Bonn President Tells Germans Not to Forget Nazi Persecutions

In an address to the Conference of German Jurists, Prof. Theodor Heuss, the West German President, turned against the German people’s “will to forget” Nazi crimes against the Jews and others.

Jurists should not cast out of their minds the memory of the time when there was neither law nor justice, Prof. Heuss told the assembly, but should keep it alive, even though it might at times be inconvenient. “The ability to forget is a grace bestowed upon man,” Prof. Heuss observed, “but it so happens that I am opposed to transmuting this ability into a technique predicated upon the will to forget.”