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French Protesters Break Up German Trial of Nazi-Hunter
International Herald Tribune July 2, 1974 By John M. Goshko COLOGNE, July 1 (WP).—The trial of Mrs. Beate Klarsfeld broke up in disorder today a.s a group of French spectators began singing "La Marseillaise" and shouting "Nazi murderer" during testimony by Kurt Lischka, a former high-ranking Gestapo officer in Paris. Mrs. Klar.sfeld, 35, is being tried for her role in an unsuccessful attempt in 1971 to kidnap Lischka on a Cologne street and take him to France. Lischka, now 65, had been sentenced in absentia by a French court in 1950 to life imprisonment for participating in the deportation of French Jews to death camps. The heckling started as he became reluctant to discuss his Nazi past under cross-examination. Trial Adjourned Presiding Judge Viktor dc Somoskcoy ordered the trial adjourned and Lischka was hustled out of the court behind a police guard. But the shouts of "murderer" and "scandal" were taken up by another crowd of Frenchmen in the corridor outside. In the jostling, one of the persons shoved aside by police was Jean-Pierre Bloch, a former French interior minister and a leading figure in organizations to combat anti-semitism. Most of the French in the court and in the corridor were former Resistance fighters or former inmates of Nazi concentration camps. A court spokesman announced later that the trial would resume tomorrow. But more testimony from Lischka was unlikely, he added. Today's demonstration occurred as Lischka was being cross-examined by Aric Marinsky, an Israeli lawyer representing Mrs. Klarsfeld. Mr. Marinsky told the court he would attempt to prove that Mrs. Klarsfeld's purpose in the kidnapping attempt was to dramatize the need for parliamentary ratiiication of a treaty amendment signed between France and West Germany in 1971 designed to close a legal loophole under which Lischka and other alleged war criminals have escaped prosecution. The West German constitution prevents his extradition to France. But war criminals found guilty by a court from one of the three World War II Western Allies cannot be tried in German courts for the same crimes. The pending treaty would eliminate this provision in respect to France, but it has been bottled up for three years in the West German parliament. French Note Rejected There have been .signs that the trial could cause friction in French-West German relations. Earlier, Judge de Somoskeoy confirmed that French President Valery Giscard c'Estaing had sent a message to the German Foreign Ministry expressing concern over the prosecution of Mrs. Klarsfeld and the failure of the German parliament to ratify the treaty amendment. He said that the Foreign Ministry had rejected the French message on the grounds that it was an interference with the independence of German courts. |
