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The Holocaust History Project.

WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
 
 
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chief of the Bordeaux Security Police, General Oberg's right-hand man, head of the Security Service's Bureau for Jewish Affairs?"

Hagen took the same tack as Lischka: "Sir, I have nothing to say to you. If you want, you can get in touch with my son. He's a journalist in Cologne."

He had a tight smile on his face, as can be seen in a close-up on our remarkable film sequence. He seemed in control of himself as he kept looking at the steering wheel and taking in what Serge was saying to him, his grim smile pasted on his face. Then he said: "All I want is to live quietly."

Just then Hagen's wife came out of the house. There ensued a kind of ballet, for she started to get into the car, then went back into the house, came out again with her two daughters, a fourteen- and a seventeen-year-old, and one of their girlfriends. Instead of getting into the car, she went off on foot with the three girls. Hagen followed, after bidding Serge a glacial good-by.

The tone of the conversation had been one of confrontation.


That evening in Cologne we recalled what he had said about his son. I called Warstein again.

Frau Hagen answered: "We know who you are, Frau Klarsfeld. Telephone my son and he will tell you what you want to know. He is a radical like you."

And she gave me her son's telephone number.

The first time I telephoned Jens Hagen, the line was busy. His mother was doubtless warning him that I would call. When we met an hour later, I asked him how his mother had known my name. The explanation was simple. Serge had told Hagen he worked for Combat; Hagen had called his son and asked him to verify that; Jens Hagen had telephoned some German correspondents in Paris and had happened to find one who had read the Combat piece about his father, signed Beate Klarsfeld. So he had been able to tell his father the identity of the woman he had encountered.

We had been a little worried, wondering whether Jens Hagen was going to descend on us with some friends ready for a fight. When he rang the bell, we looked out the window and saw that he was alone.

Jens was about twenty-seven or twenty-eight, tall, thin, longhaired, long bearded, and informally dressed. He wrote for leftist magazines like Konkret, and for DVZ, the weekly that had just
    
   
 
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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