Serge et Beate Klarsfeld, guérilleros de la mémoire

Introduction by Dan Bertsche, Associate Director of the France Chicago Center.

Serge and Beate Klarsfeld met on a Paris Metro platform in 1960. He was a holocaust survivor whose Romanian Jewish father was assassinated by the Nazis; she a young Lutheran au pair whose father was conscripted into Hitler’s army. This chance meeting led to both wedding vows and a lifelong partnership devoted to keeping alive the memory of what happened in Germany and in France during WW II. Elizabeth Lenchener’s documentary records their many joint successes, including researching and bringing to trial numerous Nazi war criminals and leading the effort to create the "wall of names" at the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris.

Lenchener has been producing and directing documentary films in France for over 30 years. In the tradition of her previous films (on Claude Olievenstein in 2000; René Frydman in 2006; and Bernard Kushner in 2008), Guerrilleros de la mémoire portrays the complex lives of militant heroes whose conviction, idealism and courage lead to historic change.

(France, 2010, DVD, 52 min, French and German with English subtitles)