Dr. Konrad Adenauer, the West German Chancellor, promised today that “everything will be done to bring the anti-Semites to justice. ” He emphasised that “we are not willing to allow this problem to destroy our reputation abroad.”
The Chancellor’s pledge was made to Dr. H.G. Van Dam, secretary-general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, who visited him here to congratulate him on his 94th birthday.
The German trade union movement called today for a special parliamentary commission to investigate the outbreak of anti-Semitic manifestations throughout West Germany, which began with the desecration of the Cologne Synagogue on Christmas Eve and spread rapidly throughout the entire country and abroad.
Professor Franz Bochm, a Christian Democratic leader and Germany’s fore must expert on relations between Germans and Jews, told the JTA today he believed the outbreak “has been organized by, and is being steered by, anti-democratic circles who use anti-Semitism as a disguise for masking their hatred of democracy.”
In London, the West German charge d’affaires delivered a memorandum to the Foreign Office expressing the Bonn Government’s condemnation of the outbreaks and its “deep indignation.” German envoys in all countries with which Germany has diplomatic relations, were to have made similar demarches today.
In Washington, the German envoy, Wilheim Grewe, told an American Jewish Committee delegation that the source of the recent outbreaks should be ought elsewhere than in West Germany. He said the incidents might have been coordinated at some center which “is certainly not on the territory of the Federal Republic.” He indicated his belief that the outbreaks might have been Communist-inspired but added that it would be difficult to give a “final and definite explanation” until an investigation was completed.
The envoy rejected an important part of the memorandum submitted him by the delegation and denied that ex-Nazis had returned to public office in West Germany, as charged by Herbert B. Ehrmann, AJC president. The delegation urged a program in West Germany to promote democracy and combat renascent Nazism.
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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.
