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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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Page 190 |
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All the Kölner Stadtanzeiger says is that
a businessman was attacked by four unknowns. You shouldn't be so casual about
things like that. The muggers were foreigners, and their victim – I know
because I live nearby – was formerly chief of the German police in
France."
"Very interesting," the reporter said with some enthusiasm.
"We did not know about it, but we'll check with the police. If what you say
proves true, we'll send you an honorarium. Give me your name and address
again."
I telephoned still another newspaper, the Express, and
told the same story. Then Serge telephoned all the papers and the German press
service in Cologne, saying he was a French journalist and that the rumor was
going around Paris that the former Paris S.D.-Security Police chief had
narrowly missed being kidnapped and that his paper wanted details.
So
reporters began besieging the Cologne police, insisting that the French press
knew about the incident. When Serge called the Express again around 1
P.M., they told him the police had decided to hold a press conference on the
matter that afternoon.
Late in the afternoon I called again, this time
using my real name. The reporters had talked among themselves, and now they
jokingly called me Frau Schmidt. The trick was working. The police had told
them that the Mercedes they had recovered had been rented by a native of
Bucharest who had come from France. Obviously they meant Serge, but the police
did not want to release his name for fear that it would be connected with mine,
and that the press would make a big thing out of the affair. The police thought
we would keep quiet to avoid trouble. They did not yet realize that our goal,
regardless of the risk of being hailed into court, was to bring to the Germans'
attention the impunity Lischka and his colleagues were enjoying. I then gave
the reporters specific details about the kidnapping and about Lischka. The next
day and thereafter there were big headlines in the German papers: "B.K. Tries
to Return Former S.S. Chief Lischka to Paris."
The second part of our
scheme was to put Hagen into the limelight as much as Lischka and to press for
the ratification of the Franco-German treaty.
Forty-eight hours later,
while the newspapers were still full of the Lischka affair, I got the
Associated Press to release a statement saying that there were still several
hundred criminals like Lischka
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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Page 190 |
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