Beate Klarsfeld

Beate Klarsfeld
Beate Klarsfeld (2015)
Born	Beate Auguste Künzel (1939-02-13) 13 February 1939 (age 78) Berlin, Germany
Nationality	German
Spouse(s)	Serge Klarsfeld

Beate Klarsfeld (born Beate Auguste Künzel 13 February 1939 in Berlin) is a Franco-German journalist. She became famous through her involvement in the investigation and prosecution of Nazi crimes. Along with her French husband Serge Klarsfeld, she has investigated with detailed documentation, numerous living Nazi perpetrators: Kurt Lischka, Alois Brunner, Klaus Barbie, Ernst Ehlers, Kurt Asche. In March 2012, she was a candidate for The Left in the election of the German Federal President 2012 against Joachim Gauck, which she lost by 126 to 991 votes.

She is the only child of Helen and Kurt Künzel, who was an insurance clerk. Her parents were not Nazis, according to Klarsfeld, however, they had voted for Hitler. The father was drafted in the summer of 1939 into the infantry. From the summer of 1940, he fought with his unit in France and was moved in 1941 to the eastern front, in the following winter because of the illness of double pneumonia he was transferred back to Germany and was used as an accountant. Beate spent several months in Łódź with her godfather, who was a Nazi official. The apartment in Berlin was bombed and relatives in Sandau (now Poland) gave shelter to Beate, and her mother. In 1945, her father was released from British captivity and joined them. The house and property in Sandau were taken by Poland, and the family returned to Berlin. From the age of about fourteen years, Beate began frequently to argue with her parents, because those "not responsible" for the Nazi era, regretted what then befell them, injustices and material losses, the Russians' accusations, but felt themselves no pity for other countries.

In 1960, Beate Künzel spent a year as an au pair in Paris. By her own admission, at that time "politics and history were completely foreign". But she was confronted in Paris with the consequences of the The Holocaust. In 1963, she married the French lawyer and historian Serge Klarsfeld, whose father had been killed in Auschwitz. Beate Klarsfeld said that her husband helped her to be, "a German to be conscience and awareness".

They had two children: Arno David (born 1965) and Lida Myriam (born 1973). After changing employment she worked from 1964 as a secretary at new German-French Youth Office. They published a guide German girl au pair in Paris. During an unpaid leave year, after the birth of her son, she became increasingly engaged in feminist literature and the emancipation of women in Germany. By the end of 1966, she moved with her family, her mother and the three-member family of Serge's sister in an apartment together.