Veteran 'Nazi hunters' to be awarded Germany's highest honour

Two veteran 'Nazi hunters' who helped bring to justice some of the most notorious Nazi criminals, will be awarded Germany's highest honour the Federal Cross of Merit, it was announced today.

Beate Klarsfeld, 76, a Franco-German journalist who has twice been nominated for the prestigious award, will finally be awarded it, alongside her Jewish husband Serge, a French man whose father was murdered at Auschwitz, Deutsche Welle has reported. Germany's presidential office confirmed today that President Joachim Gauck had already signed the relevant documents.

The couple have campaigned for over 40 years to bring perpetrators of Nazi crimes to justice, using what they've described as both "legal and illegal means".

Among these were several high profile Nazis such as Kurt Lischka, the leader of the Gestapo in Paris, Alois Brunner who was responsible for sending at least 140,000 Jews to their deaths, and Klaus Barbie - the so-called 'Butcher of Lyon' who was notorious for torturing prisoners and who was later sent to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity. The Klarsfelds tracked him down in Bolivia and helped organise his extradition to Germany in 1983.

The pair were also instrumental in bringing Maurice Papon to justice, a French civil servant who helped send more than 1,600 French Jews to concentration camps.

"We are relieved and happy to receive this award, it's an honour" Serge Klarsfeld tells Newsweek. "Our fight has been recognised, it has taken a long time to convince Germany that what we were doing was right," he continues.

Throughout their colourful career, the couple have made international headlines on numerous occasions, and both have spent time in prison for their actions.

In 1968 Beate slapped Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger and called him a Nazi, just as he was about to deliver a keynote speech at the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party congress in West Berlin. Kiesinger has been a members of Hitler's NSDAP party and had served as director of Nazi propaganda broadcasting during the war.

"She risked her life," says Serge, explaining that the police pulled their guns on his wife as she approached the chancellor, and very nearly shot her. "I told her: 'Never will you do more than you have achieved today, and one day they will recognise we are right'. You need a great deal of luck when you are individuals trying to defend a cause."

The Klarsfelds once even tried to kidnap Lischka, who was living in France and was safe from extradition, in order to have him brought to justice in Germany. The attempt failed, but as a result efforts were made to speed up cooperation between the two countries in Nazi prosecutions.

In 1973 Serge Klarsfeld held a gun to Lischka's head on a street in Cologne, in an attempt to force the West German government to prosecute him. "I went to Cologne and approached Lischka in the street," Serge Klarsfeld recalled during an interview with the BBC in 2009. "I put a gun to his forehead - he had a gun himself, but he just threw up his hands. The eyes of a man are terrible when he thinks he's going to die."

"I didn't shoot, and escaped, and then wrote to the West German government to say that if they did not deal with this man, then we could. We told them to do their duty and apply the law."

The couple began their campaign during the 1960s, when they realised that many former Nazis were living comfortable lives and perceived that the will to prosecute them was dying away. They have always rejected the term 'Nazi hunter', explaining "We didn't have to hunt them, we knew where they were, living openly".

Serge is torn about the current trial of former Nazi bookkeeper Oskar Groening, who is accused of assisting in the murder of 300,000 victims of the Holocaust. "It's good they want to try criminal Nazis until they die, but on the other hand he was only part of a criminal organisation. To put on trial the man who works in the kitchen or the man who counts the banknotes, nothing compares to the crimes."

Serge also laments the media attention that the 93-year-old is receiving. "Groening is happy to be on trial, he is a star during the trial. It is rare for a very old man to become a star in the media. It's not bad for him. He can write a book."

Among many other awards, the Klarsfelds were given the Legion of Honour by France in 1984. The pair will receive the award at the German embassy in Paris.