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Husband of Beate Klarsfeld, Nazi Hunter, Arrested in Bonn
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, October 4, 1972 BONN, Oct. 3—West German police today arrested the husband of Nazi-hunter Beate Klarsfeld shortly before a scheduled press conference at which it was claimed that another former Nazi has been found holding a high position here. Serge Klarsfeld, a 37-year-old, French journalist, was arrested by a detective from the Cologne criminal police. He is wanted in connection with the attempted kidnapping last year of an ex-Nazi. His German-born wife, Beate |is free on $10,000 bail in that She is a well-known Nazi hunter, who most recently traced Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief in Lyons, to South America, She also gained notoriety in November, 1968, by slapping the then chancellor of West Germany. Kurt Georg Kiesinger. for his services to Hitler's Third Reich. Had the police not appeared the press conference today would have been of little importance. The Klarsfelds and Jean-Pierre Bloch, president of the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, have discov-, ered another old Nazi holding a relatively high position in Lower-Saxony. Major in SS He is Heinrich Illers, who, during the war, was a major in the SS and deputy to the man the Klarsfelds tried to kidnap last year, Kurt Lischka. Mr. Lischka had been SS commander in Paris. In their press statement, the Klarsfelds charged Mr. Illers with complicity in the death of French Jews and resistance fighters and direct responsibility for a "death train" on which 536 persons died on Feb. 2, 1944. Mr. Illers retired yesterday as senate president of the State Social Court in Celle, Lower Saxony. He admitted that he had been an SS major in Paris during the war but denied any complicity in the deaths of Jews or partisans. Nor was he hiding his past, he maintained. In addition to throwing the spotlight on Mr. Illers. the Klarsfelds came here from Paris to further press for ratification by the West German parliament of the Franco-German agreement of Feb. 2, 1971, under which more than 1,000 Germans sentenced as Nazi war criminals by French courts can be extradited to France. They charged that West German politicians of all parties were bowing to public pressure not to ratify the agreement. The police intervened before the press conference started. But they let Mr. Klarsfeld make a statement before hauling him off. "I would like to see German police as active against Nazi criminals as they are against us," he said. "If I am arrested today, It is because the German political parties did not agree to judge Nazi war criminals." Mr. Klarsfeld has been in Germany twice since the bungled attempt to kidnap Mr. Lischka and. spirit him across the border Into France. Both times, he camil with a safe conduct from thee Cologne police to give evidence in the case. Ironically, he said in his prepared statement that he planned to Visit the district attorney in Cologne tomorrow to hand over documentation on the Illers case. |
