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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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WITNESS FOR ISRAEL
IN DAMASCUS

Saturday, January 19, 1974. Orly Airport. I am back from Damascus. Surrounded by my friends, I answer journalists' questions. Many people have been worried about me these last three days, especially in Israel.

"What was the purpose of your dangerous trip?"
Primarily to bear witness to the common cause of a German with the Jewish people; to bear witness in a country where Syrian and Israeli Jews have been persecuted and are in danger; to bear witness not by a written message or in front of an embassy, but right in the lion's mouth. In a message I brought to Syria and that was distributed in French and English by all the press bureaus the evening I arrived in Damascus, I said:
I have come to Damascus to witness to that solidarity the German people must have with the Jewish people as a result of the extermination of six million Jews by Nazi Germany. Wherever Jews are persecuted, it is our duty as Germans to intervene at their side. Here, in addition to the cruel treatment that the Syrian Jewish community has increasingly suffered in recent years, is added the horrible uncertainty about the lives of Israeli prisoners of war. Already dozens of their comrades have been abominably executed after their capture on the Golan Heights. This barbarism and the refusal to publish lists of
     
   
 
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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