A defense of the Waffen SS by the newly appointed government spokesman, Hans Klein, has drawn angry protests from West Germany’s Jewish community.
Heinz Galinski, leader of the community, called his remarks “inappropriate, indefensible and unacceptable to survivors of the Holocaust.”
But Klein, a member of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s ruling Christian Democratic Union, is standing by his words.
The government spokesman, who holds the rank of minister, was quoted by the Munich weekly Quick last week as saying that the Waffen SS, the Nazi elite force, was “a fighting unit, not criminals.”
Political observers here believe Klein’s defense of the Waffen SS was calculated to recapture right-wing voters who recently deserted the CDU in favor of the neo-Nazi Republican Party and other extremist factions.
Klein also defended Kohl, who came under worldwide criticism in 1986 for prevailing upon then President Reagan to place a wreath at the military cemetery in Bitburg, where members of the Waffen SS are buried along with other German war dead.
Klein said the critics acted as if the chancellor was giving the highest honors to concentration camp hangmen.
He went on to defend the men who served in the Waffen SS, who he claimed were distinct from the SS who ran the concentration camps.
At a news conference here Saturday, he said he could defend his position politically and morally. “The Waffen SS were honestly serving their country in the belief that they should defend it,” Klein said.
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.
