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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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I rang several more times. The door finally opened,
and the tousled head of a young girl appeared.
"I would like to see
Rudi Dutschke."
"He's asleep, but come in anyway."
The girl
called out: "Beate Klarsfeld is here."
A few days earlier I had talked
with Rudi on the telephone, and so he recognized my name.
"Good. Have
her come in."
I went toward the room from which the voice had come. It
was really a living room with a sofa bed in the middle. Since the shutters were
still closed, the room was in semi-darkness. I could barely make Rudi out, for
he was still in bed. His wife Gretel was beside him, and between them was their
baby Che, only a few weeks old. Rudi seemed very fond of his family; he was one
of the extremely few SDS leaders who was able to keep both his family life and
his political life in hand.
Gretel finished changing the baby and began
to give him his bottle. Rudi raised himself on one elbow. He was very simple
and frank, much as he was on platforms where I had heard him speak.
I
told him that I was planning a conference in Paris on young Germans and young
Jews joining forces against neo-Nazism, and that I wanted him to take part.
"I agree with you in principle," he said, "but I'll probably have to go
to Prague in the next few days. Things are getting tense there. I'm not sure I
can get to Paris in time."
Rudi was a strong contrast to the young SDS
abstract talkers I had encountered in the past few days. He was clear and
precise, and completely unpretentious. He had the grip of a leader, and could
have gone back to ordinary society and provided a comfortable materialistic
existence for himself and his family, owing to his intelligence, his skill as a
speaker, and his dynamic personality.
But Rudi was not a product of the
German consumer class. He had been exiled from East Germany for opposing its
excessive dogmatism, and in the West he also attacked the basic faults of
society. Through work and talent he had succeeded in making the students of
Berlin, and later of all Germany, the most politically aware in Europe.
Students in neighboring countries looked up to them.
On April 11, 1968,
three weeks after our meeting, the defenseless Rudi Dutschke was shot point
blank with three bullets. He was
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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