Two U.S. Jewish Leaders Conflicted over Reagan’s Visit to Bitburg and His Remarks at Bergen-belsen

Two American Jewish leaders clearly expressed today the conflicting reactions of many other Jews to President Reagan’s visit to a German military cemetery containing the bodies of Waffen SS troops and earlier to a hastily-arranged stop at a former Nazi death camp.

Howard Friedman, president of the American Jewish Committee, noted again the failure of the Committee and other Jewish leaders to persuade Reagan to cancel the visit to the Bitburg cemetery. But he praised the President’s remarks at the Bergen-Belsen death camp and his visit to West Germany’s first Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s grave, another bst minute arrangement.

“Our lingering sadness over Bitburg must not be allowed to interfere with our determination to look ahead,” Friedman declared, noting that “there is the irony that the unfortunate controversy over Bitburg has widened almost beyond comprehension the attention to the Holocaust and to its challenge that its lessons must never be forgotten.”

Reagan had steadfastly contended the meaning of his visit should be to focus on the reconciliation of Germans and Americans as staunch allies 40 years after the Third Reich collapsed.

Nathan Perlmutter, director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said the President’s “gentile eloquence” at Bergen-Belsen “will resonate for a long time. Not so his discomforting walk at Bitburg.”

But, Perlmutter added, “It’s all over now. The President has a new debit in his ledger: Bitburg. But as we all want to be judged by our full records rather than on our worst lapses, so should a President be judged. Bitburg evidences an insensitivity to the victimized dead. The miraculous airlift of Ethiopian Jews from Sudan and the defense of Israel reveal a great sensitivity for the living and the future.”