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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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go when his six-month trial period ended on April 14, 1972. How could he do this when I was being arrested in La Paz – I, a German, carrying on a struggle that Jews in numbers should have shared and that he alone was doing! Serge refused; once again our work took precedence over all else.

On April 14, 1972, FSJU put an end to Serge's work with them: this cowardly abandonment has left a painful scar. Granted, FSJU has succeeded in creating an indemnity service that regularly sends lawyers to Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Berlin. However, FSJU has not undertaken or encouraged any action to check the rehabilitation of criminals who deported Jews from France. I will give one example. Certain directors of the UGIF, that Union of French Jews established by Lischka, had known Röthke and others who were guilty. But not one of those directors felt the need for FSJU to act against the rehabilitation of the criminals. Röthke, having been sentenced to death in France, died quietly in 1970 in Wolfsburg, where he practiced law. The former directors of UGIF had only to send a few feelers into Germany to locate Röthke and put an end to his career. But that was apparently too much to ask. During this period we moved into a moderate-priced three-room apartment in Paris. I was pregnant; the new baby was expected in August.

On May 7, 1973 we again went to Cologne. The group consisted of me, Julien Aubart and Henri Pudeleau, four young members of the LICA, and a team from Gaumont News who were curious to follow one of our projects. We were putting on another illegal protest to shock public opinion and force the courts to choose between prosecution and acquiescence.

At ten o'clock we went into action. With swollen belly forward, I pushed the bell of Lischka's office. An employee opened the door. The youths pushed past him and entered Lischka's office. He took a pistol out of a drawer and aimed it at the youths who, as always, were unarmed. (We were to learn later that Lischka, former Gestapo chief of Cologne, was routinely entitled to carry a gun.) Only one stood frozen by the threat of the weapon. The other youths joined Julien and Henri, who broke the reinforced windows of the street-floor offices. On the walls they spray-painted S S; that was to be an article in our subsequent indictment.

While hundreds of people left the adjoining buildings or leaned
    
   
 
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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