be-002157-kd 00674
type: RecordSet
archival history: On 23 April 1996, Serge Klarsfeld kindly donated the two book excerpts in this collection to the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, predecessor of Kazerne Dossin. On 14 December 2004 he added the publication on the trial against Maurice Papon, which has not been digitised.
biographical history: Serge Klarsfeld (born on 17 September 1935 in Bucharest, Romania) is a French lawyer and historian, committed to commemorating the Holocaust. His parents, Arno and Raissa Klarsfeld, were Romanian Jews who settled in France before the war. When Nazi-Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Arno Klarsfeld enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. His regiment suffered heavy losses at the Somme front in June 1940. Arno was captured by German troops, but was able to flee to the ‘Free’ Vichy Zone in southern France. The Klarsfeld family settled in Nice. Living in the French zone occupied by the Italians they were safe at first. However, in September 1943, Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini was overthrown. When Italian troops withdrew from Nice, the German SS, under command of Alois Brunner, entered the city after which Jews were arrested and deported. Arno Klarsfeld also fell victim to the Nazis. He was arrested, while his wife Raissa, his son Serge and his daughter Georgette were hidden in a closet in their apartment. Arno Klarsfeld was interned in the Drancy camp and was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau via transport 61 on 28 October 1943. Arno Klarsfeld did not survive slave labour in the camp. After her husband’s arrest, Raissa Klarsfeld fled Nice with her young children, settling in the Haute Loire, near the village of Le Chambon, where the three of them survived the war. Upon Liberation, the family returned to Paris. Serge Klarsfeld met Beate Kunzel, the daughter of a Wehrmacht soldier. They married and committed themselves to trialling Nazi perpetrators. In 1971, the Klarsfelds intensified their efforts to track down unpunished Nazis, among them Klaus Barbie, chief of the Gestapo in wartime Lyon. They also dedicated their research to commemorating the victims: Serge Klarsfeld published the Memorial to the Jews Deported from France, which lists each of the known victims of the Holocaust in France. Serge Klarsfeld was thus able to establish that over 75700 Jews wer…
publication note: KLARSFELD Serge, Memorial to the Jews deported from France, 1942-1944, New York, 1983. KLARSFELD Serge, French children of the Holocaust. A memorial, New York, 1998. KLARSFELD Serge & STEINBERG Maxime, Mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de Belgique, Bruxelles, 1982.
accruals: No further accruals are to be expected.
conditions of access: Contact Kazerne Dossin Research Centre: archives@kazernedossin.eu
conditions of use: Contact Kazerne Dossin Research Centre: archives@kazernedossin.eu
date: post-war
has or had holder: be-002157
has or had some members with language: fra
has or had subject: 519
has or had subject: 800
has record set type: Collection
identifier: KD_00674
record resource extent: 10 digitised images (3 publications)
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: This collection contains: a photomontage of portraits of Jewish children deported from Belgium, used as a cover for the commemorative publication entitled"Mémorial de la déportation de Belgique de 25.124 Juifs et de 351 Tzigane" by Serge Klarsfeld an Maxime Steinberg ; the pages of addendum number 2 of the"Mémorial de la Déportation des Juifs de Franc" [Memorial of the Deportation of Jews from France] by Serge Klarsfeld, containing portraits of deported Jews, their names and different pieces of information (transport, biography) ; a published collection of various documents used during the trial against Maurice Papon, secretary-general for Police, Finance, Health, Youth and Transport in Vichy France, and in that capacity responsible for the deportation of 1,560 Jews from France to concentration camps and extermination centres.
title: Serge Klarsfeld. Collection