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The Holocaust History Project.

WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
 
 
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days; the S.D. of Marseille will bear its share of responsibility for the 100,000 French Jews exterminated at Auschwitz!

According to the testimony of the militia arrested after the murder of Victor Basch and his wife in Lyon, it was Moritz, in charge of S.S. operations against the Maquis of the Ain, who commanded the detachment of S.S. who had come with their French accomplices to arrest the president of the League for the Rights of Man. The S.S. delivered the Basches to the militia, which executed them at the side of a road.

We found a number of August Moritzes in telephone directories of German cities, but not in Hanover, his native city, where I went in October 1972. In Hamburg there were just two. On February 8, 1973, I rang up, saying, "This is the City Register of Hanover. We are working on statistics on the present location of our residents. Is this the same Herr Moritz who was born in Hanover on February 11, 1913?

A woman's voice: "Yes, that is my husband. He's right here."

"Thank you. That is all."

So we have located Moritz. Now we have to go to Hamburg, and without delay. Indeed, Sunday will be a better day to reach Moritz than a weekday; especially this coming Sunday above all others, when Moritz will be celebrating his sixtieth birthday. How many of the Jews he sent to Drancy will live to celebrate their sixtieth birthday? This confrontation with his bloody past will at least spoil the joyful day he is anticipating.

But I cannot go, for early Monday morning I am to take the train to Toulouse where "Presence of Israel" has asked me to speak, as well as at Agen. I find a substitute, Peggy, a Hamburg journalist, the daughter of Polish Jews who died at Auschwitz. Peggy has covered the trials of Nazi war criminals. The commando unit that will leave Paris Saturday evening by train is thus reduced to two: Julien Aubart and Serge.

SERGE'S ACCOUNT

Sunday about noon we arrive in front of the Moritz residence in the middle of the Hamburg equivalent of Pigalle, Sankt Pauli. Our guide is Peggy, accompanied by a photographer friend. Moritz lives on the third floor of a modest building (Talstrasse 27 Tel. 719 32 30) . We ring. A woman opens the door a crack. Peggy explains that we are French journalists who wish to question her
    
   
 
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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