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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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Then, about 6 P.M., the cell door suddenly opened and
the guard called my name and took me out. He shoved me into the little office
where I had left my personal effects and these were returned to me. In a larger
office at the end of the underground corridor one of the policemen was sitting
across a table from a bald young man, better dressed than his colleagues, who
spoke to me in a German I barely understood.
"Look here," he said.
"Contrary to what you were told last night, we have changed our mind and you
are going to be expelled from Czechoslovakia at once. Everything is ready. A
car is waiting to take you to the nearest Austrian frontier."
I noticed
a camera focused on me from a corner, and a tape recorder in operation on a low
table.
The young man opened a file and took out a sheet of paper, from
which he proceeded to read in Czech. Then he asked me some questions. I told
him I could not understand what he was saying, so he repeated the text in
German.
All I could gather was that he was talking about my having
broken some Czech law or other and that I would not be permitted to enter the
country again for four years. He handed me a pen and asked me to sign.
Everything he had said was already on tape, and the camera was still focused on
me and running continuously.
When I left the office, another young man
followed me with a portable movie camera. Apparently he did not like my
performance, for I had to repeat my exit three or four times before he was
satisfied. Then I was allowed to wash up in a proper bathroom, with a female
attendant watching me. My luggage was brought to me, and I could put on my fur
coat and hat again. The cameraman followed me down the corridor, his machine
whirring all the way.
In front of the building, an unfamiliar looking
big black car – a Tatra, I think – was waiting with a chauffeur and a
policeman inside. I climbed into the back seat with the woman who had kept me
under surveillance in the bathroom and one other policeman. Again, I had to
repeat this scene several times to satisfy the cameraman; either he was a rank
amateur or he thought it necessary to get a shot of me from all possible
angles.
I was famished, and I persuaded my escorts to stop for an hour
at a village inn. Four hours later we came to a small frontier post in the
middle of a forest. It was bitter cold, and the ground was covered with deep
snow. The car stopped, and as I got out another photographer rushed up to put
that scene on film. Then my pass […port]
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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Page 138 |
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