Asher Ben-Nathan, Israel’s first Ambassador to West Germany, told the founding meeting of the German-Israel Society in West Berlin this weekend that there were still persons in Germany who had learned nothing and who were hostile to anything relating to Israel.
He told the 2,000 persons present in the Hall of the Academy of Art that he was pleased at the opportunity to speak amid a large number of friends and people who themselves had suffered at the hands of the Nazis. He said there were Germans whom one could not forgive but that there were others who had done nothing and should not be subject to blame.
Dr. Heinrich Grueber, a long-time foe of the Nazis, was named honorary president of the Society. The president is Dr. Gerhard Jahn, a Social Democratic member of the Bundestag, the West German lower house of Parliament. The Society board includes former Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Dr. Eugen Gerstenmair, president of the Bundestag, Dr. Carlo Schmidt, vice-president of the Bundestag, Munich Mayor Hans Fogel and other West German leaders. One of the vice-presidents is Ernst Bender, who initiated the successful effort to extend the deadline for prosecution of Nazi war criminals last year.
Other speakers, in addition to the Israel Ambassador, were Dr. Grueber, Mayor Willy Brandt of West Berlin, Ernst Lemmer of the Christian Democratic Party, and Dr. Adolf Arndt, a Social Democratic Member of Parliament, who outlined the tasks of the Society. A special choir of Cologne students who had worked in a kibbutz in Israel sang songs fluently in Hebrew as part of the program of the meeting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
