What a timely short read for these ages! I’m so glad I had to chance to pick this up, to be reminded that fighting fascism isn’t just about wars and polls, but is an ongoing, everyday, and very necessary struggle.
Serge Klarsfeld and Beate Kunzel met in Paris in 1960. The young adults — he a law student, she an au pair from Germany — fell in love, marrying three years later despite the discouragement of several of Serge’s friends, who feared the worst from the prospect of a Romanian-born French Jew marrying a German woman. In fairness to their concerns, Beate had known little of her country’s historical extermination of millions of Jews. Serge proved to be her introduction to the extent of Nazi atrocities, stoking the fires that already burned in her against injustice.
Their career as Nazi hunters begins in earnest in 1966, when they learn that the new Chancellor of Germany, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, was a former Nazi. He wasn’t just a rank and file member either, but had worked as a deputy director under Joseph Goebbels to churn out anti-Semitic propaganda. Beate was determined to highlight his crimes. At first, she printed articles and brochures to denounce him, but when these proved less than effective, decided that civil disobedience would draw more eyeballs to her cause. Her efforts not only got people talking, but were a significant reason for his failed bid for reelection.