Mayor Willy Brandt of West Berlin, addressing a huge Jewish audience today at the Herzl Institute here, asked world Jewry to have trust in postwar German democracy “in which National Socialism has no longer any political base.” At the same time he unsparingly condemned “the terrible crimes which have been committed against millions of Jews in the name of the German people.”
“The generation of young Germans untainted by nazism would not follow so swiftly another brown Pied Piper as did their parents,” Mr. Brandt said. He did not excuse the swastika smearing incidents that took place in Cologne and other German cities at the end of 1959, but he said it would be a “grave mistake” to pass judgment on an entire nation because of the actions of a few hooligans “whose attitude stems more from an irresponsible spirit and immaturity than from serious political motive.”
In the beginning of 1960, he declared, “they were faced by 350,000 young Berliner who without any preceding propaganda got together in an impressive and spontaneous rally against anti-Semitism and chauvinism.” He added that the attitude of the overwhelming majority of young Germans is exemplified by the mass pilgrimages each year to the grave of Anne Frank and by the increasing number of German youth who annually visit and work in Israel under “Operation Atonement.”
Germany’s crimes against the Jewish people, the West Berlin mayor reiterated again and again, could neither be forgotten by good will nor by restitution and indemnification. “Nothing could be more wrong,” he added, “than wishing that the years of the brown terror did not exist and that one could start again with German history in the year 1932. The National Socialist past does exist. It has to be recognized and borne. Children and grandchildren have to come to terms with that heritage as well as possible.”
SAYS GERMANY COULD NEVER BE ‘CHEMICALLY FREE’ OF ANTI-SEMITISM
In his only allusion to the Eichmann case, Brandt remarked: “The fact that one of the worst was found and will be put to trial has to do with the development of the Federal Republic just as much or just as little as if he had never been discovered.”
While denying that Germany could ever be “chemically free” of anti-Semitism, Mr. Brandt contended that “an outbreak of boils” (the swastika incidents) did not necessarily signify” a sign of a new poisoning but rather a form of self-purification of the body.” Public discussion of the problem in Germany during the past two years, he said, had not produced a resurgence of Nazi manifestations. “Nobody,” he declared, “can undo the past; this is a simple–but in this case–horrible truth. We must see to it that the past does not have another future. We can act only in the present time.”
Mr. Brandt, who attended the 15th international Congress of Cities and Communities in Israel last November, described his visit to “that young, brave state which sprang up from the sea of blood and tears in the old land of the Jewish people” as one of the “strongest personal experiences of post-war times.” He characterized the attitude of young Germans toward Israel as one of “deep respect” engendered by admiration for its pioneering spirit, its determination to maintain itself and the recognition that “Israel stands in the same camp we do in our present fight between East and West.”
He scored the “functionaries of the Soviet Union” for using his trip to incite the Arab countries against Germany but otherwise retained from taking any official position on the Arab-Israel disputes. Declaring that East Germany had steadfastly refused to grant restitution of any kind to its former inhabitants, he said: “It is certainly no coincidence that the number of Jewish fellow citizens has fallen in the Soviet Zone to 1,500 while we have in West Berlin and the Federal Republic 27,000.”
Dr. Emanuel Neumann, president of the Herzl Institute, in introducing Mr. Brandt, recalled that the meeting was taking place on the eve of the Eichmann trial in Israel. He said-that the obvious anxiety which the case had created for German leaders and statesmen–“an ordeal for all concerned”–should not obscure the fact that “in bringing Eichmann to trial, Israel is not only performing an historic act of justice but is discharging a moral duty to all mankind.”
Dr. Neumann voiced hope that the remnants of the Nazi era “still glowing and smoldering in dark corners” in Germany would forever be extinguished through the “moral courage and spiritual leadership of men like Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt.” Mr. Brandt was also welcomed at the meeting by Kurt Grossman of the Jewish Agency.
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