One of the first acts of unified Germany will be to acknowledge guilt for its Nazi past, according to assurances made Monday to a delegation of French Jews visiting Bonn.
This will be done by the president of the Federal Republic, Richard von Weizsacker, in his state address marking unification on Oct. 3, and by Chancellor Helmut Kohl, addressing a joint session of Parliament the following day.
Their speeches will emphasize Germany’s continuing responsibility toward the victims of the Nazi period, according to Lutz Stavenhagen, deputy minister of state in the Chancellor’s Office.
Stavenhagen met with a delegation led by Jean Kahn, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Organizations, CRIF.
The German minister said Kohl’s coalition government would propose to the opposition Social Democrats a joint resolution stressing Germany’s responsibility for Nazi persecutions and massacres.
It is expected to be submitted at the Oct. 4 joint session of the Bundestag and Bundesrat, the lower and upper houses of Parliament.
The CRIF delegation, which included Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld and a representative of the European Jewish Congress, proposed setting up a Franco-German joint commission to deal with problems arising from the Nazi era.
It was proposed to create two university chairs devoted to Holocaust studies and a Franco-German historical library.
Kahn is scheduled to confer with Kohl after the all-German elections in December to work out details of these projects.
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