West German publisher Axel Springer has restated strong support of Israel in recent comments on the domestic and foreign policy of the federal government as demonstrated in the signing of the Moscow treaty by Chancellor Willi Brandt. In accepting a plaque of honor from the German League of the Expelled, a group comprised of individuals who fled East Germany, he said: “We should not forget that others suffered expulsion and flights as well. I mean those persecuted during the years of National Socialism for racial or political reasons, above all the Jews hunted by their German fellow citizens – to say nothing of those murdered. They were Germans, too, driven from their hereditary home. Some of those we drove away, together with their children, sisters and brothers of those who were murdered in our name, have set up their own state, have created a new home, ‘Israel,’ fulfilling the yearning of two thousand years.” Mr. Springer said he was “profoundly convinced” that it is a “sacred duty” for the Germans to stand by those “we drove away and their descendants, to ensure that millions are not murdered in a new wave of annihilation.”
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