Extraordinaty precautions, including the posting of a highly-trained, special security unit, were taken here today as preparations were completed by the newly-arrived West German mission to Israel to open its Embassy tomorrow on the sixth floor of Tel Aviv’s Sheraton Hotel.
Dr. Alexander Toeroek, the counselor of the new Embassy — against whose acceptance by Israel there have been protests because he was in the Hungarian Embassy in Berlin during the very time the Nazis were deporting hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews to their deaths — arrived at Lydda Airport last night. With him were three secretaries for the Embassy, which will be headed by Bonn’s Ambassador, Dr. Rolf Pauls who is also unacceptable to many Israelis because he was an officer in Hitler’s army during the war. Both Pauls and Toeroek have been formally accepted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
To protect the German Embassy, the special security unit has mounted machine guns on the roof of the Sheraton Hotel, and policemen equipped with telescopes will keep day-and-night watch. Detectives carrying submachine guns and walkie-talkie radios, accompanied by police dogs, are on watch on the hotel grounds. One yeshiva student caught with a telescope through which he was watching the diplomatic suite at the hotel was arrested today.
Anxiety over the safety of the West German mission mounted as the day approached for the arrival of Dr. Pauls. Former inmates of Nazi concentration camps were reported ready to stage a protest march against him through the streets of this city when he arrives. The protesters are set to wear yellow arm-bands, each emblazoned in indelible ink with their former concentration camp identification numbers. Dr. Pauls is scheduled to arrive here either this week or early next week.
The Sheraton Hotel suite where Dr. Toeroek will open the Embassy tomorrow will be a temporary facility. The Embassy’s permanent quarters will be on the 27th floor of a 32-story building being completed here, Israel’s tallest skyscraper.
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.
