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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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Page 228 |
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My article was deliberately forceful; indeed, some
people even found it violent and complained that I was only a child when others
were fighting in the Resistance, and so what right had I, etc…. Still,
weak wills had to be made firm. Otherwise there would be just one result: More
criminals would go unpunished or, even worse, be rehabilitated.
Then a
wonderful opportunity arose for taking action in Germany: For a whole week the
Munich courts were in the limelight because a hold-up had taken place in which
the police, on instructions from Prosecutor Schreiber, had opened fire, and a
bank clerk had been killed. Germany was horrified. So all that was necessary
for us to get some publicity was for a group of us to go to Munich armed with
our data, and submit it to the court. Either the Munich judges would be so
afraid of an additional scandal that the decision would be revoked, or at least
the reporters there would let Germans know the facts about the Barbie case and
the stand the French were taking.
Unfortunately, however, the
Resistance veterans in Paris whom I talked to slipped away. They belonged to
radical associations that were angered by my article, in which I had quoted
Deputy Virgile Barel, who was a communist, although I did not know it at the
time. Still, I had only talked sense and action. Until I spoke up, not a single
German was familiar with the various speeches and appeals Barel had made in the
National Assembly. It was not enough for him to demand action from his own
government; it would have been just as easy for him to take some action
himself. My point was that there had to be unanimous action. Barbie's victims,
whether rightists or leftists, Jews, capitalists, or communists, were all up
against the Gestapo. It was only fitting that the Gestapo should now be up
against all of them.
The leaders of the Nazi police system had not
wavered in their repression of the Resistance and of the Jews. Their deceit had
helped them overcome many obstacles, for they were fiendishly inventive in the
operation of their death machine. Their iron determination and their
unremitting efforts were deadly, as the deaths and the misery they caused can
testify. What is more, almost all have survived unpunished and full of scorn
for their critics, for they have not even bothered to conceal themselves.
How could we fight such an enemy? By making statements that no one
would read? By arousing public opinion that would merely expose an unpunished
criminal, as in the case of Lammer […ding]
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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Page 228 |
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