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Intrigues Of a Nazi Nemesis
The New York Post Wednesday, May 12, 1971 By JOE ALEX MORRIS Jr. COLOGNE (LAT)—Beate Klarsfeld, who boxed the ears of West Germany's Chancellor Kiesinger two years ago to call attention to his Nazi background, is still trying to redden the cheeks of her countrymen with shame. She wants to keep the spotlight on the anti-semitism of the Nazi era by exposing and punishing those still possibly culpable, directly or indirectly. In particular, she is pursuing a trail of vengeance against 310 German men still walking about in freedom here, although under sentence for war crimes in France. She is doing that even to the point of attempting an International kidnaping. On March 22 That abortive caper took place March 22, to the delight of the few to whom Mrs. Klarsfeld is a heroine, Irritation to the west German government, and heightened dread to the. 310 on the list. Four men, including a doctor with a hypodermic kit, arrived here from Paris in a rented Citroen. Beate was waiting for them. Her husband, Serge Klarsfeld, rented a black Mercedes with Frankfurt number plates. The intended victim, Dr. Kurt Lischka, 61, a punctual man, emerged from his home at the expected time. They were waiting. But that day, he unexpectedly crosse'd the street before walking down to the corner. This took him away from the parked Mercedes. Rather than risk failure, the men who were to do the Job decided to wait until he returned in the afternoon. Inexplicably, Lischka once again took the wrong side of the street. But this time, the men risked it. They rushed him, and tried to overpower and drag him across the street to the car. But Lischka Is a big man, and despite his years, he resisted. And he cried out for help. Police on Hand Passersby intervened. Soon the police were on hand. The plotters got away, and Lischka remained a free man. But he had lost something precious: His cover was removed. For Lischka was one of those hadowy figures who had successfully hidden his past. Even his closest neighbors did not know that he had been a top official in Hitler's Gestapo, sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a French court for his role in the deportation of 100,000 French Jews to concentration camps. He is one of Beate Klars-feld's 310. And back in Paris, Beate, a 31-year-old mother, a Protestant, and above all a crusader acknowledged she was behind the plot to kidnap Lischka. The plan was to force him into the Mercedes, knock him out with an injection, then transfer him to the trunk of the Citroen. He was to be driven through Belgium into France, and turned over to the authorities there. A few days later, Beate was arrested when she showed up at the Justice Dept. in Cologne, armed with documentary evidence purporting to prove Lischka's complicity in war crimes, not on'y in France, but in Berlin. Beate was delighted at her arrest. The publicity was worth the discomfort. She was even disappointed when the court released her on bail after 16 days. Conventional Life What turned a pretty, commonplace woman with a warm smile into West Germany's most notorious crusader? The answer goes back to 1960 when Beate, then 21, went to Paris. Before that, life in Berlin had been most conventional. She met a young Jewish journalist named Serge Klarsfeld, and they fell in love. His father had been in the French underground, and died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. "For me," Beate said, "this was a shock, to experience in the flesh what had been something abstract; something you read about but which doesn't affect you." That awakening changed her life. Beate is today one of the best known people in West Germany admired by some, deplored by others, but above all a gadfly—a constant reminder to her fellow Germans of an era they would much rather forget. |
