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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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reaction would be to my performance. I had thought
for a while that my mother in West Berlin might change her attitude toward me
because the conservative papers were for the first time being more favorable to
me. I was wrong, however; her prejudices were as strong as ever, and she was
still completely allergic to any kind of public activity.
While I was
taking the S-Bahn to the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint, I began to worry that I
might not be allowed into East Germany without some difficulties. But
everything went as usual. I immediately telephoned one of my friends, a radio
executive who had been the first to help me establish contact with East
Germany. He and his wife met me the following day in the Hotel
Unter-den-Linden.
"I want to show you the leaflet I handed out in
Warsaw."
I had thought that might take him by surprise, but he replied
that he had already read it carefully. Then he said: "The press service
dispatches that descended on the newspapers gave a lot of journalists quite a
shock. It certainly made them think, even if they didn't show it."
We
arranged to meet again on the following day.
Another telephone call was
to an official in the Ministry of the Interior who had helped us in our
research on Kiesinger: "I should like to see you. Could Serge and I stop by
your office tomorrow?"
He answered me frostily: "I think that is
scarcely necessary after what you did in Poland."
"But why shouldn't
anti-Semitism in Poland be exposed?"
"You see the matter from the wrong
historical perspective," he said.
I wondered whether I might have any
better luck with the East Berlin paper, BZ am Abend, for which I used to
write fairly frequently. When Serge and I went to its offices, we looked up the
man in charge of foreign news. I asked him whether he was going to publish the
story I had sent in three weeks before.
"We really cannot print any
more of your articles," he replied. "We do not approve of your activities, even
if it is true that there are shortcomings in the communist countries. Our
opinion is that there is no need to expose them, for in doing so you are just
furnishing the capitalist camp with ammunition. After this latest performance
of yours blows over, we'll see."
I tried one last contact at the
Association of East German Anti-Fascists. The conversation was nothing but
clichés, for the people
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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