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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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possible, it would mean that this
cooperation is plunging its roots into a criminal past.
One of the
people in Achenbach's law office, his former client Horst Wagner, was liaison
between Ribbentrop and Himmler. It was Wagner and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
who, in 1943-1944, sent to death thousands of Jewish children rather than let
them go to Palestine.
There you have an example of German-Arab
cooperation that we would not care to see again.
This is why those
people in Germany who have the courage to assume their responsibility as
Germans in regard to the Jewish people are also asking the Arab world, through
me, to change its unjustly aggressive policy toward the State of Israel, and to
admit the sovereign existence of Israel within secure and recognized frontiers.
This is why we are also asking Egypt to influence the Syrians and Iraqi
authorities, so that the living conditions of the Jewish communities in Syria
and Iraq may be improved. The lot of those Jews signifies, to the entire world,
the lot suffered by Jews in Arab territory.
It is my intention
to do the same in Damascus, Baghdad, and Beirut. But this time I have no visas.
It would have been a waste of time to try and get them. As I check in at the
Egyptian Airline, the Reuter correspondent informs me that a visa will be ready
for me in Cairo. Some hours later I land in Egypt; I have no trouble the first
night. The following morning, on the advice of the press corps, I report to the
Ministry of Information, near the Nile. I am received courteously by Dr.
Metwalli, chief of the Foreign Press section. I explain the purpose of my
visit. He telephones to the office of the National Assembly and asks to see my
dossiers (they also include copies of anti-Jewish correspondence between the
Mufti and Nazi officials), in order that he may inform the President of the
Assembly, as the latter cannot see me personally.
Thursday morning,
before boarding the plane for Damascus at the Cairo airport, I have a televised
interview with CBS in which I explain the major reasons for my Mideast tour. I
am the only European on the plane, and I am aware of stares of curiosity. At
the airport at Damascus the police keep me waiting a half hour and then say I
am not authorized to receive a visa. It is now close to noon. They tell me I
can return to Cairo or proceed to Beirut. Of course I choose Beirut, but I have
to wait until next morning. So I spend eighteen hours in the icy drafts of the
transit area, with nothing to do but observe the comings and goings of a
handful of planes, most of them from Arabia and Kuwait, carrying picturesque
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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Page 330 |
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