Their “fight against oblivion” was highly praised. Emmanuel Macron honored Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, known for their tireless hunting down of Nazis after the war, in Berlin on Monday. The President of the Republic welcomed their “fight against oblivion,” admitting that the “work” against anti-Semitism “is not finished.”
“Your couple embodies these decades of travel together” between France and Germany, Emmanuel Macron said as he presented them with the Grand Cross and the Legion of Honor during a state visit to Germany.
He recalled the incredible meeting of a French Jewish student, whose father was killed at Auschwitz, and a German au pair in 1960 in Paris. Both, “activists of memory and justice,” began a long-term struggle to expose the Nazis, who disappeared from view after World War II, and work to recognize the Holocaust, the Head of State recalled.
“Be vigilant in the face of anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, xenophobia”
The couple contributed to the arrest of the head of the Gestapo in Lyon, Klaus Barbie, who was hiding in Bolivia, who was extradited and then sentenced to life imprisonment in France in 1987. They also convicted in absentia Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner, a refugee in Syria for the rest of his life. Beate Klarsfeld is also still famous for slapping German Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger in November 1968 in Berlin and denouncing his Nazi past.
“You (fought) against impunity and oblivion” of Holocaust victims, whose “you resurrect their memory, their faces,” Emmanuel Macron also recalled. In France, Serge Klarsfeld in 1978 published “Memorial of the Deportation of Jews from France”, based on a list of those deported (76,000 people).
“You allowed our Europe to face its history (…) in order to refute all the falsifications of French history (…) changed the German consciousness,” said Emmanuel Macron. “A good memory (it) also allows us to remain vigilant in the face of anti-Semitism, denial, xenophobia,” he warned, adding: “The work is not finished, I know that.”
Emmanuel Macron made no mention of the couple’s recent and controversial stance in favor of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party. Both believe that the party has broken with the anti-Semitism of its predecessor, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, and “entered the circle of republican parties.”
Source: Le Parisien
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