WE CAREFULLY STUDIED the legal aspect of transporting Lischka to France. Serge examined the case of Colonel Argoud’s abduction from Munich, which set a precedent.
The conditions of the return to France did not constitute a major obstacle to the retrial of someone convicted in absentia: Male captus, bene detentus (Captured in irregular conditions, but detained in regular conditions).
Once we had attempted to abduct Lischka, the real battle began: getting the story in the German press. The next morning, I called a newspaper in Cologne, the Kölner Stadtanzeiger, and told them my name was Mrs. Schmidt: I lived on Bergisch-Gladbacher Strasse, and I had witnessed an attempted kidnapping the day before.
“Some young people clubbed a man over the head. I can’t believe it: the police got involved, and yet this morning there’s nothing in the papers.”
The journalist replied, “Yes, there is: look at page two, at the bottom. There’s a little piece on it there: ‘Four persons unknown attacked a shopkeeper early yesterday afternoon and then fled.’”
After that, I called another local paper, the Kölner Rundschau. “Hello, this is Mrs. Schmidt. I live at 559 Bergisch-Gladbacher Strasse. Yesterday, I witnessed an incident in Maria-Himmelfahrt Strasse. There’s nothing about it in your newspaper, and the Kölner Stadtanzeiger just talks about a shopkeeper attacked by four unknown people. But the attackers were foreigners, and the man who was attacked—I know this because I live nearby—is the former head of the German police in France.”
“That’s very interesting,” the journalist told me. “We’ll look into it.”
We called several newspapers, providing them with the same information. Then Serge phoned the German press agency, explaining that he was a French journalist and that there were rumors in Paris that the former head of the Sipo-SD in France had escaped an attempted kidnapping, and his newspaper was after the details of the event. So it was that a group of journalists began demanding information from the Cologne police. Around 1:00 p.m., we learned that there was going to be a police press conference on the subject that afternoon.
Later that day, I called again, this time using my real name. The journalists, who by now had worked out what was going on, ironically addressed me as “Mrs. Schmidt.” But our ploy had worked. The police had told the press that the Mercedes they’d found in the woods had been rented by a French person born in Bucharest. They did not divulge Serge’s name, out of fear that it would be connected to mine and that the press would turn it into a big story. The police must have imagined that we would remain silent in order to avoid getting into trouble; they did not yet understand that our goal was to raise awareness in Germany of the impunity enjoyed by Lischka and his accomplices, even if that led to legal action being taken against us. I gave the journalists the precise details of the abduction and the victim; that same day, I sent them dossiers on Lischka. For days afterward, there were headlines featuring my name and Lischka’s all over the German press.
Phase two of our plan involved drawing attention to Hagen. Forty-eight hours later, while the Lischka affair was still rumbling on, I sent out a press release via the Associated Press announcing that several hundred criminals like Lischka still lived free and that, unless the Bundestag ratified the convention, we would abduct other criminals whose names and addresses we knew. Our next victim would be Herbert Hagen, in Warstein. We gave details about his Nazi past, and his photograph, which we distributed to all the newspapers, appeared in the next day’s pages alongside his curriculum vitae. Hagen immediately called the police.
* * *
IF I HAD simply taken my dossiers to the newspapers’ editorial floors, none of this would have happened. For several days, the German press went into paroxysms of outrage over this menace to German citizens.
And so the whole issue of these criminals’ impunity—little known prior to this—was at last exposed in the press. In the Vorwärts, the Social Democrats’ party organ, Wolf Scheller wrote: “Since March 22, several gentlemen of a certain age … can no longer sleep peacefully; they do not answer the telephone, or let their wives say that they are absent.”
Simon Wiesenthal supported us: “Although the Federal Republic is not South America, I do understand why these young people are losing patience.” His was not a view shared by many West German columnists, however, many of whom seemed irritated that a woman should be involved in such actions. Peter Herold, in the Tagesanzeiger, was categorical: “The woman who slapped Chancellor Kiesinger has become a criminal. The Klarsfeld affair is a case of political pathology.”
Through journalists who were in contact with the examining magistrate, Dr. Bellinghausen, I learned that, at least for the moment, no arrest warrant had been put out for Serge or me. Questioned about this on March 31, Dr. Bellinghausen replied, “I am not obligated to believe what I read in the newspapers.”
Clearly, the German justice system was hesitating to issue an arrest warrant for fear that it would cause an even bigger scandal. I knew that if I forced the issue by going to see Dr. Bellinghausen, he would either have to let me go, which would suggest that the situation involving war criminals in West Germany was so outrageous that the government did not dare to crack down even on those who acted illegally against them, or he would have to arrest me, in which case the war criminals were continuing to enjoy impunity while their militant anti-Nazi accuser went to prison in their place.
So I went to Cologne, accompanied by Ralph Feigelson, a former French Resistance fighter and Auschwitz survivor, who wore his concentration camp uniform, decorated with medals. With his imposing physique and impressive beard, I knew Ralph was extremely photogenic, so we went to the DPA press agency. Several journalists, photographers, and cameramen followed us from there to the courthouse, where more photographers and cameramen were waiting for us.
We went to see the prosecutor.
“I know,” said Mr. Bellinghausen. “I heard about your arrival in Cologne.”
“Mr. Bellinghausen, I have come here, accompanied by Mr. Feigelson, first of all to bring you these dossiers. I also wanted to let you know that what was written in the newspapers is completely true: I am responsible for the attempted abduction of Lischka.”
“I have a warrant for your arrest in my desk drawer. Mrs. Klarsfeld, you are under arrest.”
* * *
BACK IN PARIS, Ralph Feigelson described this scene in LICA’s house newspaper:
The prosecutor Joseph Bellinghausen and his assistant received us courteously. They looked pale and embarrassed, but not surprised. After Beate presented them with the dossier, I asked for Lischka to be arrested immediately. The prosecutor, who looked like he was too young to know much about the war, said he was not competent to try the case. Beate was translating for me as he spoke because I only learned German in Auschwitz, so I find it hard to understand and even harder to speak. So, when he talked about the arrest warrant, I thought for about half a minute that he was going to have Lischka arrested! But he was talking about Beate Klarsfeld. The German state is charging B.K. with “a serious attempt at illegal confinement, complicity in assault and battery, and organization of a criminal association,” for which she faces up to twenty-three years in prison.
I was transferred to the Ossendorf Prison, a few minutes from the city center. My cell was on the first floor, and it overlooked a grass courtyard with a few flowers. It was an individual cell containing a bed without box springs, a wardrobe, a sink, a toilet, a barred window, a table, and a chair. I was allowed to write, to read three books per week (though no newspapers), to listen to the radio from 6:30 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. Everything was fine, clean, bearable—except for the loss of freedom. And the food, which, while it looked better than the meals I’d been given in Prague, tasted just as vile. I was allowed two thirty-minute walks per day. Most of the other women in the prison were prostitutes, though there was also an East German spy. We talked a lot during our walks (except for the spy, who always walked on her own), and some of the girls told me secrets: “One of my clients is a judge; he’s old, and he always asks me to tickle him beforehand because that gives him strength, but really I’m the one who needs tickling, because it’s not much fun with him. He pays well, though. Anyway, I should probably write to him. He might be able to get me out of here sooner…”
They were all very kind to me: I had slapped the chancellor; I had not been afraid to attack SS officers; and I’d been to prison before.
In the first few days, my only communication was with my lawyer, Klaus Himmelreich, a young Christian Democrat supporter whom I’d chosen by chance when I was arrested. Horst Mahler, my usual lawyer, was not in a position to recommend anyone to me, as he’d spent the previous six months in prison. Always very friendly and dressed to the nines, my new lawyer specialized in car accidents and saw my case from a purely legal standpoint. His attitude changed after he met Serge in Belgium, particularly as he was regularly threatened: “How can you defend that Klarsfeld woman?”
I had no contact with Serge, and I felt lost, suddenly cut off from the world. And yet, paradoxically, prison also relaxed me after so many weeks of physical tension. I did worry about Arno, though.
A day or two after my arrest, I was summoned to the courthouse for the examination of my case. I sat across from Dr. Bellinghausen and his assistant, Mr. Wissborn. While the prosecutor was notably well groomed, his assistant had a scruffy look; he was in charge of pornography, which meant his duties generally consisted of reading all the pornographic magazines that were published. Whenever he looked at me, I had the impression that he was trying to remember which magazine he had seen me in.
The examination took place in a relaxed atmosphere. I was given coffee and sandwiches, and the prosecutor even cracked a few jokes. But I had experience with German prosecutors: they tend to be very pleasant as a way of making people talk.
My objective was to make sure that all Lischka’s functions as a high-ranking Nazi were recorded in the minutes of our interview. Their objective was to limit the conversation to the legal parameters of my particular case, dissociating Lischka’s past from the man he was now. Whenever they said “Lischka,” I added “The head of the Gestapo’s Jewish Affairs Department,” and I would stop speaking and cross my arms if this was not written in the minutes. My case file ended up being huge, about twelve or thirteen pounds of paper.
During my sixteen days in detention, my lawyer asked on two separate occasions for my arrest warrant to be suspended and for me to be freed until the trial in July. Both times, the court refused. The judge, Mr. de Somoskeoy, had already given his personal opinion: “An act like Mrs. Klarsfeld’s can only be explained by a mental deficiency.” He insisted that I should be examined by a psychiatrist, and I replied that a society that rehabilitated murderers like Lischka was more worthy of psychiatry. The judge concluded, “Then the psychiatrist will attend your trial and will make his report based on his observations of you.”
* * *
WHILE I WAS jailed, the SS anthropologist Bruno Beger was tried in Frankfurt for procuring and preparing the eighty-six Auschwitz prisoners who would be killed in order to furnish bones for Professor Hirt’s pathological anatomy collection at the Reich University of Strasbourg. After being transported to Natzweiler concentration camp in August 1943, the victims were gassed, boiled, and then dismembered. Beger’s sentence: three years in prison.
Meanwhile, Serge was organizing a campaign to support me. After mobilizing former Resistance fighters and deportees, he was able to obtain a suspension of the arrest warrant, so I was—temporarily—free. In order to save face, the court demanded thirty thousand marks in bail. (To give you a point of comparison, the bail for SS Ludwig Hahn, head of the Sipo-SD in Warsaw, was eight thousand marks.)
When I was released, a guard in his early fifties came up to me and shook my hand. “I was worried that I wouldn’t see you walk out of this place. You did a good thing, a very good thing. I hope Lischka will take your place here one day.”
* * *
SERGE TOLD ME later what had happened during my imprisonment: “At the instigation of Mr. Pierre-Bloch, the various organizations of Resistance fighters and deportees, Communists and non-Communists, came together for the first time in years. At their third meeting, they formed a National Liaison Committee to seek out and punish war criminals. I also got in touch with some of the youth movements. The Revolutionary Jewish Organization occupied the German embassy and covered it with stickers saying ‘Free B.K., imprison Nazi criminals.’ Then they chained themselves to the embassy railings. And one day, we received a call at home from a gentleman named Mr. Lichtenstein. He told us he was worried about you, that he had fled Germany during the Nazi persecutions, and that if they ever gave you bail, he would pay it. And he kept his promise.”
Mr. Lichtenstein always said that what he did was “normal.” Serge and I know just how exceptional it was.
* * *
WHILE STILL IN my cell, I received the greatest reward I could imagine: a beautiful justification of all my protests carried out in the name of the German people, in an article by the philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch in Combat:
So B.K. is in prison and Dr. Lischka, SS-Obersturmbannführer, is free to go about his business unmolested. B.K. is in prison, but the head of the Gestapo in France, Knochen, a doctor of philosophy, is free to philosophize and to live his bourgeois life without having to spare a thought for the hundreds of thousands of poor victims whose bones are rotting in the ground. For now, the indifference of the German justice system is winning out over the courage of Chancellor Brandt. The apparent illegality of an act of protest is used by the Cologne prosecutor to conceal the horrifying responsibilities of a war criminal.
It is not difficult to understand why German neo-Nazis are so worried about B.K., so eager to silence her. B.K. is, alone, the conscience of a nation that would rather forget its past, would rather enjoy the benefits of its prosperity, its “economic miracle.” All Germany’s shopkeepers, its captains of industry, its tourists and soldiers, seem stunningly oblivious. Or is it that their consciences are clean? They think they do not owe us anything: no explanations, no apologies; they don’t even understand what we want from them. Which makes B.K. doubly precious to us …
She is fulfilling the promise made to us by the judges at Nuremberg, which they did not keep: “pursuing the greatest criminals in the greatest crime in history until the ends of the earth.” Her cause is our cause. Her exemplary struggle is a triumph of perseverance, lucidity, and passion, and it has the potential to rehabilitate the youth of Germany.
As a German citizen, she has bravely accepted the responsibility for horrible crimes she did not commit; though innocent herself, she has taken on the weight of her people’s guilt. And yet those crimes were not hers: they were the crimes of vile, fat, sixty-year-old men who currently run German politics and industry.
[…] And in spite of everything, B.K. has not decided that those crimes have nothing to do with her. That is wonderful … B.K. has chosen tribulation and danger. And so, for us, she represents hope, the possibility of reconciliation, the first great opportunity for forgiveness.
[…] And the same thing applies to her other protests: slapping an unrepentant chancellor, making a scene in parliament, chaining herself in the streets of Warsaw and Prague to bring attention to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism before the indifferent eyes of the crowds there … These are, assuredly, “scandalous” acts. But these scandalous acts, disturbing the good conscience of passersby, highlighted another scandal—an infinitely more serious scandal hidden by the forces of law and order: the scandal of the unpunished crime amid this triumphant prosperity. Acting scandalously to make people see the real scandal: that is the dangerous role B.K. has taken on, not in words, but in deeds.
* * *
I WAS ALSO encouraged by the attitude of the East German government. Friedrich Kaul, the GDR’s official lawyer, asked to take part in my defense. When he saw me in Cologne, Kaul told me, “Mr. Honecker gave written orders for me to defend you. Without that, I would never have been able to overcome the objections of all the senior civil servants who are against you. I also wanted to pass on Mr. Honecker’s greetings and his respect for you.” That respect meant a great deal to me, as I had earned it despite—or because of—my protests in Warsaw and Prague and my attacks on East German anti-Semites. It came from a man who had not, like me, spent two weeks in a pleasant, clean prison but had been locked up by the Nazis for ten years.
I informed Kaul that Serge was attempting to obtain an Israeli lawyer to represent Lischka’s Jewish victims at this trial. The GDR was extremely hostile to Israel at the time, but Kaul did not take offense. Perhaps he didn’t believe that the Israelis would support me. It was true, after all, that the newspaper of the West German Jewish community, the Allgemeine Wochenzeitung, had not been in agreement with the World Jewish Congress or the Jews in France, who had actively supported me: “This situation [the impunity of war criminals] does not give B.K. the right to act as a spokesperson for Jews and persecuted people, and to seek personal publicity in this intolerable manner.”
But I was not acting in the name of the Jews. Serge was acting in the name of the Jews, and I was acting in the name of the Germans. Anyway, it seems normal to me to assume that, as they were being murdered, those six million Jews would have preferred that their murderers—and the people who ordered those murders—should be punished rather than protected by the spokespeople for German Jews.