Serge Klarsfeld

Serge Klarsfeld is a French historian, lawyer and Holocaust survivor. Together with his wife Beate, they are renowned for documenting all 76,000 French Jews deported during the Second World War and tracking down Nazis for prosecution. They helped locating former German and French officials such as Klaus Barbie, René Bousquet, Maurice Papon and Paul Touvier, who have been implicated in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews during the Second World War.

In 2015, they received the German Federal Cross of Merit in recognition of their efforts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice. The same year, the UNESCO designated the Klarsfelds as “Honourary Ambassadors and Special Envoys for Education about the Holocaust and the Prevention of Genocide”, to work as ambassadors of genocide prevention at the United Nations education agency. Serge Klarsfeld is Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, the highest French order of merit for military and civil merits.