West Germany’s embassy in Israel “will be watched” for a long time, “and more will be expected of it,” the Allgemeine Wochenzeitung, a Jewish weekly, declared editorially here today.
The newspaper stated that Dr. Rolf Pauls and Dr. Alexander Toeroek, respectively Ambassador and counselor of the West German mission in Israel, “are confident that they can work in a manner calculated to reduce the discords gradually, and to awaken sympathetic feelings. They do not expect that the sorrows visited on Jews in the name of the German people will be forgotten by the Israelis. However, they hope to contribute toward closer approaches between Germans and Jews.”
The German envoys in Israel, continued the editorial, “hope, above all, that they can make a contribution toward stabilizing political relations in the Near East, now that a beginning has been made in diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany. Surely, this would represent an advantage to Israel, one which, by itself, is justification enough for taking up diplomatic relations with Germany, despite the fact that countless Israelis speak against it.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
