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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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[repro…] ductions on the wall for originals. For
the occasion, I had bought myself a wool dress with a red bodice and steel gray
cuffs. It had cost me plenty, but it had the desired effect, especially since I
was wearing Dior patent-leather pumps.
They took pictures of me
preparing a meal in my spotless kitchen, and thereafter I became in their eyes
a real middle-class housewife who was driven by an irresistible impulse to
leave a well-ordered existence and a well-to-do home to which she was much
attached. Kiesinger's idea that I was a professional revolutionary fell flat.
November 18. The Ilyushin 18 took off for a rough flight from Le
Bourget to Schönefeld. The visibility was so poor that we could not land
in East Berlin. We headed for Warsaw, then Prague. Finally we had to spend the
night in the Budapest terminal, along with eight hundred other stranded
passengers.
November 19. We reached East Berlin, were I was
welcomed with flowers left over from the night before and a big black Ziss car.
I stayed at the Unter-den-Linden luxury hotel, where two young people came over
to my table and asked for my autograph – the first time in my life –
which I wrote on a menu.
November 20. I caused a small panic in
East Berlin. Although I had been invited only to do an interview on East German
television, I had told the East German Press Agency in Paris that I would hold
a press conference on Kiesinger's Nazi past in the Potsdam Archives building.
My East German hosts were dumfounded. They did not like having their hand
forced. Since no foreigner has a right to invite Western reporters into a
government agency, the press conference was forbidden.
So far as I
could observe, the incident did not diminish the general enthusiasm. An album
of hundreds of press clippings and cartoons that had appeared in East Germany
since my "exploit" was ceremoniously presented to me. I found the East German
papers quite favorable. How could such a rigidly communist state bestow so much
praise on a single sensational act – and one that undermined authority to
boot?
November 22. Michel Lang joined me, and we left for
Dortmund to attend a meeting of young socialists at which Günter Grass and
the singer Dieter Süverkrupp were to share the stage. Grass was none too
pleased at having to play second fiddle to me.
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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Back |
Page 68 |
Forward |
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