A wide variety of former partisans, ghetto fighters and representatives of all political parties except Premier Levi Eshkol’s Mapai announced today plans to stage protest demonstrations here when Dr. Rolf Pauls, West Germany’s first Ambassador to Israel, presents his credentials to President Zalman Shazar. The presentation ceremonies will probably be held Thursday.
The demonstrators plan to picket the route expected to be used by Dr. Pauls in the center of Jerusalem, leading to the President’s House, where the ceremony will be held.
In the continuing demonstrations against the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, the leftist Mapam Party sponsored a march last night. Several scores of placard-carrying youths marched through one of the main streets of Jerusalem, demonstrating against Dr. Pauls and urging “remembrance,” a term used in reference to the Nazi genocide of European Jewry.
After the demonstrators finished their scheduled and approved march, they turned to other streets and began disrupting traffic. Several of the youths went to the home of Mrs. Golda Meir, Israel’s Foreign Minister, and sang the national anthem, Hatikvah. Police restored quiet, but made no arrests.
Protest rallies and marches have been held in half a dozen cities since Dr. Pauls arrived last week. Arrests have been made in a number of the protests, mostly on charges of disturbing the peace and defacing public property. Some of the youth group demonstrators painted Stars of David with a “J” in the center, recalling the emblem the Nazis forced their Jewish victims to wear, on walls in several cities.
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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.