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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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They were on my side, but they irritated me with all
their patronizing, tried-and-true bits of advice.
I settled with
Matthiessen that I would be in my electoral district whenever Kiesinger was
there. The ADF would help me carry on my campaign.
On May 10 I took the
night train, by myself as usual, and stretched out on yet another banquette for
the trip to Stuttgart, where a NPD Congress of neo Nazis was to meet over the
weekend. Serge, who was going to demonstrate with me, had already arrived. Our
first disappointment was to find that the Social Democrats and the union
leaders had taken off for the weekend. The NPD's rabid security force had
transformed the Congress hail into a fortress. They had barricaded the entrance
with wooden boards, and turned themselves into a human barrier by linking hands
and spreading their lederhosen-clad legs. I shuddered at the thought of
having to tangle with those giants, and the young demonstrators apparently did
too, for there were no hand to hand encounters.
It was extremely
important that our protest against the NPD get full attention so that it could
not be said that the neo Nazis met with no opposition. We decided to make the
most of our ridiculously pitiful resistance. The press would be looking for
something sensational to report. If nothing happened, they would merely print a
picture of Adolf von Thadden speaking. So why shouldn't we give them a chance
for a picture that would reflect our line and not the NPD's?
I proposed
that we hang a huge Nazi flag in the main square and solemnly proclaim
Stuttgart the foremost Nazi city in Germany. Getting the material for the flag
was no cinch. Sewing it up was no cinch either, not to mention painting a
swastika on it. But finally we produced a reasonably good flag.
Luck
was with us. We made such an impression right in the center of the city that
the picture of our flag and of us haranguing the good citizens of Stuttgart
appeared in the papers of Germany and the rest of the world with the caption:
"Germans Protest Neo-Nazi Congress."
May 28. Back in East
Berlin, I assembled photographs of documents to illustrate the book on
Kiesinger that the Heinrich Heine Publishing Company of Frankfurt had
commissioned. It was to have a much more controversial tone than the previous
one, for I
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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Page 81 |
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