Just hours after President Reagan laid a wreath at the German military cemetery at Bitburg, with its graves of soldiers who fought for the Nazi army, some 500 Jews and Christians — among them Holocaust survivors and American veterans of World War II — paid their respects to those soldiers who liberated Europe from the Nazis, in a memorial ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.
Sponsored by the Washington chapter of the Jewish War Veterans, the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington and the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, the ceremony was publicized as a “Tribute to America’s Defenders and Liberators.”But the tribute was clearly an expression of the continued anguish over the President’s visit to Bitburg this morning.
“Over the last days, there has been a growing consensus among American veterans and interfaith and Jewish groups that it is of paramount importance to honor in an appropriate manner the heroism of those who perished in the defense of freedom from Nazi tyranny,” the Rev. Edward White, president of the Interfaith Conference, said in his welcoming address.
SAYS REAGAN SENDING ‘WRONG SIGNALS’
Benjamin Meed, president of the American Gathering and Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, was more direct in criticizing Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg cemetery and in linking the controversy with the tribute today.
“Sadly, we live in a world of images. The image of the American President — however well-intentioned — at a German cemetery where soldiers are buried, including Nazi SS elite and concentration camp guards, sends to the world wrong signals,” Meed told the crowd that filled the area of the cemetery’s small memorial Ampitheater.
Maintaining that “there can be no reconciliation between murderers and their victims,” Meed stressed that the spirit of reconciliation with Germany, which has been Reagan’s justication for the visit, cannot be achieved by honoring Nazi soldiers.
“We have seen our leaders go to great pains to separate the evil of Nazism from the German people as a whole,” Meed said. But he added that “the Nazis did not operate in a vacuum,” and that “the German nation was willingly mobilized to carry out the Nazi policies and therefore shares its moral responsibilities …. for the destruction they brought.”
“The reason for the outcry about Bitburg is precisely this: the attempt to obscure and absolve a nation of its moral responsibilities both to the victims and humanity,” Meed said. “True reconciliation can only be found if we confront this fact of history — as painful and as ugly as it was — truthfully and fully.”
ARMY REPRESENTED AT THE TRIBUTE
The sponsoring organizations had initial difficulty in obtaining a permit to hold the ceremony at Arlington, in part, according to one report, because the Army viewed it as a demonstration that would appear hostile to the Commander-in-Chief.
But the Army was represented at the tribute today. Its band played American patriotic melodies as well as Jewish liturgical music, and soldiers paraded with the flags of battalions that participated in the liberation of Europe. Following the laying of three wreaths — one by each of the sponsoring organizations– people filed past, laying flowers that had been presented to them at the entrance.
One of the wreaths was in the shape of a Star of David, contributed by the JWV.
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.
