It is as a historian, “hunter of Nazis” and militant of the memory of the Holocaust that the little boy of Romanian origin, Jewish, who had been welcomed with his family during the Second World War, will return this summer. in Saint-Julien-Chapteuil.
Already a visit last year
Serge Klarsfeld, 86, and his wife Beate, 83, with whom he tracked down the Nazis all his life, will give a conference on July 30 at the community space in the town. They will return to their journey, marked by their commitment against Nazism.
A plaque will then be unveiled in front of the building where the Klarsfeld family was collected from March to October 1944 in Saint-Julien-Chapteuil. It was on the first floor, 36, rue Chaussade, above the current bar des sucs, that with his mother, Raïssa, and his sister Georgette, Serge Klarsfeld had found refuge, following the arrest in Nice from his father, deported to Auschwitz.
This is not the first time that Serge Klarsfeld has returned to Saint-Julien-Chapteuil. The couple had been there in 1967, then in 1995. Last July, when they were already giving a conference at Chambon-sur-Lignon, they had made a discreet detour via Saint-Julien-Chapteuil, to see the house where the historian shared a room with his sister for six months.
It was during this conference that Guy Devidal, municipal councilor of Saint-Julien-Chapteuil, made contact with the Klarsfelds. “I spoke with the director of the Mémorial de la Shoah who accompanied them. He told me that it would be good to do something in Saint-Julien-Chapteuil, ”he says. “For us, it is an honor to receive him. We owe them a lot, ”says the mayor, André Ferret. The couple attends conferences around the world. “They are known internationally but, in France, many do not know who they are. It is also to make them known that we wanted to bring them here, ”underlines Florence Barthélémy, deputy mayor of Saint-Julien-Chapteuil.
Because even in Saint-Julien-Chapteuil, the name Klarsfeld does not always evoke something. “Obviously there is a section of the population that knows them, but that is far from being the case for everyone. We called the family who lives in the apartment where they were accommodated, they did not know who it was, ”says the elected official.
In addition to making Serge Klarsfeld’s name known to the inhabitants of Saint-Julien, the conference could be an opportunity for a wonderful reunion with a few people who knew him in 1944, whom the municipality has specially invited.
A life of hunting Nazis
Serge Klarsfeld was born in 1935 in Bucharest (Romania). In October 1943, his father, Arno, was arrested in Nice by the Gestapo, then deported to Auschwitz, where he died. Serge Klarsfeld takes refuge in Puy-en-Velay, then in Saint-Julien-Chapteuil. He becomes a lawyer and historian and marries Beate Künzel. German, she was born in 1939 in Berlin. The couple dedicate their lives to the fight against Nazism.
They had managed to arrest Klaus Barbie
They campaign against the impunity of former Nazis. They are opposed in particular to Chancellor Kiesinger, who had been a member of the Nazi party. In 1968, Beate Klarsfeld slapped the latter during a congress. From then on, the couple seeks and tracks down the Nazis. We owe them in particular the condemnation of the heads of the Gestapo from Paris to Cologne in 1979. They are also the ones who manage to arrest Klaus Barbie, who was hiding in Bolivia. Alongside this commitment against Nazism, they campaign for the memory of the Shoah. Serge Klarsfeld has found the identity of the 11,000 children deported by France as well as the photo of 5,000 of them, visible at the Shoah Memorial. Today, they continue to participate in conferences around the world to keep this memory alive.