Book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0814726623/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp;=1789&creative;=9325&creativeASIN;=0814726623&linkCode;=as2&tag;=doc06-20 Serge Klarsfeld (born 17 September 1935) and Beate Klarsfeld (née Künzel, born 13 February 1939) are activists known for documenting the Holocaust to establish the record and enable prosecution of war criminals. Since the 1960s, they have been notable for their activism against former Nazis, efforts to commemorate the Jewish victims from France of the Occupation, and for their support of Israel. They helped found and have led l'Association des fils et filles des déportés juifs de France (Association of the sons and daughters of Jews deported from France), or FFDJF. It is one of the groups that has documented cases and located for prosecution such German and French former officials as Klaus Barbie, René Bousquet, Jean Leguay, Maurice Papon, and Paul Touvier, who have been implicated in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of French and foreign Jews during World War II. The Klarsfelds were among organized groups who filed cases decades after the war, sometimes as late as the 1990s, against such officials for their crimes against humanity. In the 1960s, Beate Klarsfeld publicized the wartime activities of West German politicians; on one occasion, she slapped Chancellor Kiesinger in public in protest. After the German reunification and the opening of Stasi records of East Germany, in 2012 it was revealed that both Klarsfelds had been regular Stasi contacts during the 1960s. Beate had received materials on the politicians and pay for her actions against West German leaders. In the years before 1989 and the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Klarsfelds frequently protested against the Eastern Bloc's support for an independent Palestine and criticisms of Israel. Recognition for their work has included France's Legion of Honour in 1984.[1] In 1986, their story was adapted as an American television movie starring Tom Conti, Farrah Fawcett, and Geraldine Page. In 2008, a French television movie was made about them. In 2012, Die Linke ("The Left") nominated Beate Klarsfeld as a candidate for President of Germany in opposition to Joachim Gauck, a rights activist and Lutheran pastor from the former East Germany. Gauck was the consensus candidate and won overwhelmingly.[2] On January 1, 2014, the Klarsfelds were promoted in France's Legion of Honour: Béate became Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur et Serge became Grand officier de la Légion d'honneur. They are notable in the postwar decades for having been involved in hunting and finding German Nazis and French Vichy officials responsible for the worst abuses of the Holocaust, in order to prosecute them for alleged war crimes. Several officials were indicted due in part to the work of the Klarsfelds; they included the following, with the years of their convictions or deaths in parentheses: Klaus Barbie (1987) René Bousquet (1993) Jean Leguay (1989) Maurice Papon (1998) and Paul Touvier (1994) In the 1970s the Klarsfelds considered kidnapping Barbie in much the same way the Mossad did Eichmann but the plan fell through. They decided instead to bring international pressure to force his extradition. By 1995, only four senior French Vichy officials had been indicted for war crimes, and by that year, only Paul Touvier had stood trial.[18] Like Touvier, the former Vichy official Maurice Papon was convicted of war crimes in 1998. The Klarsfelds continued to publicize the wartime activities of prominent politicians in Germany and Austria. In 1986 the Klarsfelds campaigned against former United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, who was elected President of Austria amid allegations that he had covered up his wartime activities as an officer in the Wehrmacht. In 1991 Beate Klarsfeld was arrested and deported from Syria after she spoke out in Damascus against the government's harboring of Alois Brunner, another former Nazi official accused of war crimes.[19] As commander of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris from June 1943 to August 1944, he directed the round-up and transport of some 140,000 European Jews to the Nazi gas chambers in eastern Europe. Most were killed. In 2001 Brunner was condemned in absentia in France to a life sentence for crimes against humanity. In 1996, during the warfare in the former Yugoslavia, the Klarsfelds joined the outcry against Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić for alleged war crimes and genocide of Bosnian Muslims. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_and_Beate_Klarsfeld

• published: 18 Jun 2014
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