration is expected to run as high as 200,000 per year, with Israel ultimately taking in as many as one million Soviet Jews. Ambassador Shoval, in his first address since assuming Israel’s most important diplo matic post, said that 250,000 housing units would be needed to successfully absorb the Soviet immigrants. In noting that the Soviet resettlement effort came at the same time as increased military expenditures due to the Persian Gulf crisis. Ambassador Shoval said “it will not be easy, but we cannot afford to fail. It would be the most disasterous Jewish failure since World War II.” The keynote address of the conference was given by Ambas sador Rosenne, who told Bond delegates that “we are here to ensure that no Jew will ever be prevented from going to Israel because of a lack of funds, housing and jobs.” Declaring that “we are survi vors of the hate, indifference and cruelty of mankind,” Ambassa dor Rosenne urged the Bond leaders to “renew your commit ment. We are unique because we have been taught never to give in and never to give up.” Israel Bonds are viewed by Israel’s government as an impor tant means of providing housing and job opportunities for Soviet immigrants, and several of its top leaders cabled the confer ence to convey their support. You've made it! You‘re the new company executive^ but did you have to use an old photograph in the neujs release? PHOTOGRHPHIC EHPRESSIONS Terrill R. 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The Charlotte Jewish News (Charlotte, N.C.)
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Dec. 1, 1990, edition 1
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