I MET WILLY BRANDT again in January 1971, during his official visit to Paris. The meeting took place at the German embassy.
During my anti-Kiesinger campaign, I had been banned from the embassy. This situation did not change after Brandt became chancellor: the consulate even refused to renew my German passport. Furious, I called the government’s assistant spokesman, Rüdiger von Wechmar, whom I’d gotten to know when Brandt met Willi Stoph in May 1970. I hated having to use my connections in this way, but it was the only language that those bureaucrats understood.
* * *
AT BRANDT’S PRESS CONFERENCE, I raised my hand.
“Chancellor Brandt, when will the impunity of German criminals sentenced in France come to an end?”
“Soon, soon, gnädige Frau. A few days from now, the two governments will sign a new agreement that will put an end to the current situation.”
When the conference concluded, Brandt walked over to me. What he said went straight to my heart. “Your courage is refreshing. We were talking about you today, in fact; we were surprised that your work is still going on, because we’d thought it would end when Kiesinger left office. Your critical commitment in the East and the West is very positive.”
In fifteen months in power, Brandt had left his mark, particularly in terms of foreign policy. He had pulled West Germany out of its rut.
Ten days after I returned from Prague, I received a phone call from Yaron London, an Israeli television representative in France. He wanted to talk to me about my recent protests. The interview took place in his apartment, as we had moved to a smaller place a few months before this, for economic reasons, and our house was a mass of toys and piled-up case files.
When the interview was over, London asked me about my plans for the future, and I told him about our intention to bring the most prominent Nazi war criminals to justice.
“Their trials would be an opportunity to understand the police mechanism that led to the deportation and death of more than seventy-five thousand Jews from France and to establish who was responsible for it. And if we can bring to justice those few big fish, we will be able to prevent all the little fish in Germany from being rehabilitated. Any proceedings that end in a case being dismissed or an acquittal would lead to German public opinion accusing the French judicial system of having wrongly condemned those ‘German patriots.’ But the rehabilitation of Nazi criminals can only sully Germany’s reputation. We must force German society to examine its conscience, however uncomfortable that makes it.”
“Who are the biggest Nazi criminals in France who have not yet been punished?”
“There are two: Kurt Lischka and Herbert Hagen.”
“And where are they?”
“Living peacefully in Germany.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Lischka, who was the number one Nazi policeman in France, lives in Cologne. When I was going through his files, I noticed that he had been head of the Gestapo in Cologne from January to November 1940. So I thought that, if he were still alive, he would probably have chosen to live in a city where his former subordinates and colleagues worked in the police and government. I called the operator in Germany and asked if there was a Kurt Lischka in the Cologne phone directory. Ten minutes later, they called me back: ‘Yes, there is a Kurt Lischka. His number is 631 725, and his address is 554 Bergisch-Gladbacher Strasse.’”
“It was that easy?”
“Yes. It’s only in detective novels that ex-Nazis live in constant fear in Patagonia. Apart from the Eichmann abduction, which was organized and carried out by Israeli government services, there has never been any illegal action against Nazi criminals.”
As we were talking, I thought of something that Serge once said about Lischka: “Think how powerful a man like Lischka must feel. He’s responsible for the deaths of so many Jews, he’s sentenced to life imprisonment in France, and yet he puts his name in the phone book. How much contempt must he have for Jews? We have to react, Beate. You as a German, and me as a Jew.”
When I told London that we were planning to write an article about Lischka and Hagen for Combat, he suggested we make a film as well. “We could show it in Israel as part of an in-depth news show called Panorama.”
Thrilled, I agreed, and on February 15, Serge finished writing the screenplay for the Panorama program that would last twelve minutes if we succeeded in filming Lischka and Hagen. Four days later, my article was published in Combat. And two days after that, we were in Cologne, ready to get to work.
* * *
AT 8:00 A.M. on Sunday, February 21, we parked our car opposite Lischka’s apartment building, on the far side of the wide street where he lived. It was a three-story building in a suburb of Cologne, and he lived on the top floor. The day was gray and rainy, and the streets were deserted.
We waited for six hours for him to emerge, but nothing happened. We went to eat lunch, and I called his phone number to find out if there was anyone home. When his wife answered, I hung up. We decided to ring his doorbell. He must have been watching us through his window, however, and, seeing a cameraman, opted not to respond. So we rang all the bells in the building, and someone eventually came downstairs and opened the door to us. We explained that we were there to see Mr. Lischka. They let us in and told us he was on the third floor.
We walked upstairs. His door opened. Mrs. Lischka appeared: her hair was blonde and stylishly cut, her expression cold. I explained that we had come to interview her husband for a French television show. After a moment of thought, she invited us into a small room, probably the dining room, and called out to her husband, “Kurt, come and see!”
Kurt Lischka entered the room. I told him that Mr. Klarsfeld was a French journalist and he wanted to interview him. I was his translator. Lischka asked to see Serge’s press card, then asked me for my name. As usual in such situations, I used my maiden name. Lischka got to his feet and stood next to his wife. He was very tall, with a large pink head and sparse blond hair, and he spoke in short, dry sentences. He wore slippers, pants, and a cardigan. I was watching him closely when I announced Serge as “Mr. Klarsfeld,” but Lischka did not react. I translated Serge’s questions word for word.
“After the signature of the Franco-German agreement, I did some research into Nazi criminals judged in absentia in France. You were at the top of the list, Mr. Lischka. But before starting a campaign against you, we came here to ask if there was anything you wanted to say in your defense.”
“I have nothing to tell you. If I am ever asked to account for my actions in a German court, I will do so, but only in a German court. To you and to the French courts, I have nothing to say.”
“Do you acknowledge that you were assistant head of the Sipo-SD in France, head of the Gestapo in Paris, and one of the main organizers of the persecution of the Jews in France?”
He responded to this with icy silence. His expression was closed, hostile. Serge asked him, “Would it interest you to see the orders you signed? Perhaps you thought they had been destroyed, like most of the German archives were; but at the CDJC, the archives for the Gestapo’s Jewish Affairs Department have all been kept, and your signature is at the bottom of several documents. You will be tried and, I hope, convicted.”
Lischka was interested in those documents. I handed him a few photocopies. His wife leaned over his shoulder to see, and we noticed the sheets of paper tremble in Lischka’s hands. He read the pages attentively, one after another. He looked like he was in shock. We left soon afterward.