Arno Klarsfeld, the son of celebrated French Nazi-hunters Serge and Beata Klarsfeld, has done his share of bringing justice to the perpetrators of the Holocaust. But now that former Nazis are dying of old age — “they aren’t like Dracula, they don’t live forever,” Klarsfeld says — he has turned his energies toward mobilizing support for Israel.
The 36-year-old lawyer, who has been known to roller-blade to court and “regularly appears as an escort to beautiful film stars and top models,” according to a 1998 Reuters article, has been speaking on campuses in the United States and overseas. Last week he appeared at the Santa Clara Law School doing what he can, he says, to “reach the leaders of tomorrow on the battlefields of today,” by telling them to remember the Holocaust and the importance of a Jewish state.
However, says Klarsfeld, Jewish students are not as politically engaged as he would like to see. About a month ago, he spoke at the University of Michigan. “There were only 200 people demonstrating, when there are 6,000 Jews at Michigan. There were more squirrels on campus than Jews. That’s not right.”
Activism is Klarsfeld’s birthright. When he was 2 years old, his mother brought him to Germany. Disguised as a journalist, she sneaked into a government meeting and publicly denounced West German Chancellor Kurt-Georg Kiesinger, slapping him on the face and calling him a Nazi. Beata and her husband went on to track down and bring to justice Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyons,” and other Nazis and Nazi collaborators.
Arno went on to make his own headlines. As a 21-year-old college student he demonstrated against the French extreme right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. After hearing the politician say the Holocaust was a “mere detail” of World War II, he jumped on the stage during a Le Pen rally wearing a T-shirt that read: “Le Pen Nazi.” He then was badly beaten by security guards.
So far, the highlight of his legal career is his successful prosecution of Vichy official Maurice Papon. In 1998, Papon received 10 years in prison for his role in deporting 1,560 Jews from Bordeaux.
“We rewrote history,” says Klarsfeld. “Before, the policy in France was those who helped arrest the Jews were not guilty of anything. Now, those who are in the civil service, if they are asked to do something inhuman they know they shouldn’t obey.”
Today, he says, the challenge is to support Israel in the face of divestment campaigns in Europe and the United States. His view, which he articulates in heavily accented but lucid words, is that the conflict is inaccurately portrayed as between Israelis and Palestinians, instead of between Israel and the Arab world. “When they show the map of Israel and the West Bank, they never show Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the other Arab states. Israel is like David and the Arab states are like Goliath.”
Klarsfeld recently became an Israeli citizen, although — irony of ironies — the Israeli government wanted to register him as a Protestant since his mother, Beata, is a non-practicing Lutheran. He thinks that someday intermarriage between Jews and Palestinians may make Israel’s emphasis on Jewish identity less important.
“Since I am the grandson of a man who died in Auschwitz and another man who served in the Wehrmacht [German army], I believe in reconciliation. But it takes time and the will of the people to do that, so for the next two or three generations, it is important for Israel to be a true Jewish state.”