Reagan’s Visit to West Germany

Perhaps the very fact that President Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg cemetery created the firestorm of feelings and actions that it did will lead us to assess the situation--and public life--more fully and deeply.

First off, Reagan thought he was joining with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to help further “reconciliation” between the Germans and the Americans. But such reconciliation has been going on for years--from at least the start of the Marshall Plan in 1948. One could say that the symbolic celebration of it occurred when President John F. Kennedy said, “Ich bin ein Berliner” at West Berlin’s City Hall more than two decades ago.

What is still left over--and powerfully left over--from the era of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and World War II and Hitler and Nazism and Fascism is the Holocaust, the almost unspeakable extermination of Jews (and some others). And the question is not simply one of Hitler and the SS. The questions extend far more deeply, even into the other Western powers and whether our leaders did all they could have, and should have, to save the Jews or largely tried to ignore the issue. The abysmal wounds persist.

In any event, dealing with feelings of reconciliation and renewed meaning between Jews and, for example, the Germans, is something that must take place by them and between them. Gentile leaders in America, no matter how sympathetic and understanding they may feel, or think they feel, toward the Jews and other victims are not the ones to speak for them.

And finally, when some persons powerfully and passionately tell the President, “Don’t! Please don’t! For God’s sake, don’t!” he needs to do more than listen. He needs to hear. And hear beyond his own needs to save face, his own needs to act stubbornly as if he “can’t give in to pressure.”

Whether or not we can--and should--love our enemy, including our enemy who seems the very embodiment of evil--and what and how that “loving” means--are questions each of us has to face. (Try Matthew 5:43-48 if you want to meditate on this.) But I cannot do it for you with your enemy, nor you for me with mine. And if we did think that questions with moral and spiritual meaning to the very depths of our existence can be determined mainly on political grounds, the incidents of the last three months with Bitburg should disabuse us, if we have opened our eyes and unblocked our ears.

HAROLD SPEAR

Hermosa Beach

I am staying here in Escondido as a foreign exchange student from West Germany. So far I have had a great time, and I have enjoyed America a lot. It is a wonderful country with very nice people.

The subject I would like to comment on is the noise that is made about President Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg cemetery.

I can understand that many people, especially those who were victims of Nazism, still have bad feelings about Germany. But I think after 40 years it should be realized that the Germany of today has nothing in common with Hitler Germany. I don’t say we should forget what happened, but the Germans get tired of being expected to be ashamed about what their fathers did, and thus feel as a second-class people.

It is obvious that the President didn’t visit Bitburg to honor the dead SS men, but to honor those who died for their country, believing that they did the right thing. It is a misconception to think that every German was a Nazi.

Instead of strengthening the bonds between the United States and its most loyal ally, and that is what Reagan intended to do, the unbelievable publicity devoted to this subject makes us Germans feel that we still aren’t accepted among the brotherhood of free nations.

So, I say, let the dead rest and the living act like compassionate human beings.

RAINER BAUER

Escondido

In explaining why he went to Bitburg, Reagan has portrayed the soldiers buried there as victims of Nazism, separating them from the government that used them as instruments of war and terror. But would Reagan be as quick to forgive the soldiers of communism?

Can anyone imagine Reagan visiting a North Vietnamese military cemetery, or bowing his head in memory of the Russians who have died in Afghanistan? Of course not, as he would not wish to separate the soldiers from the cause for which they fought.

Yet this is just what Reagan has done by going to Bitburg. It is a fine and noble thing to recognize the millions who died in World War II, on all sides. But by going to a German military cemetery, Reagan has honored the dead buried there in their role as soldiers, thus implicitly giving respectability to the cause for which they fought and died.

Reagan’s visit to Bitburg has not simply reopened old wounds, it has whitewashed one of the most revolting chapters in human history. For this he should never be forgiven.

STEVEN J. RENICK

Beverly Hills

Something has happened that was very important.

I heard a President of the United States say there was a Holocaust. He used words like Jew, Nazi, heinous, evil and guilt. And he said these things in Germany.

It has been said we must never forget. What better way to accomplish this than by what has occurred with President Reagan in the German city of Bitburg?

With so much protest, emotion and publicity revolving around the trip, please let us be able to cut through it all and really see that something truly good took place.

GERALDINE UTASY

Sherman Oaks

Reagan regretted opening “old wounds” by his cemetery trip, but I strongly feel that we must remember so that crimes of yesteryears will never again be repeated.

The opening of old wounds has brought back vivid memories of my months incarcerated behind barbed wire fences in an American concentration camp guarded by soldiers with rifles because we were Americans but with Japanese faces.

If we, the Japanese-Americans are to “totally share and embrace the positive things,” as Reagan eloquently expressed, let us remember, too, this act of “infamy” that happened in our United States of America.

KIYOKA KURUMADA

Culver City

American people should be very thankful that they have a President who has the courage to prevail against the pressures of the media and minority groups. Whenever any nation allows its foreign policy to be dictated or formulated by pressure groups, that nation is entering upon the long, dark night of dissolution.

Germany committed indescribable crimes against dissident peoples, which we all pray will never occur again. But, despite this it is essential for our own safety that the Germans remain in our orbit of influence. German arms have for generations been the shield of Western Europe. Should Germany and Russia ever embrace, that shield breached and discarded, it spells the end of Western civilization, as we know it.

CARL O. RAUCKMAN

Huntington Beach

Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg cemetery was an act that not only exhibited a lack of sorrow and regret for the millions who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazi butchers and a lack of gratitude and respect for those who fought and died to safeguard the freedom of the world, but, by ignoring the mandate of the American people, revealed a blatant disregard for the high and noble ideals of democracy.

SETH D. SLATER

Irvine

Reagan’s visit to a German cemetery was planned as a recognition of the reconciliation that has taken place between our two countries. We have changed from enemies to allies.

The visit has not reopened old wounds as much as it has revealed that many old wounds have never healed. Apparently some of our people harbor such hatred that they cannot share in a spirit of reconciliation, even after 40 years.

GEORGE L. CLARK SR.

Manhattan Beach

I wonder how the White House would have handled Bitburg if President Reagan, the servant of the people, were in his first term in office now.

RICHARD LOWE

Canoga Park

Congratulations to our President. It is wonderful to have a Chief Executive with guts.

President Reagan is well aware that neither he, nor you, nor I, can change the Holocaust. So he has the serenity, and, by his action, provides ample evidence for us all to profit from, to accept that dismal part of history.

He has the courage, and he gives ample evidence of that continuing courage, when, in spite of bleating from all sides, he stood proud, and, as an American, he gave added impetus to the gradually healing wounds of a terrible time.

JOHN A. CLOES

Huntington Beach

What a bizarre and tragic way to reconcile with a former enemy--by reminding the world of the most horrible and shameful chapter in that nation’s history.

SAUL KAHAN

Los Angeles

If there is no collective guilt, then the guilt, as I believe, resides in every participating individual. Herr Hitler did not march through Poland; thousands of male Germans with lucidly conscious intent of murder, theft and destruction marched through Poland.

We are responsible for our actions regardless of our God, our country, our government, our family. It is never necessary to participate in sin just because everyone else is doing it.

A realization, I hope, from the speeches at Bitburg, is that we are ever responsible as individuals and our guilt is not transferable.

Should it ever happen when an aggressive government calls a war and nobody comes, then society, mankind, will have arrived.

LYMAN ENNIS

Pasadena

It strikes me as somewhat paradoxical that the Germans ask the world’s peoples not to view them as collectively guilty for their actions during World War II--while they indiscriminately collectively made entire groups of people “guilty” without exception!

ROBERT ARONOFF

South Pasadena

Enough is enough! Our country has been torn to shreds! Our President has been put through excruciating personal anguish! All over what was a misguided event--but certainly not done out of insensitivity.

It is not my purpose here to debate the cruelties and/or injustices that have occurred to any designated peoples. Men of all societies abhor atrocities; no one can deny such.

Our United States is falling victim to the immortalizing of crimes of the Old World to the detriment of the very strength of which our nation stands for.

Let us close the door on these past few weeks. Enough has been said. We need not pursue the President’s German trip any further.

K.Y. MEEKS

Montclair