David A. Andelman, visiting scholar at the Center on National Security at Fordham Law, wrote an op-ed for CNN about French activists and Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld.
For six decades, Serge and Beate Klarsfeld devoted their lives to hunting former Nazis — from death camp guards to leaders of the Gestapo — and bringing them to justice. It was the Klarsfelds who identified the Butcher of Lyons, Klaus Barbie, who was living in exile in Bolivia under an assumed name. Thanks largely to their efforts, Barbie was extradited to France and spent his last years in a French prison, convicted for having sent some 14,000 French Jews and resistance leaders to their death.
The Klarsfelds identified fascists who had scattered after the end of World War II, at times to hidden exiles. The duo pursued them, often at great risk, and held to account politicians and diplomats who sought to mask their Nazi backgrounds and carve out a new life in post-Holocaust Europe.
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Today, 73 years after the end of World War II, with most of their Nazi targets dead or imprisoned, the Klarsfelds have turned their attention to the rise of neo-fascism and, inevitably, the comfort and support the far right is feeling from Donald Trump.