Former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt said here today that “it would have been a good idea” had President Reagan decided to include a visit to Dachau when he attends an economic summit meeting in Bonn next May 2-4.
“I hope he did not get advice from any official quarters in Germany that this would not be a good idea,” Brandt told reporters after a ceremony at which the Jewish National Fund presented him with a 70th birthday present — a forest in his name to be planted in lower Galilee.
The White House informed Bonn this week that the President would not be visiting Dachau, site of one of the most notorious concentration camps of the Nazi era, because he “doesn’t think it is the appropriate thing to do.”
The West German government reportedly had suggested such a visit as part of the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany on May 8. Reagan was quoted in the American media as saying Dachau represented a past of which the people of today’s Germany had no part. An unnamed Administration official was quoted in the media as saying: “The President now thinks we should put this past behind us. He thinks that a visit there (Dachau) wouldn’t contribute to the theme of reconciliation and friendship.”
Brandt arrived in Israel yesterday and was greeted at the airport by Premier Shimon Peres who welcomed him as a “great friend of Israel and my personal friend.” Brandit said he hoped his visit would help the Socialist International formulate its position on the problems of the Middle East, in view of the recent changes in Israel and the region in general. Brandt and Peres both are leaders of the Socialist International.
Brandt expressed indignation over the anti-Israel statements by a delegation of West Germany’s Green Party which visited Israel and neighboring countries last month. The delegation, he said, represented only a faction of the Greens.
“In Germany they are a minority within a minority and do not represent the thinking of West Germany’s youth,” he said. “We ask our friends in Israel not to pay too much attention to what some minorities within minorities may say when they come to Israel.”
Brandt said he was “hurt” by Austrian Defense Minister Friedhelm Frischenschlager’s personal reception of Nazi war criminal Walter Reder when the latter returned to his native Austria last week after nearly 40 years in an Italian prison. “This hurt me, but it was apparently due to a misunderstanding,” Brandt said.
During his stay in Israel he will meet with Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Mayor Elias Freij of Bethlehem.
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