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The Holocaust History Project.
The Holocaust History Project.

WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
 
 
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Lischka was the man who actually directed the Final Solution in France."

The director replied: "I agree with you in principle, but our budget won't permit it."

"Do you know," Serge said, "that we are now in a building that the head of the Gestapo's Bureau for Jewish Affairs used to visit frequently? I can assure you that he had a hard time finding trains to ship Jews out of France, but he got them just the same. Just remember that only a week before Paris was liberated, when the German soldiers were retreating in disorder, he succeeded in getting a train for the deportation of a thousand Jews, including hundreds of children."

The matter of the ticket was quickly settled.

In Israel, the Association had in mind an aged lawyer of German birth who could not be expected to mount an energetic attack on German justice. Serge gave several interviews on television and radio and kept insisting that an Israeli lawyer was not needed to defend Beate but to attack Lischka. Thereupon, Shmuel Tamir, a member of the Knesset and a former Irgun commander, volunteered and was appointed by the Association.

Back in 1953, while still quite young, Tamir had taken on the Kastner case. He had defended Michael Greenwald, an Austrian Jew who had written that Rudolf Kastner, the spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Commerce and Industry, was actually a traitor to Israel for having been an accessory to the Final Solution in Hungary that disposed of a half million Hungarian Jews.

The whole thing seemed unlikely, for Kastner was regarded as a hero for bravely refusing the demands of Eichmann, who had placed him at the head of the Hungarian Jewish community. But after tireless research, Tamir collected documents in Europe and America that proved Kastner's guilt. Kastner lost his suit for libel. In March 1957, he was gunned down on a Tel Aviv street.
    
   
 
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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