They spent decades pursuing Nazi fugitives, denouncing anti-Semitism, combating the extreme right and confronting France with its historical responsibilities for collaborationism. The Klarsfelds—Serge and Beate—are a moral authority.
Now they defend that, if in the French legislative elections they had to choose between a candidate from the left-wing New Popular Front coalition and another from Marine Le Pen’s National Regroupment (RN), they would be clear about who to vote for. And they have caused an earthquake in the campaign for the legislative elections of June 30 and July 7.
“Between these two parties, we consider the New Popular Front party to be much more dangerous than the National Rally, and we tell people who must make this decision to vote for the National Rally,” says Serge in his office, sitting next to Beate. . “There is now a choice between a party that is openly anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic, and a party that is perhaps sincere in its willingness to change its point of view.”
The Klarsfelds do not ask to vote for the RN; They say they will vote for President Emmanuel Macron’s candidates, and in their Parisian district they will be able to vote for a Macronist. But they indicate what they would vote if, in a second round, they had to choose between the left that they see dominated by the candidates of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise, and a Le Pen candidate.
On the walls of the Klarsfeld office in Paris there is a map that reconstructs the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, where Serge’s father was murdered. Also hanging is a copy of the cover of a German tabloid from 1968, the day Beate publicly slapped the then German chancellor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, a former Nazi.
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When the Klarsfelds speak, in France they are heard. And that none other than Serge Klarsfeld said that, between a candidate from the left and another from a party inherited from the extreme right that was anti-Semitic and collaborationist, he would opt for the latter, has disconcerted many French people, including a part of the Jewish community. .
“Klarsfeld falls into a trap,” he told Le Monde Samuel Lejoyeux, president of the Union of Jewish Students of France. “The RN is still dangerous for Jews,” he says.
A blessing for the RN
For Marine Le Pen, Klarsfeld’s words are a blessing, a definitive step in the process of ridding the party of its most uncomfortable past, that of the National Front of her father, Jean-Marie. What the Klarsfelds say connects with a feeling among many French Jews regarding the increase in anti-Semitic acts and the ambiguities of a part of the radical left regarding this phenomenon.
Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, Le Pen has presented herself as a shield for Jews in France in the face of new anti-Semitism that no longer comes from the extreme right but from Islamism. And the message, for some, seems to work. Today they see Mélenchon as their enemy, whom they accuse of minimizing anti-Semitism — “it is residual in France,” he said — and no longer the party founded by someone convicted of anti-Semitism, like the father of the current leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and by a member of the Waffen-SS.
“In our opinion, the fact that parties considered far-right have become pro-Jewish and pro-Israel is a victory in the fight against anti-Semitism,” says Serge Klarsfeld. “I don’t care about the origin of the party. It is the reality of the game. It’s another game. It is not the National Front. It is the National Regrouping.”
The Klarsfelds are living history of Europe: the Nazi hunters who managed to put, among others, Klaus Barbie, the butcher of Lyon. In France, this couple of octogenarians—French Jew, he; German daughter of a Wehrmacht soldier, she is a reference. A few weeks ago, on the occasion of a state visit to Germany, Macron decorated them and in his speech he said: “You have been insolent, free, intransigent, persevering.”
“We have never asked to have this moral authority, but they give it to us,” Serge defends himself. “So we have assumed responsibilities that are serious, and we will suffer if the National Front [sic] comes to power and acts in the opposite way.” Beate, sitting next to him, nods. And she frames her decision-making in a long story, that of a life of going it alone and not marrying anyone. They remember that when Beate slapped Kiesinger, a symbol of the new generation of Germans who asked her parents for explanations for what they had done during the war, the communist dictatorships applauded and entertained her. After her, when Beate Klarsfeld denounced anti-Semitism in the Soviet bloc, she was accused of being a CIA agent.
“Here we fought Le Pen in the courts, in demonstrations, and we suffered package bomb attacks that came from the extreme right,” says Serge Klarsfeld. “But we try not to be sectarian and look lucidly at what is happening.”
Last February, the Klarsfelds received Marine Le Pen in this office. “I think she is sincere,” says Serge, referring to her break with the historical anti-Semitism of the far right. And he remembers that she has condemned Phlippe Pétain, the leader of France who collaborated with Nazi Germany, and that she has repudiated the anti-Semitism of her father, whom he expelled from the party. In an article in the latest newsletter of the Association of Daughters and Sons of Jewish Deportees from France, which they direct, Klarsfeld writes: “Their distrust of a part of the Muslim population that does not accept the laws of the Republic and would like to impose those of the sharia “It seems justified to us.”
In the interview he insists on specifying: “I vote for Macron. What I am saying is that the RN was previously a political enemy and now it is a political adversary. That is, if they come to power, if they do things that we don’t like, we will fight them.”
When asked if, as some accuse them, they have fallen into a trap or acted like Le Pen’s useful fools, he replies: “Events will decide. I can’t convince them.” And he adds: “Our priority is not social transformations, social progress, etc. After the Shoah, our priority is the fate of the Jews and Israel. This is our criterion, which is a narrow criterion, and many great consciences with great moral authority will perhaps say that we are insensitive to the suffering of others. But we belong to a generation that is the post-war generation. “We are inextricably linked to the world war and the Shoah.”
Before saying goodbye, we asked Beate Klarsfeld who she would slap today. He says that it was a symbol of the time: the young German woman and the father Nazi. And he answers:
―Today I would no longer have the strength.
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