As East and West Germany were agreeing last week on a date for unification, a European Jewish leader visiting here expressed skepticism about the ability of West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to lead a united country into the future.
Some of Kohl’s close aides “are really anti-Semites,” charged Jean Kahn, president of CRIF, the Representative Council of Jewish Organizations in France, and the man slated to become president of the European Jewish Congress.
“I do not feel the circle surrounding Kohl has been de-Nazified,” Kahn said in an address to the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. He said many European Jews were “concerned and worried about reunification.”
Kohl has been a longtime advocated of reunification. His Christian Democratic Union championed the cause of speedy reunification in its last election campaign.
Voicing doubts about Kohl and his advisers, Kahn referred to a widely publicized incident in Poland, after West German Jewish leader Heinz Galinski protested Kohl’s scheduled visit to a concentration camp on Shabbat.
Hans Klein, the West German government spokesman and a close friend of Kohl’s, reportedly told Galinski, “We cannot always accept the precepts of international Jewry.”
Kahn also claimed that German academics who are apologists for the Nazi regime have been known to serve as advisers to Kohl.
But Robert Goldman, ADL’s European representative, said after Kahn’s speech that “there is another side to the German story.”
He said West Germany under Kohl has been one of the most responsive governments in the European Community when it comes to Jewish or Israeli concerns.
“I would not like to associate (the ADL) with any notion that there is anti-Semitism within the current government in Bonn,” Goldman said.
While Goldman said fears over reunification are “understandable,” he believes “the net effect of reunification will be positive.”
The joining of East and West Germany means the end of the “hypocrisy and lies” that were told to the East German people by the previous Communist government, Goldman said.
Through education, he said, the East Germans will “come to grips” with the history of the Third Reich and the Holocaust.
Goldman said Kahn’s negative feelings about Kohl should not detract from his effectiveness when he takes the helm of the European Jewish Congress.
But he added, “Obviously, I hope that as he goes on, he will perhaps develop a more balanced view” of the Germans.
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.
