ACTIVISM AND INNOVATION

Beate and Serge Klarsfeld

Human rights activists

Serge Klarsfeld, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust in Romania, married his German wife, Beate, in Paris in 1962, sealing a partnership for justice that continues to this day. As human rights activists, the Klarsfelds have played a major role over several decades in bringing to trial German and French Nazi war criminals such as Klaus Barbie, Paul Touvier, and Maurice Papon. They both understood the threat from anti-Zionism early on, confronting the antisemitic demonization of Israel pushed by the Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 2018, their joint memoir Hunting the Truth was published to wide acclaim, winning the Jewish Book of the Year Award from the Jewish Book Council. (Photo: Klarsfeld Foundation / CC BY 3.0)