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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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charge of reading all the pornographic magazines when
they came out. Whenever he looked at me, I always had the impression that he
was wondering which magazine he had seen my picture in.
My examination
was conducted in a relaxed atmosphere. They brought me coffee and sandwiches,
and the prosecutor even made a few jokes. But each of us kept his eyes on the
other. I had had experience with German prosecutors before. They try to relax
you to make you talk. So they are very polite and try to make you feel you
haven't done anything so serious – just to make you talk, to make you say
things that usually could be learned only through harsher methods.
My
aim was to get into the written record all the positions Lischka had held, but
for them Lischka was the victim and they had no desire to take his Nazi past
into consideration. They wanted to keep the whole business as coldly legal as
possible and to dissociate Lischka's past from the man who had recently been
attacked. It was hard for me to get that past down in black and white and to
make them understand why I had done what I did. Whenever they mentioned Lischka
to me, I always added: "You mean the head of the Gestapo's Bureau for Jewish
Affairs." And I stopped talking if I saw that that was not being entered in the
record. The next time I would say: "You mean the head of the secret service in
France," and again, if that was not taken down, I would shut up. Then I would
say "Deputy Chief of the Gestapo in the Reich," and if that position was not
recorded I would fold my arms and say nothing further. And so on. By the time
the examination was over, the transcript filled two big books and four
appendixes – about ten or twelve pounds of paper.
During my
sixteen days in jail, Himmelreich twice tried to get the warrant suspended so
that I could be free until the trial, which had been set for July. The court
turned him down both times.
De Somoskeoy, the president of the
tribunal, had already imprudently expressed his own opinion: "The only
explanation for behavior like that Klarsfeld woman's is feeble mindedness."
During the court session that ended with the rejection of Himmelreich's plea,
de Somoskeoy stated that "Frau Klarsfeld should be examined by a psychiatrist."
I protested loudly: "A society that rehabilitates murderers like Lischka is
what should be psychoanalyzed."
Before turning down my plea, the
president changed his opinion
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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Page 196 |
Forward |
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