Who are Serge and Beate Klarsfeld?

Serge Klarsfeld (born 17 September 1935) and Beate Klarsfeld (née Künzel, born 13 February 1939) are activists and Nazi hunters known for documenting the Holocaust in order to establish the record and to enable the prosecution of war criminals. Since the 1960s, they have made notable efforts to commemorate the Jewish victims of German-occupied France and have been supporters of Israel.

They helped found and have led the Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France (Association des fils et filles des déportés juifs de France) or FFDJF. It is one of the groups that has documented cases and located former German and French officials for prosecution such as Klaus Barbie, René Bousquet, Jean Leguay, Maurice Papon and Paul Touvier, who have been implicated in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of French and foreign Jews during the Second World War. The Klarsfelds were among organised groups who filed cases decades after the war, sometimes as late as the 1990s, against such officials for their crimes against humanity.

In the 1960s, Beate Klarsfeld publicized the wartime activities of West German politicians; on one occasion, she slapped Chancellor Kiesinger in public in protest. After German reunification and the opening of the Stasi records of East Germany, in 2012 it was revealed that both Klarsfelds had been regular Stasi contacts during the 1960s. Beate had received material on the politicians and pay for her actions against West German leaders.