“My father had died in Auschwitz and I had behind me the suffering of French Jews. Beate carried with her the knowledge of Germany’s role in this suffering. Besides, we were naive and full of energy, so we did things we might not do when older and wiser.” Serge Klarsfeld paused and smiled at me….
Nazi hunters, a fertility specialist and a Tunisia-born journalist are among the Jewish recipients in 2013 of France’s Legion of Honor award. The Holocaust scholar and Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, 79, was named Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor — the order’s second highest degree. His wife and partner, Beate Klarsfeld, received the lower…
Over decades, together with her husband, Serge Klarsfeld, Beate Klarsfeld has forged a name for herself as a fearless Nazi hunter, one whose achievements include bringing to justice Klaus Barbie, the so-called “Butcher of Lyon.” During this time, she has also been a staunch defender of Israel. But today, Klarsfeld is engaged in quite a…
Charles de Gaulle famously observed that France had “la droite la plus bête au monde” [“the dumbest right-wing in the world”]. Events over the last couple of days reveal that the French Right continues to work hard for bragging rights to that dubious moniker. At the start of the week Christian Vanneste, a deputy of…
In 1995, Serge Klarsfeld described Henri Borlant, a French Jewish doctor born in 1927, as “the sole survivor out of 6000 French Jewish children under age 16 who were deported to Auschwitz in 1942.” On March 3, Borlant published a lucidly eloquent memoir from Les editions du Seuil, “Thanks for Surviving” (Merci d’avoir survécu). The…
Fifty years after his death on July 1, 1961, French modernist author and ferocious anti-Semite Louis-Ferdinand Céline is still causing controversy. Last January, an attempt by France’s Ministry of Culture to “celebrate” Céline on this anniversary ran aground after noted Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld pointed out that Céline was not merely the author of such…
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