From the Archives: Trying to fathom Reagan’s Germany visit

Four years ago I saw President Reagan weep.

He attended a White House ceremony that was his first public appearance after the attempt on his life. He was visibly moved as he listened to the reciting of the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, and watched the lighting of six candles, each standing for 1 million victims.

As at such functions, the mood was somber, subdued, solemn. The candle-lighting was followed by a short address given by the chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. He spoke of the importance and implications of memory. He recalled the tragedy, or at least parts of it, and the silence surrounding it.

Then the President rose. He had a prepared speech in his hand, but he could not read it; he was too moved, with tears welling up in his eyes. So he improvised.

It was one of his best improvisations.

He attacked those who denied that the Holocaust ever occurred; he spoke of the concentration-camp pictures that he had seen as an Army officer while the war was still on; he stressed his resolve to oppose oppression anywhere, in any form, for whatever purpose.

In short, it was a superb address in favor of human rights.

When asked for comments, White House aides later said that the President was carried away by emotion; he didn’t mean what he said. However, about two weeks later President Reagan called me to thank me for the ceremony. He was kind, compassionate, generous. Before hanging up, he remarked, “By the way, I meant every word I said.”

I believe him.

I believe that he is a good, warm, sensitive person. I believe that the tragedy of the Jewish people pained him. I believe that the memory of the Holocaust is important to him.

But then how is one to understand the recent incident with regard to his visit to West Germany?

Why did he change his mind and decide not to go to Dachau? Could not he speak about reconciliation there ? Is there a better place to denounce war and its ugliness, to repudiate hate and its consequences?

Reconciliation is an ideal that is possible only if it is based on memory rather than distorting it. The President knows that, for the President is committed to memory. He has proved it more than once by his support of Holocaust Memorial Council projects. In fact, he is the honorary chairman of the Council’s Campaign to Remember. Why then did he decide to prefer honoring enemy soldiers over their victims? Is it politics, only politics? A desire not to hurt Germany or German sensitivities? What about survivor sensitivities?

Whatever the answer, I am afraid that it is the wrong answer.

The plan as proposed to the President, including a visit to a cemetery with SS graves, is unacceptable--unacceptable not only to Jews but also to all the thousands of American families whose sons and daughters fought against SS battalions in the Battle of the Bulge. How can they, how can we, forget that SS units butchered American war prisoners in Malmedy? The SS was declared by the Nuremberg tribunal as a criminal organization, and therefore to visit a cemetery where there are SS graves is wrong, period.

It is wrong also for the President. His image and his place in history are at stake. He is a moral person with a sense of history. And therefore it is also for his sake that we plead with him to do anything and everything not to go to that cemetery in Bitburg.

Elie Wiesel, chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, is a survivor of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. An author and human-rights activist, he is Andrew W. Mellon professor in the humanities at Boston University.

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