Hillel Zeidel, a member of the Histadrut Executive and a World War II partisan, telegraphed Premier Golda Meir urging her to formally dissociate her government from Eban’s statement. Itzhak Zuckerman, whose code-name was “Antek” when he commanded the Warsaw Ghetto fighters in 1943, denounced Eban’s remarks in a statement broadcast on the radio last night. Stefan Grayek, head of an umbrella organization of ex-resistance fighters, condemned the statement as utterly irresponsible and insulting to the memory of the Nazis’ victims not to mention the survivors. He said Eban’s words would be used in German courts by defense councels to argue for the acquittal of war criminals.
An editorial published today in the English-language Jerusalem Post, a newspaper that often reflects government views, severely chastized Eban. “Foreign Ministers are not private individuals free to air personal views on public matters. Mr. Eban should not have told Mr. Frost in a televised interview that he is not interested whether further Nazi war criminals are prosecuted. The partisans’ organization is right in holding that such an opinion publicly expressed by Israel’s Foreign Minister will be made use of by reluctant prosecutors in Germany and Austria and that it will be said that ‘even Israel’ favors abandoning all further prosecutions,” the Post said.
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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.
