In Buenos Aires, volunteers from the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation met with Mrs. Beate Klarsfeld, who along with her husband, Serge Klarsfeld, will receive the Raoul Wallenberg Award 2010. The couple is globally recognized as one of the most active in terms of documentation on the Holocaust and persecution of Nazi war criminals.
Along with Diana Liniado and Paula Ini, volunteers of the program ”Wallenberg at School”, Mrs Klarsfeld enthusiastically addressed educational issues. Mr. Gustavo Jalife, executive director of the foundation, also participated in the meeting. Mrs. Klarsfeld showed a high interest in the existence, in her hometown of Berlin, of a replica of the Holocaust Memorial Mural, whose original is placed inside the Buenos Aires’ Cathedral. The replica was inaugurated in 2004 at the Vaterunser Church led by Pastor Annemarie Werner.
Beate Auguste Künzel Klarsfeld is famous in ”hunting” Nazis war criminals. With her husband, Serge Klarsfeld, she has also denounced major Nazi political activism and European officials.
Mrs. Klarsfeld is the daughter of a Christian, German-born, regular Wehrmacht soldier. She lived in Germany during the Second World War. At the age of 21 she traveled to Paris to study and work. In 1963 she met Serge Klarsfeld whom through she joined the French intellectual milieu and became interested in the fate of the Jews during the Holocaust.
Serge Klarsfeld was born in Bucharest, Romania. He is a writer, historian and lawyer. His family moved to France at the beginning of the Second World War. In 1943, his father was arrested by the SS in a massive raid in the city of Nice, being deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was murdered. Serge, with his mother and sister survived the war. He obtained a degree in advanced studies in history at the Sorbonne and in political science at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris.
