Serge and Beate Klarsfeld
From Free net encyclopedia
Serge (born September 17, 1935 in Bucharest, Romania) and Beate (born February 13, 1939 in Berlin, Germany) Klarsfeld are called "Nazi hunters" for bringing Klaus Barbie and others to justice.
Serge is a Jew whose father, settled in the French Third Republic since the 1920s, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and died at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Beate was born Beate Künzel in Berlin during the height of Nazi Germany. The daughter of a Wehrmacht soldier, she first learned of the horrors of the holocaust after moving to France in 1960. Serge and Beate were married in 1963.
Beate first gained international attention when she slapped Chancellor of Germany Kurt Georg Kiesinger in 1968. Kiesinger had been a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) during World War II and had worked in the information department of the foreign ministry. Beate Klarsfeld was sentenced to one year in prison for insulting the Chancellor.
The Klarsfelds also campaigned against Kurt Waldheim, the former United Nations Secretary-General, who had been elected President of Austria in 1986.
The Klarsfelds were the targets of a much publicized car bombing at their home in France on July 9, 1979. No one was in the car when the bomb went off and no one was injured in the blast. The ODESSA organization took credit for the attack and demanded that they stop pursuing Nazis.
Serge and Beate Klarsfeld are internationally noted for their anti-Nazi and pro-Israel activities. They both reside in Paris, France.
The Klarsfelds' anti-Nazi campaign was dramatized in a 1986 film entitled Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story starring Farrah Fawcett as Beate and Tom Conti as Serge.
See also
- Nazi hunter
- Charles R. Allen, Jr.
- Tuviah Friedman
- Simon Wiesenthal
- Yaron Svoray
- Efraim Zuroffda:Beate Klarsfeld