Arno Klarsfeld

Arno Klarsfeld (born the August 27th 1965) is free a lawyer - Israeli.

Biography

Origin, studies and family

Wire of Serge and Happy Klarsfeld, Arno Klarsfeld makes its studies with the colleges Janson-with-Sailly and Claude Bernard with Paris, then in the universities of Paris the II-Pantheon Assas, Paris Sorbonne and New York University. It obtains a control of right and a master in international law.

Legal career

Registered with the bars of Paris, New York and California, Arno Klarsfeld gives up the New Yorkean business consultancy Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LP to join that of his/her father and his sister in Paris. Since, he is the lawyer of the association of the Fils and girls of Jewish deportees of France (FFDJF).

Counsel for the plaintiff

; With the Touvier lawsuit In 1994, he is counsel for the plaintiff to the lawsuit of Paul Touvier, chief of the Milice to Chambéry and Lyon, condemned to the life imprisonment. At the time of the lawsuit, it disunites its fellow-members while arguing on the fact that Touvier had decided to only carry out executions, without to have received order of the Germans. On this occasion, the historian Henry Rousso, written in Libération that Arno Klarsfeld was “the lawyer of the truth”.

; With the Papon lawsuit In 1998, Arno Klarsfeld represents the association of Wire and girls of Jewish deportees of France at the time of the lawsuit of Maurice Papon. It is pointed out by the media while openly going to the Law courts in roller skates.

A lawyer engaged against the war crimes

He makes then countryside, in particular in the media, for the creation of international courts in order to judge the war criminals for massacres such as the Génocide with the Rwanda and that with the Kosovo.

Following the audience of the administrative court of Toulouse of May 16th, 2006 concerning the lawsuit started by Georges Lipietz and Guidéon S. against the State and the SNCF for their role in their transfers of Pau to the Camp of Drancy, it takes nevertheless left for the SNCF by a “point of view” in the newspaper Le Monde.

Political activities

In 2005, it is requested by Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the UMP and Minister of Interior Department, to write reports/ratios on a certain number of topics or to exert ministerial mediations.

Rapporteur

; Report/ratio on the mémorielles laws In December 2005, it is charged to write a “work detailed on the law, the History and the duty to remember”, following the polemic around the mémorielle law of the February 23rd 2005 mentioning the “positive role” of the Colonisation. It was in particular to propose an analysis - as those on the Négationnisme and the Armenian Génocide - whose historians ask for abrogation in the name of the “freedom” of their work.

In his report/ratio, he recapitulated initially the successive interventions of the French legislator in this field, in particular the ordinance of the January 19th 1816 (to commemorate the victims of the Revolution), the law of the July 30th 1881 (to compensate the victims for the coup d'etat of December 1851), the law of the July 7th 1880 (to adopt the July 14th like national Festival), and the law of the July 10th 2000 resulting from the speech of Jacques Chirac in Vel d' Hiv' in 1995 (which recognized the fault of the French State at the time of the raid of 1942).

He proposed to establish the distinction between the discriminatory modes accompanied by repression, Torture or of massacres, and those having invested in the infrastructures (roads and public buildings) even if they were conceived to meet the needs for the colonists primarily.

The choice of Arno Klarsfeld to write this report/ratio was however criticized by MRAP, disputing its legitimacy and its impartiality because of its declarations on the war of Iraq and its engagement in the Israeli army to be useful specifically in the Occupied territories, the general secretary of the MRAP Mouloud Aounit going until qualifying lawyer of active militant of the colonisation" (in the Occupied territories) and of savage defender of the colonial war against Iraq . In answer, the December 27th 2005, on France Inter, Arno Klarfeld compared to the president of MRAP with the Iranian president informant that Mouloud Aounit is perhaps on the same line as the Iranian president (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) who estimates that the Jews do not have anything to make with the the Middle East .

This nomination is immediately criticized with left in particular by Daniel Schneidermann in an article in Libération, regarding as “stupid” to make enter “the spectrum combined of the deportation of the Jews and the conflict of the Middle East, in the French policy of immigration” but also by Arnaud Montebourg, deputy and member of the Socialist party, which declares that it would have been better or been necessary to perhaps name for the effectiveness is David Halliday, Paul Belmondo or Anthony Delon! It is that it is Arno Klarsfeld .

Not to be themselves opposite with certain explusions or to have approved some under the terms of the conditions of regularizations selected, Arno Klarsfeld was also taken with part by Association for the Democracy in Nice and in the Alps Maritimes and by Réseau education without borders (RESF).

; Mediator near the Children of Don Quichotte

In December 2006, Arno Klarsfeld was charged by Nicolas Sarkozy with solving the crisis caused by the mobilization of the SDF with association the Children of Don Quichotte.

He declares in particular that the cost to place the SDF " should not be exorbitant" . " The idea is to find from here at two years a reasonable solution in terms of quantity and of quality of reception for the SDF (...) Sarkozy did not say that there would be zero SDF in two years, it said that there would be a human reception for each person from here two ans."

Relation with the National front

Arno Klarsfeld initially engaged politically against the National front.

Mission ecology and transport

By mail on February 19th 2007, Arno Klarsfeld sees charged by Nicolas Sarkozy a mission on ecology and transport.

Candidature for the delegation

Following the victory of Nicolas Sarkozy to the presidency of the republic the May 6th 2007, the commission of nomination of UMP indicates Arno Klarsfeld like candidate with the legislative elections in the 8th district of Paris (XIIe district) in order to succeed the deputy Jean de Gaulle. If it seems initially little at ease in this new role of candidate and if its adversaries reproach him for not living in the sector, it manages to be in ballotage favorable to the evening of the first turn of the legislative elections, but it loses finally the second with the profit of the socialist candidate Sandrine Mazetier, who gains 55,85% of the voices vis-a-vis 44,15%.

Topicality

Arno Klarsfeld is today to advise within the cabinet of the Prime Minister Francois Fillon and east had a presentiment of to become general inspector of the prisons posts created by the new law on the repetition of Rachida Dati. November 24th, 2007, it was made knight of the National order of the Merit by the President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy, after her mother Beate Klarsfeld who had been decorated with the Légion of honor.

Relations in the Middle East

Personal engagement in favor of the State of Israel

In 2002, at thirty-seven years, it takes Israeli nationality. He declares on December 4th, 2003 at the Israeli News agency French-speaking Guysen: " Hatred is a banished feeling of the rows of Tsahal. Yes, I am proud to be used within the army as Israël".

The December 4th 2001, it had written in an article entitled Israel-Palestine: true causes of the conflict published in Le Monde, that while being opposed to Jewish immigration in Palestine in the years 1930, the Palestinians responsible for had died for part of the victims of Shoah: If the persecuted Jews of Germany, of Poland, of Hungary, of Romania and besides had been allowed to immigrate in Palestine, as it had been agreed and recognized by the Company Of the Nations, undoubtedly the number of exterminated Jews would have been much lower than than it was . In this same article he declared that there is nothing of shocking so that Israelis live in the occupied territories, since Palestinians lived well in Israel

Support for the American invasion of Iraq

It is in the name of the friendship with the United States, of protection due to Israel, and the human rights which it brings also its support for the American intervention in Iraq. It will take in 2004 the defense of the president George W. Bush on the plates of French television (in particular with the Grand Newspaper of Michel Denisot on Canal+).

Quotations

“In the years 1980, the school handbooks written by the aggregate ones of history affirmed that the Jews in France had been stopped by the only Germans, whereas the three quarters were it by police officers of Vichy. The historians are not neutral, they have also their political commitments. ” ( Libération , December 30th, 2005)
“If a series of cars leaves the factory with a defect of manufacture and that these vitiated cars cause accidents, casualties and deaths, it is right to be turned over against the manufacturer. Can one act in the same way by comparing the relative to the manufacturer and the child with the vitiated product? ” - On the responsibility for the parents of delinquents - Arno Klarsfeld
“Through centuries and times, the Jews preserved and maintained their traditions without being assimilated, and this not-assimilation was the proof not only of their religious faith, but also of their major love for their lost fatherland”. ( Le Monde , 2001)
“Which logic there would be in an exiguous, divided and over-populated Palestinian State, whereas Jordan vast, little is populated and mainly inhabited by Palestinians. ” ( Le Monde , December 4th, 2001)
“the two people have to so much gain to get along and to so much lose to continue the combat” ( Le Monde , September 5th, 2005)
In connection with its candidature in the 8th district of Paris: “I am not an expert of the twelfth district, but I am Parisian. And I crossed it when I ran the Marathon of Paris. ” (newspaper the Parisian one, May 16th)
After having lost: “I am in love with this district, but the love is not always paid a return. ”

Random links: