|
|
 |
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
| |
|
| |
 |
Back |
 |
Contents |
Page 301 |
|
Home
Page |
Forward |
 |
| |
| |
institutional level, of the lessons to be learned
from the Hitlerian tragedy. There are all too few persons who experience any
obligation or responsibility for true justice or for helping the Jewish people.
So I am going to get myself arrested. I don't know for how long. My
release will depend on the volume and intensity of the reaction to my arrest.
This time I am depending upon the reaction in Israel, where I have been so
warmly welcomed. But in this cruel world I know it is not easy to arouse a tide
of moral indignation strong enough to wear down the dike of German law, with
its severity toward those who attack the established order. I am sometimes
compared to Antigone. But the task of pitting the unwritten law against the
written law is better suited to unmarried persons than to young mothers. It is
always a painful wrench to go away from Arno and little Lida, who is now only
eight months old, and in spite of the deep concern that makes me go, it always
leaves me with a tinge of bad conscience. Katia, the little marmoset perched on
my shoulder, rubs her head against my neck. Petia, the good cocker spaniel,
licks me. All the responsibility for the family falls once more on that true
heroine, my mother-in-law. Serge, who will have to orchestrate the campaign to
get me out of jail, is worried. Oh! to have to leave all these dear ones! I
will be understood by all those who have experienced separations in time of
war. I will be understood in Israel.
I leave Paris Tuesday evening,
April 16, with two faithful companions, Henri Pudeleau and Henri Wolff. This is
not Pudeleau's first expedition with me, but it is Wolff's. Like Pudeleau, he
is forty-nine, and was sent from France to Auschwitz after eighteen months'
imprisonment in France in the camp at Gurs. Like the other Henri, like Julien
Aubart, he too was active in the Irgun from 1945 to 1948 after his release from
the camp. They are here with me as a sign of the solidarity of deportees, to
demonstrate the connection between yesterday's battle and the one we are waging
today.
We arrive in Munich in the morning. We have some difficulty in
rounding up journalists, as the United States Secretary of Defense, James R.
Schlesinger, is in Bavaria today. At last we reach someone at the Associated
Press. I tell him what we plan to do and have him tip off the police and get
them to come to Dachau. We arrive before the police. There are tourists, the
museum is open.
In Israel this day is being dedicated to the memory of
the de […portees]
|
|
| |
| |
| |
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
|
Back |
Page 301 |
Forward |
|
|
