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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
 
 
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THE SLAP

Late in the afternoon of Sunday, November 3, I arrived at the West Berlin railway station. Serge had tried to smile encouragingly when he saw me off the night before, but he could not hide his anxiety. I had left to fulfill my promise.

My mother-in-law had tried to dissuade me, saying: "You are right, but you may get killed. The police will think it an assassination attempt and shoot. You ought to think of your child."

Think of him I did. I had written in German and in French a statement to make clear the meaning of what I was about to do, no matter what happened:
By slapping Chancellor Kiesinger I want to bear witness that a part of the German people – especially the young – is deeply revolted at having as head of the government of the Federal Republic of West Germany a Nazi who was assistant director of Hitler's foreign propaganda effort.

The Third Reich represented a philosophy as stupid as it was cruel….We don't want any more of that again, and we refuse to allow Germans who had any kind of authority under the Third Reich to play any part in Germany's political life . . . . Kiesinger and his colleagues are turning Germany into a revengeful, expansionist nation that ignores the consequences of world war and demands atomic weapons. So long as Kiesinger and his accomplices remain in power,
     
   
 
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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