IN DECEMBER 1970, two of the people accused of attempting to hijack an airplane to escape the Soviet Union were sentenced to death. In tandem with LICA and thousands of Jews, I took part in the protests in Paris that followed this verdict.
Three weeks later, I was asked to speak at the Maison de la Mutualité. The room was packed. Among the other speakers were Jean-Paul Sartre and Eli Ben Gal, the European representative of the Israeli party Mapam. When my name was announced, there was a loud burst of applause. I was very touched by this. Later that evening, Ben Gal came up to me, shook my hand, and said, “This is the first time in my life that I have shaken the hand of a German. But after all you have done, I can and I must.” He wrote a short dedication for me on the program for the event: “To Beate, who brought something unique into my life: the hope, one day, of a reconciliation between our two peoples and, while we wait for that far-off moment, a real friendship.”
How far I had come since that day in the summer of 1966, at a kibbutz in Galilee, when a young woman explained to me that they did not allow Germans to live with them! To be allowed into the hearts of the Jewish people, to be able to shake a Jew’s hand without any ulterior motive on his part, we as Germans had to do more than simply leave them in peace.
That night in the Mutualité, a journalist from a German press agency was taking notes. He sent a complete account of the meeting to Hamburg, expressing how moved he was by seeing a German woman welcomed so warmly by so many Jews. That paragraph was censored from his article: German readers must not be made aware that the scandalous path I had taken in public life could have ended in the respect of Jews, a respect that most Germans were far from earning.
I spoke with more emotion than usual that evening, perhaps because the battle was about to move to a new front: Czechoslovakia.
The expulsion of many Jewish socialists from Poland, the insidious persecution of thousands of others who do not want to leave their country, the inferior status reserved for the majority of Soviet Jews, the obstacles that prevent them from living and expressing themselves as Jewish nationals or emigrating, the recent trial in Leningrad and its terrifying verdict: all of this is anti-Semitism. Likewise the venomous attacks on former Czech leaders of Jewish origin. We must be clear about this! All of this is anti-Semitism, and it will only spread and strengthen unless the Communists, socialists, and anti-fascists here in the West openly and wholeheartedly throw themselves into the battle against it!
The western Communists denied the fact that many Soviet Jews wished to emigrate to Israel; in Brussels, in February 1971, I even heard a delegation of Soviet Jews state that there was no Jewish problem in the USSR. And yet it was obvious that the problem did exist and that it would take more than denial to make it go away.
But words were not enough; the situation demanded action. I could not be content merely to write press releases and sign petitions. Particularly as the East German party newspaper, the Neues Deutschland, had just taken up an anti-Semitic position by approving the death sentence of the sixteen refuseniks (all but two of them Jewish) who had attempted to escape the USSR by stealing a civilian aircraft, in what became known as the First Leningrad Trial.
If the East Germans were subject to such brainwashing, I felt obliged once again to make a public protest against that hateful policy in a way that would reach the people of East Germany. A number of former Nazis had found jobs in the GDR’s propaganda department. They were not in positions of great power, but they still had influence. And the occupation of Czechoslovakia, the persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union, the GDR’s good relations with the Arab countries … all these things gave those ex-Nazis the opportunity to rear their ugly heads.
In early 1971, anti-Semitism was growing stronger in Czechoslovakia. The Bratislava edition of Pravda attacked “Jewish intellectuals who were able to occupy a number of influential posts in Czechoslovak cultural life.” On January 13, Radio Prague broadcast the conclusions of the Czech Communist Party’s Central Committee accusing Zionist elements of having played a considerable role in the events that led to the Soviet invasion. Whenever a former leader of Jewish origin was mentioned, the radio announcer used certain set phrases, such as “an admirer of Lev Davidovich Bronstein, better known as Trotsky.” A trial of twenty-six young Trotskyites was due to take place on February 8. They were accused of “attempting to overturn the socialist regime, not only in Czechoslovakia but in other socialist countries, including the USSR”—a monumental accusation.
I decided to protest outside the courthouse on the opening day of the trial. This date seemed particularly propitious, as the East German prime minister was traveling to Czechoslovakia the day before, to take a rest cure in Karlovy-Vary. It was highly likely, after my arrest, that Gustav Husák, the secretary-general of the Czech Communist Party, having met me in East Berlin, would turn toward the East Germans for advice on what to do with me. And I felt pretty sure that the East German government would not want its youth to find out I’d been sent to prison, because that would almost certainly provoke a wave of protests, particularly among the country’s students. And they couldn’t hide the truth from them, because they were able to access news from West Germany. With Willi Stoph being in Czechoslovakia at the time, his opinion would probably be decisive. So he and his fellow East German leaders would be caught in a dilemma: to abandon a German woman in prison, knowing that she was telling the truth, or to intervene on her behalf despite the trouble she was causing them.
But first I had to get a visa. As it was possible that the Czech secretary in the Paris embassy might know my name—and what I had done in Warsaw—and consequently be suspicious of my intentions, I decided to turn up at the consulate with Arno, playing the role of a snobbish middle-class woman who wanted to embark on a pleasure trip in a slightly “exotic” country. Arno did his part, climbing on the furniture and making a mess of the secretary’s neatly stacked paperwork, and the secretary quickly got rid of us, handing me a visa without any questions and even booking me a hotel room. I bought a Paris-Vienna-Prague-Cologne-Paris plane ticket and packed my suitcase with three hundred leaflets, written in French and Czech.
It was hard to leave my family. My mother-in-law was frantic, fearing that I would be drowned in the Vltava, as had happened to a leader of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in 1968 at the hands of the Czech secret service. Serge had trouble concealing his anxiety, too. For once, Arno knew nothing about it all.
I left Serge at Orly Airport. As I walked away from him, I turned my head, and the two of us stared intensely at each other. I believe that couples who deliberately live with a shared ideal and in a climate of danger are much more likely to see their love increase over time. To me, that is what living together really means.
* * *
I LAND IN Vienna on Saturday, February 6. From there, I will take the train to Prague. The police checkpoints in airports are far more rigorous than those in train stations, and there is a strong possibility that my leaflets will be discovered if I go through airport security. I have to wait an hour at the airfield in Vienna because the customs officials sees my name on a blacklist.
After finding my hotel, I call Simon Wiesenthal. He meets me that evening in a café. I tell him about my plan, and he gives me some new information, notably that the Trotskyists’ trial will not take place on February 8 because the Czech authorities fear it will provoke protests at the Young International Communist Conference in Bratislava.
Wiesenthal approves of my plan, but he is very worried. “Czechoslovakia is not like other countries; the police are really tough. There’s a real risk that you’ll end up in prison for a long time.”
My greatest fear, however, is not being able to inform anyone of my arrest, and simply disappearing. Of course, I have the addresses of Western journalists in Prague. Once again, I will have to contact them without raising suspicion. Serge and I have agreed that, if I succeed in talking to one of those journalists on Sunday evening, I will send a telegram to Paris stating: “Got here safely. Beautiful city.”
On Sunday, I catch my train. The three hundred leaflets are hidden in the lining of a small bag. This bag is full of food, notably a Camembert cheese so ripe that its smell will, I hope, dissuade even the most conscientious customs official from digging any deeper. I have also bought a huge bouquet of flowers that I will carry while looking vacuous. My aim is to be above suspicion.
It all goes as planned. The young policeman smiles at me as he glances distractedly at my passport. He takes a brief look inside my suitcase but doesn’t even glance at my bag of food. I do, however, have to get rid of an Austrian architect who seems determined to show me around Prague, unaware that his tourist itinerary would probably end with a visit to the local prison.
From the Flora Hotel, I take a taxi to the apartment building of a German journalist. He lives quite far from the city center. It is already pretty dark. The buildings have a sad look. I climb the stairs to the third floor and ring the bell. No one answers. I sit on the top step to wait. One hour later, I leave; I don’t have time to just wait around. I need to organize a contact with the press that evening.
I go to see a Reuters English correspondent, who lives in the city center. After listening to me, he explains that there is no anti-Semitism at all in Prague. All the same, I give him the time and place for the meeting. The place I have chosen for my protest is the university’s philosophy department, to which most of the students accused in the trial are attached.
As I doubt the Englishman’s reliability, I go to see a German journalist who works for a Cologne radio station. His wife is there alone, as he is at the Young International Communist Conference in Bratislava. She calls a cameraman from a West German television channel, and we spend the rest of the evening together in a café. Here, at last, I can speak freely: the young woman was obsessed by the fear of hidden microphones at her apartment. Getting back to my hotel room at one in the morning, I send the coded telegram to Serge. I sleep badly that night.
On Monday morning, I leave the hotel around ten o’clock and walk through the streets of Prague for two hours. It has been snowing, and the streets are covered with muddy slush. I take refuge in a café to warm myself up. I sit there tensely, surrounded by young people talking cheerfully.
At noon, I walk to a large square outside the philosophy department and take out my leaflets. On the back of each one, printed in large lettering in Czech, it says: “Against re-Stalinization, against repression, against anti-Semitism.” On the front, the same text is printed in both French and Czech:
Citizens of Czechoslovakia,
I am not a Jew; I am a German anti-fascist. In the name of all the forces of the left, I led the campaign of young Germans against the Nazi chancellor Kiesinger. I was sentenced to a year in prison for slapping him.
Today in Prague, as I did on August 26, 1970, in Warsaw, I am calling on the citizens of an Eastern country to oppose the frenzy of anti-Semitism that is being whipped up in the socialist nations by the supporters of re-Stalinization.
Under the influence of Stalinists, Czech propaganda continually claims that the 1968 occupation was caused by the pernicious and anti-Czech role of “Zionists.” This propaganda continually underlines the Jewish origin of certain liberal leaders; they are trying to convince you that there is no difference between a Jew and a Zionist agent. All of this is not anti-Zionism, it is anti-Semitism. They are looking for a scapegoat.
We must not let this anti-Semitism discredit socialism. The only solution for Western anti-fascists who are not blinkered is to act openly against it and against those who propagate it—as in the USSR, where Jews’ national rights are flouted; as in Poland, where the ultra-nationalist Moczar entered the Politburo while Jewish Communists are driven out of their country; as in the German Democratic Republic, where the Neues Deutschland dares to unreservedly back the death sentences handed out at the Leningrad trial.
Citizens of Czechoslovakia, do not allow yourselves to be contaminated! Fight against anti-Semitism!
A student reads the text, then asks me in German if it is really me, Beate Klarsfeld. “We know all about your campaign against Kiesinger, we talked about it a lot in class. What you’re doing is extraordinary. But be careful, the police here are very harsh. You should leave right away.” He takes twenty leaflets from me, promising to distribute them to his friends.
After three-quarters of an hour, I go to Wenceslas Square. It is full of people, but they all seem wary; I really have to insist before anyone takes a leaflet from me. A few minutes later, a policeman enters the square. He has seen what I am doing. I immediately give him a leaflet. He goes into a nearby phone booth, and I see him read the words on the leaflet out loud. Not long after that, I am brutally manhandled by another policeman, who tears the leaflets from my hands and shoves me into a police car. There is a long discussion on the car’s radio, and I am driven to a large modern building in a narrow street. I assume this must be the police headquarters, though in fact I never find out where exactly I was held.
I sit in a small office opposite a fat superintendent in a dark suit, about fifty years old with a round, rather jovial face that appears to grow harsher with each question he asks. He speaks to me in fairly good German. He empties my bag out on the table and, after taking my ID papers, spreads all the objects out. Then he phones to ask for an interpreter, and we wait for nearly an hour in silence.
Finally, the door opens and a man in his sixties enters: he is pretty thin and wears a very long dark gray leather coat with a belt, like a Gestapo commander. I get goose bumps. This is the official interpreter, a former Austrian. They start the interrogation, which is extremely methodical and lasts several hours. A secretary records all the questions and answers on a typewriter. The superintendent wants to know everything: Who wrote the leaflets? Who translated them? What machine was used to print them? Who gave me the money? Why are there so many East German visas in my passport? Who are my friends in the GDR? Are they aware that I am currently in Prague? Most of the time, I just tell him the truth, which makes things easier. On the walls is a poster protesting the imprisonment of the American radical Angela Davis.
The first phase of the interrogation ends. The superintendent, a detective, and the translator take me to the hotel to search my bags. On the way there, we walk through a courtyard lined with barred windows. The impression is so suffocating that I say to the superintendent while we wait for the car, “You’ll have to release me tomorrow, you know, like they did in Poland, because you can’t allow anti-Semitism to go on trial.”
“No, no,” he tells me, “that might work for Poland, and as it happens I completely agree with you, because there’s a definite anti-Semitism in Poland: it’s not organized by the government; it’s just rooted in the Polish people. It’s not like that here. You should have come on a visit and asked around; we could have shown you the country, and you would have realized that there is not anti-Semitism here. And you wrote [on your leaflet]: ‘Against re-Stalinization, against repression.’ But without Stalin, the Nazis would have won, and the Jews would have been exterminated.”
“I know they’re not the same, anti-Semitism in Poland and anti-Semitism here. I know that the Czech people are not anti-Semitic. But there is a team in the government, notably in the propaganda department, that is scapegoating the Jews, trying to make them out to be the cause of all your problems.”
“Why did you repeat the same protest in two Eastern countries? Surely you must realize that this repetition is fatal for you. We are going to be much firmer with you this time; you have slandered our country; you have acted against Czechoslovakia. You’re going to have to stay here for a while.”
I am becoming increasingly anxious. I am cut off from the outside world. In the West, I would have a lawyer to defend me. But here in the East, what do I have?
* * *
THREE POLICEMEN SURVEY the hallway while we go up to my room. They empty my suitcase and my travel bag. They search under the mattress, under the blanket, and in the cupboards, where they find some leaflets that I’d left there; they even lift up the carpet and inspect the bathroom.
Suddenly, I notice that the man who is searching my suitcase has put his hand beneath the liner and is taking something out. He discovers a dozen pieces of microfiche, and the police start holding the pieces under a lamp, trying to decipher what is written on them. These microfiche contain lists of names of Czech Jews killed by the Nazis during the war and awarded posthumous honors by the Czech government; I brought them here intentionally to infuriate the police. Serge found them at the CDJC. We expected the police to research the names immediately and, after realizing their true meaning, to understand that we were mocking them: after all, discovering hidden microfiche is the dream of all detectives. In fact, none of the police will ever mention those microfiche to me.
I am hungry, having skipped breakfast. The hotel has a luxurious dining room, and delicious smells keep wafting up from the kitchen. I decide that I may as well have one last good meal, and the superintendent agrees to my request. The four of us sit at a table, surrounded by foreign tourists. The policemen order only a beer each—they will pick up sandwiches on the way back to the station—but I choose a shashlik from the expensive menu and a half bottle of wine.
It is past 8:00 p.m. by the time we get back to the office. The policemen are all eager to go home for the night, so the interrogation is postponed until the next morning. They tell me that I will spend the night here, in a basement cell. I leave all my personal belongings in another office, where they are carefully sealed inside an envelope, and then I am taken to a kind of filthy cellar. All I have on me is one handkerchief, which I will end up using as a washcloth.
I am feeling pretty happy after everything that’s happened today, and I am expecting to find a bed in my cell, as I did in Berlin. Instead, I discover a dark little hole, twelve feet by fifteen, with three women—two thin and one fat—already lying on mattresses on the floor. My mattress is still rolled up against the wall. There are no sheets, only a stiff, dirty, stinking blanket. The women speak only Czech. One of them helps me to make my bed. Like them, I lie down fully dressed. Their panties and tights are drying by the window. I sleep better than I did the night before.
At 6:00 a.m., someone hammers on the door. One of the young women gets up and knocks on the wall. I don’t understand why until water suddenly spurts from a small pipe that sticks out of the wall. It is in a corner and is separated from the rest of the cell only by a torn curtain that no longer closes properly. Next to it is a bucket so disgusting that I assume it must be a chamber pot. But no, this is the bucket that holds all our water for the day. These Czech women are clearly used to this: they carefully use every drop of it. First they brush their teeth, then wash their faces; after that, they clean their laundry. They really are remarkably well organized. One of the women even cleans the cell with the last bit of grayish water. Then we roll our mattresses against the wall and fold our blankets.
All our guards are men. They watch us through a peephole in the door. The young women wear short skirts, and the one who cleans the cell does not put her panties on until she is done, so I imagine the male guards are enjoying themselves.
The cell’s window looks out on the courtyard I walked through the day before. It can’t be opened very much, and the stench coming from the corner behind the torn curtain makes me want to throw up. In the middle of the cell are a table and some stools. The walls were painted gray a long time ago, and the floor is covered by torn linoleum. At 6:30 a.m., breakfast arrives: some very sweet white coffee and a thick slice of stale black bread.
I wait for them to come and fetch me. They keep interrogating the fat girl from our cell, and each time she returns she is in floods of tears. She tells the others all about it, and they try to calm her down. The youngest one—the one who cleaned the floor—cheerfully sings Western pop hits to herself. I wish I knew how long she has been here and what she is here for, but the language barrier makes conversation impossible. From time to time, the women bang on the door. Almost every time the guard arrives, they ask him for a cigarette. They laugh and flirt with him, and he lets them have one. The rest of the time, they make their own cigarettes using old stubs, some bread crumbs, and a bit of dust; they savor each drag.
The day goes by slowly. At noon, we are given cabbage soup with a bit of meat in it, but it’s so salty and greasy that I eat only a few mouthfuls; I don’t want to get a stomachache in a tiny cell like this.
In the afternoon, my back starts to hurt from sitting on the stool for so long. So I unroll my mattress and lie down on it. A few minutes later, the door opens and the guard shouts something at me. I know what he wants, but I pretend not to understand. When he comes back and sees me still lying there, he storms into the cell, grabs me by the arm, yanks me to my feet, and hurls the mattress against the wall.
I am beginning to worry now. Last night, they told me I would be interrogated this morning, but no one has come to see me all day.
Around 6:00 p.m., the cell door opens again. The guard calls me over and leads me out. He shoves me into the little office where I left my belongings; they are returned to me. In a bigger office, I see one of the policemen from last night, sitting on a chair. A young, prematurely bald man sits behind a large table; he is better dressed than his colleagues. In barely comprehensible German, he tells me, “You are going to be expelled from Czechoslovakia immediately. We have prepared everything. A car is waiting for you outside, and it will take you to the nearest Austrian border.”
In a corner of the room, I see a camera pointed at me. On a low table, the spools of a tape recorder turn round and round. The young man opens a file and takes out a sheet of paper, which he begins to read in Czech. He questions me. I say I don’t understand what he is saying; he summarizes the text in German.
All I gather from this is that I have broken this or that Czech law, and I am now banned from entering this country for the next four years. He gives me a pen and asks me to sign the paper. When I leave the office, I am followed by another man, who carries a portable camera. But apparently he doesn’t like the scene he has shot, so he makes me do it again three or four times. I am allowed to wash in a bathroom, this time surveyed by a woman. When I have gotten dressed and picked up my bags, I walk outside, still pursued by the cameraman.
Outside the building, on the other side of the narrow street, a large black car awaits, with a driver and a policeman inside. I get in the backseat with the woman from the bathroom and another policeman. We have to repeat this scene several times for the cameraman. I wonder if he is new at the job or if he is shooting the scene from different angles. Around midnight, we arrive at a small border post in the middle of a forest. It is very cold, and there is a thick layer of snow on the ground. After a few formalities, two policemen and a uniformed customs guard escort me toward the Austrian border.
Suddenly, the policemen come to a halt. They do not say a word. Ahead of me, there are a few lamps and then nothing—just darkness. The customs officer explains that he cannot go any farther. I walk, alone, through the snow, heading for a tiny light that I can just make out in the distance. This turns out to be an Austrian border post, even smaller than the Czech one, a single room. When I enter, the two Austrian customs officers look up at me in astonishment.
“Did you come by car?” they ask.
“No. I walked.”
“But where did you come from?”
“I’ve just been expelled from Czechoslovakia.”
“Expelled?” They laugh. “Well, you’re lucky they didn’t keep you there!”
They are staunchly anti-Communist and fully prepared to help me find a room for the night.
This has just been organized when, at 12:25, their replacement arrives. The two guards explain the situation, and the new man picks up my passport and examines it. He speaks with the other two. “You should have asked for authorization from the police in Vienna before you gave her an entry visa.” He takes them aside, and I hear the name “Kiesinger” mentioned several times. Obviously, they are not going to get a response from the Vienna police at this time of night. I try to argue, but the new customs officer pays no attention. I have to spend the night in that border post, lying on two chairs.
At 6:00 a.m., the response from Vienna arrives: I can enter Austria. I reach Vienna by bus and train, and from there I call Paris. I reassure my mother-in-law that I am fine, and she tells me that Serge has gone to Bonn as planned. I catch a plane to Frankfurt, and another one to Cologne, and finally see Serge at four that afternoon.
* * *
THE NEWS OF my arrest had not filtered out of Czechoslovakia. Serge had called the hotel where I was staying but had found out only that I was no longer there. Because of the telegram I sent, he knew I had made contact with the press agencies in Prague, so he called their Paris offices and asked them to question their Prague correspondents about me. That was how he learned about my arrest. On Tuesday morning, it was in all the newspapers, which perhaps played a part in my expulsion. I learned later that Willi Stoph had immediately intervened on my behalf; I like to think that he had a sudden fit of conscience, though maybe he simply didn’t want his Czech vacation to be ruined.
* * *
ON MARCH 2, the Czech leader Gustav Husák criticized my “bad behavior” in Prague, probably because the anti-Communist radio station, Radio Free Europe, had created a buzz around the incident and because I had explained in an interview broadcast within Czechoslovakia the reasons for my protest.
My role is not to make people happy; it is to tell the truth as strongly as possible—bluntly, even savagely, if necessary. But having been banned from Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany, I was now about to be arrested in West Germany, too.