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British Jews Protest Gen. Eisenhower’s Statement Offering Forgiveness to Germans

January 23, 1951
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The Board of Deputies of British Jews today decided to send a deputation to the British Government to protest against statements by General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower and Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, British High Commissioner for Germany, offering Germans forgiveness in return for support in the Western European alliance.

Commenting on Gen. Eisenhower’s statement yesterday that as far as he is concerned “bygones are bygones,” speakers at the Board’s meeting today called it a “betrayal of those who fought and died for the Allied cause.” Col. Bean, leader of Jewish veterans, stressed that British Jewish veterans are deeply concerned by the prospect of being “allies in arms with the Germans in any future conflict.”

Representations to the four Allied Powers were made by the World Jewish Congress in protest against suggestions to release Nazi war criminals. The strongest exception in particular was taken by the W.J.C. to the declaration made last week in Berlin by the British High Commissioner in Germany, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, who said that “there is no man in prison in Germany for war crimes whose sentence I shall not be willing to consider in view of the changed circumstances.”

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