Klarsfeld, Serge

(1935– ) and Beate Klarsfeld (1939– )

   The Klarsfelds, best known to the public as “Nazi hunters,” have for more than 30 years located and confronted Nazis who remained untried for their participation in the Holocaust. In 1968 Beate, the Christian daughter of a father who was a soldier in the Wehrmacht, publicly slapped Kurt Kiesenger, the German chancellor, in an attempt to expose his Nazi past. The controversy that ensued led three months later to Kiesenger’s defeat at the polls by Willy Brandt, a leading anti-Nazi politician. Subsequently, the Klarsfelds located and exposed many Nazis who had managed to escape trial as war criminals. The list of names includes Klaus Barbie, Rene Bousquet, Kurt Lischka, Maurice Papon, and Paul Touvier. Serge Klarsfeld published the Memorial of the Deportation of Jews of France (1978), which consists of a listing of more than 80,000 names of Jews deported to the East or killed in France. Each entry includes names, birth date, and birthplace of each deportee. In 1996, Serge Klarsfeld published a similar memorial entitled French Children of the Holocaust, a collection of photos and personal data on more than 11,000 Jewish children who were deported from their homes in France and put to death in the German extermination camps. The Klarsfelds head the Committee of Children of Deportees, a French organization whose objective is to bring French collaborationists to justice.