Chancellor Helmut Kohl placed a wreath Monday on a memorial to the 60,000 people who died at Buchenwald, one of the first concentration camps built by the Third Reich, which also served the Stalinist regime after World War II.
His visit, before attending a special convention of the Christian Democratic Union in nearby Weimar, focused attention on the fact that the many Jewish victims of Buchenwald, which was opened in 1933, are hardly acknowledged as such.
The memorial lists 32 nations from which the victims came but makes no reference to any of them having been Jewish.
The news media accompanying Kohl concentrated on his wreath-laying at a memorial to some 10,000 anti-Communists who died at the camp after its takeover by Soviet occupation forces.
It was erected only seven months ago, after the German unification. The concentration camp site is now managed by the state of Thuringia.
It includes a small Jewish memorial plaque, which tells visitors in Hebrew of the Jews who perished at the hands of “German fascists.”
The German and Russian translations omit the word “German.”
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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.
