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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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completely. It was a ray
of light for me. I felt part of the Scholl family.
Hans and Sophie
Scholl were students. At Easter 1943, they and Adrian Probst, Professor Huber,
and a few others had written and distributed tracts in Munich condemning Nazism
and its crimes. They were not heeded, but were arrested and beheaded. I read
what Thomas Mann told the Germans over the American radio on June 27, 1943:
"Now their eyes were opened, and they laid their young heads on the
block to testify to their faith and to the honor of Germany after having told
the president of the Nazi tribunal to his face: 'Soon you will be where we are
now,' and affirmed as they faced death: 'A new faith is being born, a faith in
honor and freedom.' Brave, magnificent youths! You shall not have died in vain.
Never shall you be forgotten!"
Being on the fringe of ideologies,
parties, and organizations, the only thing that made them risk their lives was
their conscience as Germans. Although it seemed meaningless and sterile in
1943, the significance of their act has grown with time until it reached Serge
and, through him, me. In them I saw myself.
November 1960. Serge
was on military duty. The separation brought us still closer together. We went
to see each other often, and we wrote every day. In my wretched French I told
him:
"Your letters make my feeling for you grow. I don't know myself
any more. I read and reread your letters, memorize the phrases that speak of
love, and do not hesitate to believe every word. At first I always doubted them
a little because I was afraid I might be disillusioned. But during the nights
when you made love to me I could feel that you did love me, and now I return
that love with all my heart. For the first time I am deliberately putting into
writing that I love you."
Almost every evening Serge would
telephone me. My employer, Mme. Pontard, a mathematics teacher who had not
married off her daughter Monique, kept telling me: "Beate, he won't marry you.
He's not serious. Frenchmen never marry foreigners."
What difference
did it make? Waiting for Serge took all the burden out of my daily existence.
He was on maneuvers at Mormelon in February 1961, when he wrote:
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
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