The French Jewish community has sharply condemned the arrest of Beate Klarsfeld by German authorities near Munich and her detention without bail in a Cologne jail until her trial which is expected to take place late July. The avowed Nazi hunter was arrested on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day while attending a demonstration at the site of the former Dachau concentration camp to protest against the Bonn Parliament’s delay in ratifying an extradition accord signed three years ago with France.
Mrs. Klarsfeld is accused by German authorities of having tried three years ago to kidnap Kurt Lischka, former head of the gestapo in Paris during the German occupation of France, and bringing him to justice in France where a court sentenced him in absentia in Sept. 1950 to life imprisonment for war crimes. Mrs. Klarsfeld was deported from West Germany and told she would face charges if she returned.
In condemning West German authorities for her arrest and incarceration, the French section of the World Jewish Congress recalled that her fundamental aim is “the search for war criminals.” The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICA) called for Mrs. Klarsfeld’s “immediate release” and has set up solidarity committees to support her cause. The Association of Former Jewish Deportees of France declared their solidarity with the anti-Nazi activist and in a communique called for her release and demanded “the Nazi torturers be thrown in prison in her place.”
ISRAELIS DEMAND NAZI HUNTER’S RELEASE
(In Jerusalem, Leon Dulzin, acting chairman of the Jewish Agency, called on West Germany to free Mrs. Klarsfeld. Dulzin said that her activities express deep humanism and solidarity with the Jewish people. Tuvia Friedman, chairman of the International Organization of Jewish Victims of Nazi Crimes, cabled West German President Gustav Heinemann asking for his personal intervention to free Mrs. Klarsfeld. Other holocaust survivors organizations and former members of partisan organizations now in Israel also sent cables of protest to German Chancellor Willy Brandt.)
(A large group of former concentration camp inmates and resistance fighters demonstrated outside the West Germany Embassy in Tel Aviv demanding Mrs. Klarsfeld’s release. They were joined by former Israeli POWs and relatives of POWs still in Syria. The demonstrators carried placards reading. “Release Beate,” and “Jail the Nazis.”)
(The Knesset is scheduled to meet tomorrow in special session to discuss a motion by Likud Knesseter Akiva Nof that Israel’s Parliament appeal to the West German Parliament for the release of Mrs. Klarsfeld. Appearing on Israeli television last night after German prison authorities permitted her to be interviewed by Israel’s television correspondent in Germany. Mrs. Klarsfeld said she was fighting for Jewish causes as a German who felt that her people still owed something to the Jewish people.)
Mrs. Klarsfeld was in the news two years ago when she claimed to have tracked down the notorious Klaus Barbie, the former gestapo chief in Lyon, who is under sentence of death in France. She claimed he was living in Bolivia under the alias of Klaus Altmann. Considerable evidence was obtained from West Germany indicating that Altmann is Barbie but extradition failed to materialize. Recently Mrs. Klarsfeld has been active in behalf of Israeli POWs in Syria.
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