Jewish Group Protests Scheel’s Failure to Mention Extermination of Jews

A letter protesting the attitude of the Foreign Minister of the German Federal Republic, Walter Scheel, during his visit to Auschwitz last Sunday, was handed yesterday to the German Ambassador here by the Association of Polish-Jewish Former Servicemen. When Mr. Scheel visited the site of the former concentration camp at Ozwiecim, Poland, he appeared visibly moved and wrote in the memorial book following his tour of the camp: “In the face of these horrors, this inhumanity, it must be our task to preserve these highest values: the dignity of man and peace between nations.” Shocked and outraged at Mr. Scheel’s failure to mention the millions of Jews exterminated there, the Association’s letter states: “The German Foreign Minister failed to mention the millions of Jews who perished in Auschwitz merely because they had been Jews. It is the attitude of the Polish government, as part of its aggressive anti-Semitic policy, to present Auschwitz as a place of Polish martyrdom and to ignore the Jewish martyrs of Auschwitz completely. The German Foreign Minister has chosen to copy this attitude.”