Beate Auguste Klarsfeld (née Künzel; born 13 February 1939) is a Franco-German journalist and Nazi hunter who, along with her French husband, Serge, became famous for their investigation and documentation of numerous Nazi war criminals, including Kurt Lischka, Alois Brunner, Klaus Barbie, and Kurt Asche. In March 2012, she ran as the candidate for The Left in the 2012 German presidential election against Joachim Gauck, but lost by 126 to 991. Biography Early life Beate Auguste Künzel was born in Berlin, the only child of Kurt Künzel, an insurance clerk, and his wife, Helen. Her parents were not Nazis, according to Klarsfeld; however, they had voted for the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Her father was drafted in the summer of 1939 into the infantry. From the summer of 1940, he fought with his unit in France and was moved in 1941 to the eastern front. In the following winter, because he had contracted double pneumonia, he was transferred back to Germany and worked as an accountant. Beate spent several months in Łódź with her godfather, who was a Nazi official. The Berlin apartment in which she lived was bombed and relatives in Sandau gave shelter to Beate and her mother. Her father joined them in 1945. The house and property in Sandau were seized by the Polish government, and the family returned to Berlin. From the age of about fourteen years, Beate began to frequently argue with her parents because they did not feel responsible for the Nazi era, focused on the injustices and material losses they had suffered, and, while blaming the Russians, felt no sympathy for other countries. Move to Paris In 1960, Beate Künzel spent a year as an au pair in Paris. By her own admission, at that time politics and history were completely foreign to her. However, in Paris she was confronted with the consequences of The Holocaust. In 1963, she married the French lawyer and historian Serge Klarsfeld, whose father was a victim of the Auschwitz concentration camp exterminations. Beate has said that her husband helped her to become "a German of conscience and awareness". The couple had two children: (born 1965) and Lida Myriam (born 1973). In 1964 Beate began work as a secretary at the new Franco-German Youth Office. There she published a guide for German au pair girls living in Paris. During a year of unpaid leave after the birth of