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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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You head the list. But before we start a campaign
against you, we want to know whether you have anything to say in your defense."
Lischka replied: "I do not have to account to you. If I eventually have
to account for my actions to a German court, I will do so, but only to a German
court. I have nothing to say to you, or to a French court."
Serge
persisted: "Do you admit to having been chief deputy of the French
S.D.-Security Police, chief of the Paris security police, one of the leaders of
anti Jewish persecution in France, and chief of the Jewish Division of the
Gestapo in the Reich in 1939?"
Lischka's only reply was icy silence.
His expression was stern and hostile. He refused to be filmed, and since he
might have broken the camera, we did not insist. In my behalf Serge asked him:
"Would it interest you to see orders that you yourself signed? Perhaps
you thought they had been destroyed along with most of the German archives, but
they were preserved at the Library of Contemporary Jewish Documents in Paris,
and your signature appears at the bottom of them. When the Bundestag ratifies
the pending treaty, you will be brought before a tribunal, tried, and, I hope,
convicted."
Lischka showed some interest in the documents. I held out to
him photocopies of some that were quite compromising.
He took the
pages. His wife read them over his shoulder. We distinctly saw Lischka's hand
shake. I had given him a sizable stack of papers, and he carefully read one
after the other and seemed to be truly stunned. Doubtless he was seeing his
past rise up before him – a past that we had been the only ones to
reconstruct from our countless hours in the archives.
We left
Cologne for Warstein to film Herbert Hagen. But two days later we were back. We
arrived in Harry Dreyfus's Mercedes, and parked the car about a hundred yards
away from the house. It was 7 A.M., and we were early. It was very cold, and
for half an hour we had to keep stamping our feet to keep them warm. At 7:50
– later than usual, for it was the day after Carnival – Lischka came
out. We were leaning against the fence near the streetcar stop.
Lischka
was wearing an overcoat and his coat, hat, glasses, and black briefcase all
made him look exactly like a member of the Gestapo. The people waiting for the
streetcar kept staring at us because we had a movie camera.
Lischka got
closer to the stop and saw the people staring at us.
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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Back |
Page 169 |
Forward |
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