Klarsfeld Beate - Hunting the Truth

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T HREE WEEKS AFTER my birth, Hitler entered Prague. In Berlin, my father calmly put away the pencils he used in his job at an insurance company. He kissed my mother, Hlne, and his only daughter, Beate-Auguste, then left the Hohenzollerndammthe residential district that still contained a few working-class houses, including oursand set off on a long journey. After joining up with his regiment, Infantryman Kurt Knzel spent the summer of 1939 on maneuvers, and the following summer he was somewhere in Belgium.

I have a photograph of him smiling as he stands guard outside a military headquarters. In the summer of 1941, his regiment moved east toward Russia. That winter, he was lucky enough to catch double pneumonia, meaning that he was sent back to Germany, where he became an army accountant. After the liberation in 1945, he rejoined his family in the village of Sandau, where my mother and I had reluctantly taken refuge with relatives. Here, in a barn, surrounded by terrified women, children, and old people, we witnessed the arrival of the Mongols. Polish laborers invaded our cousins house and took our belongings. This was poetic justice, as in 1943 we spent several months living a life of ease with my godfather, a high-ranking Nazi in Lodz.

For those who believe that childhood impressions are a critical factor in decisions made later in life, I should point out that the Soviet Mongols never hurt or sexually abused us.

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IN LATE 1945, we returned to Berlin, where the three of us and a kitchen worker shared a room for the next eight years. The apartment belonged to an opera singer who could now only find work singing at funerals and who was forced by the Allieslike many other German property ownersto sublet his home to refugees. This was a strange period for me as a little girl. There might seem something enjoyable about such a nomadic, unpredictable existence, but my parents anxiety and sadness, added to the general atmosphere of confusion and bitterness, had a negative effect on my morale. My parents found it very difficult to live among strangers.

I grew olderseven, eight, nine years oldbut my familys situation did not improve. Some of my friends families were living in their own apartments by now, with a kitchen and bathroom just for them, but we remained at the mercy of our landlords whims. Being a child, however, I found it easier to adapt to this reality than an adult or a teenager would. Without realizing it, I became hardened. Not in a bad way. I simply mean that I didnt whine or curse my misfortune or envy those who were luckier than me. I see this part of my life as formative for my character: it taught me to deal with adversity. Besides, I knew there were people worse off than me. Some of the girls I went to school with had lost their fathers during the war, while others waited endlessly for them to return from Soviet POW camps.

At the local school, I was a quiet and conscientious student. There werent enough places, so half the students attended in the morning, the others in the afternoon. And in winter, there wasnt enough coal to heat the building, so we were completely free. My mother worked as a housecleaner, while my father salvaged bricks from the citys ruins for its reconstruction, before being employed at the courtroom in Spandau. It was in those ruins that I spent whole days with my friends, playing hide-and-seek, climbing up to the roofs of damaged houses, andbest of allsearching for buried treasure.

The school was located in an imposing building, a five-minute walk from where we lived, its white faade riddled with bullet holes. I loved going to school. Our teachers were kind and attentive, we were given chocolate and warm milk every day, and I also got to see my best friend there. Her name was Margit Mcke.

In the mornings, I would leave for school with my lunch in a mess tin. I dont remember ever going hungry. On the other hand, I do remember eating an awful lot of potatoes, rarely accompanied by any meat. Our meals became slightly more varied when my mother started bringing back gifts from the houses where she worked. There was a sort of lard, which we used instead of butter and which my mother would keep cool by storing it in the space between the double-glazed windows. But the outer pane was broken, and birds sometimes flew in. I would watch, rapt, from the other end of the room as they pecked at the lard.