Serge and Beate Klarsfeld
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.
*
Nazi hunter*
Charles R. Allen, Jr.*
Tuviah Friedman*
Simon Wiesenthal*
Yaron Svoray*
Efraim Zuroff
