Early Years
Serge Klarsfeld was born in Bucharest to a family of Romanian Jews. They migrated to France before World War II began. In 1943, his father was arrested by the SS in Nice during a roundup ordered by Alois Brunner. Deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, Klarsfeld's father died there. Young Serge was cared for in a home for Jewish children operated by the OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants) organization; his mother and sister also survived the war in Vichy France, helped by the underground French Resistance beginning in late 1943.
Beate was born Beate Künzel, the daughter of a Christian German family; her father served as a regular Wehrmacht soldier. In 1960, she went to Paris to work as an au pair, where she began to learn more about the Holocaust. Later she worked for the Deutsch-Französisches Jugendwerk (Franco-German Alliance for Youth).
Read more about this topic: Serge And Beate Klarsfeld
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