A Misbegotten Trip Opens Old Wounds

By Ed Magnuson

The scene was remarkable: the President of the United States was about to be lectured on morality while a national television audience looked on. It unfolded in the White House Roosevelt Room, crowded with top Administration aides, some 30 Jewish leaders, a sprinkling of Senators and Congressmen. Reagan's deceptively gentle antagonist was Elie Wiesel, 56, a survivor of Nazi death camps, who was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement for his life's outpouring of books that detail the savagery of the Nazis and the suffering and courage of their victims.

The President listened in tight-lipped concentration as the thin, wispy-haired writer graciously accepted his medal, handed it to his son Elisha, 12, and then turned to the sensitive topic everyone present had awaited: Reagan's intention to visit a West German cemetery at Bitburg, where 47 of the Third Reich's notorious Waffen SS troops, as well as some 2,000 regular German soldiers, lie buried. As criticism mounted, Reagan had belatedly added a concentration camp to his itinerary next month in West Germany, where he will help Chancellor Helmut Kohl observe the 40th anniversary of the ending of the war in Europe (see following stones). Only the day before, Reagan had stirred passions anew by seeming to equate most of Bitburg's interred soldiers with the Jewish victims of the Nazi terrors.

Turning to the President, who sat just ten feet away, Wiesel politely noted that "a stage of reconciliation has been set in motion between us. We were always on the side of justice, always on the side of memory, against the SS and against what they represent." He said that he was convinced that "you were not aware of the presence of SS graves in the Bitburg cemetery . . . But now we all are aware. May I, Mr. President, if it's possible at all, implore you to do something else, to find another way, another site. That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.

"The issue here is not politics, but good and evil. And we must never confuse them, for I have seen the SS at work and I have seen their victims . . . Sons watched helplessly their fathers being beaten to death. Mothers watched their children die of hunger. There was . . . terror, fear, isolation, torture, gas chambers, flames, flames rising to the heavens."

The President, looking relieved that the painful moment had passed, applauded. He did not respond to Wiesel's plea not to lay a wreath at Bitburg. Moments before, Reagan had eloquently expressed his view that Americans have pledged more than "Never again"; they have also pledged "Never forget." Yet in indirect reference to the cemetery visit that has embroiled his presidency in its most emotional controversy, he also declared, "There is a spirit of reconciliation between the peoples of the Allied nations and the people of Germany and between the soldiers who fought each other on the battlefields of Europe. That spirit must grow and be strengthened."

It is, of course, a delicate matter to seek reconciliation among World War II enemies without seeming to paper over the unspeakable evils of the Holocaust. Yet for a White House staff that prides itself on its mastery of public relations and for a President who has shown great skill in the use of symbolic gestures, the task should have been fairly routine. Instead, a series of staff miscues and a lack of sensitivity by the President not only cast a pall over his German trip, they managed to stir up all the old wartime passions that Reagan had hoped to put to rest. As the furor over the Bitburg cemetery visit escalated for more than a week, he seemed unable to understand the emotions that he had aroused and, instead of recovering, slid more deeply into controversy.

The result was anger from almost every quarter. West German officials felt the White House had trampled the feelings of a nation still torn by guilt over Nazi atrocities. Complained one of Kohl's closest aides: "Our friends overseas have to make up their minds whether we are friends, fighting shoulder and shoulder together, or whether we are just the offspring of Nazis." In the U.S. and Israel, in the very week that poignant Holocaust remembrances were being held, Jewish leaders were outraged at what they considered Reagan's lack of appreciation of the Nazi horrors. They were mystified by his insistence on the cemetery visit, since he had long been a staunch ally of Israel and had even shed tears when watching films of the concentration camps. Some U.S. veterans' groups were upset that Reagan would visit any cemetery where Hitler's elite troops were buried. "I never thought I'd see the day when Ronald Reagan could get the American Legion angry at him," noted one U.S. diplomat, "but, by God, we've done it."

Politically, the series of gaffes, coming at the same time that Reagan was forced to give ground on aid to the Nicaraguan rebels ( see NATION), helped foster the impression that the Administration was stumbling, however temporarily, in the early months of its second term. "The damage is done," said a White House adviser. "It hurts. It adds to the 'insensitivity' problem." Reagan, in turn, was said to be "frustrated" and "a bit angry." Explained an aide: "He thinks the press coverage has been unfair." Vanishing was the hope that the storm would subside before Reagan leaves April 30 on a ten-day trip to Europe. He will make appearances in Germany before and after the annual economic summit of the seven major industrialized democracies (May 2 to 4 in Bonn), visit Spain and Portugal, and address the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Long lasting or not, the controversy last week gave the Administration a severe buffeting. In Manhattan, an annual Holocaust service was moved from a synagogue to Madison Square Garden's Felt Forum, where an overflow audience of 5,500 heard Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, declare, "A courtesy call at a conveniently located concentration camp cannot compensate for the callous and obscene scandal of honoring dead Nazis." Dressed in black, 41 women who had survived the death camps marched silently to the stage and lighted six banks of candles. At a similar observance in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said, "Reconciliation in the present is fine between British and Germans, French and Italians, Americans and Japanese. But in reconciling the past, with its evil and with Satan, there is no room for salving the conscience."

Addressing a Houston congregation, Menachem Rosensaft, chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, termed the President's insistence on going to the Nazi cemetery "so macabre and so awful that one can only wonder what possessed Reagan." If Reagan does not change his plans, Rosensaft warned, "I would want to organize survivors and American veterans to be at the gate of Bitburg, so that he should look into the faces of those he has terribly and permanently offended."

Veterans' groups, acknowledging that Reagan has been a good friend of the military, were more restrained in their protests. "It would not sit well with American veterans for the President to lay a wreath at the graves of Nazi soldiers," said Clarence M. Bacon, national commander of the American Legion.

On Capitol Hill, 53 Senators from both parties signed a letter urging Reagan to cancel the Bitburg visit. The letter noted that SS troops had committed atrocities against American prisoners during the Battle of the Bulge, as well as against millions of Jews, and suggested dryly that "a more appropriate gesture of reconciliation be found." In the House, New York Democratic Congressman Stephen Solarz charged, "This is the most monumental error of judgment by the President since he assumed office." Asked another New York Democrat, Congressman Ted Weiss, "Mr. President, where is your sense of history? Where is your sense of decency?"

Editorially, few U.S. newspapers defended the President's West German itinerary. "The victims and the butchers of Nazism are not equatable," observed the New York Times. Suggested the Boston Globe: "If Jimmy Carter or Walter Mon-dale had so ... befouled the dignity of the presidency . . . ridicule and sarcasm from right-wing sermonizers would still be echoing." But the press assault on the trip was not unanimous. "That some of the men buried at Bitburg were members of the SS . . . does not make the visit less proper," argued the Houston Post. "Those men are dead, killed fighting as regular troops . . . Death does not distinguish among them, any more than it distinguishes them from Nazi victims." The cemetery stop, contended the Atlanta Constitution, demonstrates "this President's desire to put the atrocities and tensions of the past behind him and shift his focus to the radically different world community of the 1980s--where it belongs."

As might be expected, the view from West Germany was even more ambivalent. Some newspapers complained editorially about the U.S. intrusion into Germany's own attempts to deal with its tormented past. Said the Suddeutsche Zei-tung: "The shame of having waged and carried on the most horrible of all wars, fighting for an unjust cause and for criminal goals, is something the Germans have to deal with. The same is true for the sorrow and tears, for the lives this nation had to give. Leave us Germans alone with it."

The Reagan Administration's efforts to extricate itself from the controversy only made matters worse. Speaking to a group of newspaper editors and broadcasters at a White House lunch, Reagan conceded that the SS officers buried at Bitburg "were the villains, as we know, that conducted the persecutions and all." But he described the other German soldiers there as averaging 18 years of age. "These were those young teenagers that were conscripted, forced into military service in the closing days of the Third Reich when they were short of manpower." White House aides could not explain where Reagan got his estimate of the ages of the dead soldiers, or why he believed there were few volunteers among them. More significant, the President went on to say, "I think that there's nothing wrong with visiting that cemetery where those young men are victims of Nazism also, even though they were fighting in the German uniform, drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis."

In itself, the idea that there were victims among Nazis is reasonable enough; Reagan's error was in equating armed soldiers with the defenseless victims of the death camps (see ESSAY). Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, called it "a perversion of language and a callous offense for the Jewish people. The President has made a terrible statement that brings shame to the American people." At a ceremony in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, where both the victims of the Holocaust and the ten U.S. Army divisions that liberated the camps were honored, speaker after speaker criticized Reagan's statements. Wiesel turned to a red-faced Secretary of State George Shultz and pleaded, "Please, be our emissary. Tell those who need to know our pain is genuine, our outrage deep, our perplexity infinite." Responding, Shultz departed from his text to say solemnly, "I share with you the deep conviction that there is no place, within the deep spirit we feel of reconciliation, for understanding for those who took part in the perpetration of the Nazi horror."

Reagan added further to his problems by dispatching longtime Aide Michael Deaver to West Germany to find a suitable concentration camp or synagogue for the President to pay his respects to the Nazi victims. Deaver, who had directed the arrangements for the visit from the start, swept into Bonn with an entourage of 20, leading some members of Kohl's staff to complain privately that Deaver travels with more aides than the Chancellor does. While many West Germans view Kohl as a genial but often bumbling politician, they see the men around Reagan as undignified novices who are ill-equipped to handle the heavy duties of a superpower. In Washington, a State Department official conceded that presidential advance teams often "swarm all over our embassies and reduce local protocol to rubble." In this case the ghoulish exercise of selecting a death camp for Reagan to visit appalled many Germans. White House aides would not explain just why Bergen-Belsen was finally chosen. It is conveniently close to Frankfurt, its park-like setting is photogenic, and, since the camp was burned to the ground in 1945, there is little to remind visitors of its gruesome past except a monument.

How could both Bonn and Washington blunder into such a degrading fuss over an event that was intended to be a moving, soothing and mutually constructive experience? The origins go back more than a year ago, when plans for the observance of the Normandy invasion anniversary were carefully worked out by officials in Washington, London and Paris. Kohl was not invited to participate, since this was seen as a celebration of the wartime victory over the Germans rather than a time for the victor to join hands with the vanquished. Kohl was miffed, and his resentment lingered. When it turned out that the economic summit would bring Reagan to Bonn shortly before May 8, the V-E day anniversary, Kohl saw a chance to regain lost prestige. He thought some expression of the new bonds between his country and the U.S. would be in order 40 years after the wartime enmity. At the State Department, top officials viewed the occasion as a way to solidify the NATO alliance. The primary aim of the American diplomats, said one, was "to keep Germany happy."

Kohl brought his plans to Washington when he visited the White House last November. While there has been much confusion and some dispute between the two capitals over just what was said between Reagan and the Chancellor, there is no doubt that Kohl made an emotional appeal for the President to join him in appearing at a German military cemetery. Kohl had clasped hands on Sept. 22 with France's President Franc,ois Mitterrand at a World War I cemetery in Verdun, where German as well as French soldiers are buried, and had found it a gratifying experience. Kohl mentioned Bitburg as a likely site for a similar ceremony with Reagan. The President agreed with the idea in principle, while not committing himself to any particular cemetery.

Kohl also suggested that Reagan might want to appear with him at a Nazi concentration camp. Neither the President nor his aides have been able, or perhaps willing, to explain just what Reagan's reaction to the camp suggestion had been, or why, months later, Reagan seemed to imply that Kohl had never formally proposed such a visit. All that seems certain is that Reagan did not focus on Kohl's camp visit proposal, an error that was to have serious consequences.

The President had, however, definitely accepted the Kohl invitation to mark the V-E day anniversary with him in some fashion, and Deaver was sent in February to work out the details. By then Deaver had announced his intention to leave the White House as soon as he could be spared. He had been hospitalized for nearly two weeks in January after developing a kidney infection, and had suffered from allergic reactions to medication after that. Thus he was far from his best as he left for West Germany on Feb. 19 for a weeklong advance-planning survey. Recalled a close friend: "He simply wasn't concentrating. His head wasn't in the White House."

Logistically, Bitburg was advantageous because Reagan could fly into the NATO air base near the city. Reagan and Kohl could greet a mixed assembly of Germans and temporary American residents, further symbolizing the ties between the two nations. Deaver tramped the cemetery grounds briefly, but the gravestones were covered with snow, and the fact that 47 SS officers were buried there apparently was not known to him. He neglected to check out the general identity of the dead with cemetery officials.

West German officials in Bonn also apparently failed to look closely at the cemetery lists. At first some aides in the chancellery thought that Americans might also be buried at Bitburg. But a German official lays the blame heavily on the U.S. advance party. Says he: "You can't just walk over the ground covered with snow and say this is a nice landscape. We should know history even better than the Americans, but the Americans also have a responsibility toward the President. They must also check on the history that is beneath the ground. It was not very intelligent."

After Deaver returned to the U.S., lower-ranking aides worked on the trip details. They discovered that no Americans were in the cemetery because all U.S. soldiers had been removed from German territory. One of these aides insists that they asked about Nazis' being buried there and were told by their low-level counterparts in West Germany that, in effect, "there'd be nothing embarrassing" for the President in such a visit. Contends one U.S. official: "As clumsily as we've handled it, Kohl & Co. have surpassed us in spades." But another U.S. planner concedes, "We should have gone back and done some homework on our own."

One possible cause of the lack of White House focus on the impending trip was that the staff was in the midst of a wrenching transition. The politically savvy James Baker had shifted from chief of staff to head the Treasury Department. The incoming chief, Donald Regan, was acquiring new personnel and realigning responsibilities. He eventually was to approve the European trip plans but apparently in a perfunctory manner Beyond that, there was no one in the White House hierarchy with special sensitivity to Jewish concerns. As happened so often in his presidency, Reagan had remained aloof from detail, even though the trip was fraught with symbolism. Once again he was relying on staff expertise to guide him through the shoals, but this time his aides were distracted.

West German officials contend they were surprised when the President told reporters last month that he did not want to offend his German hosts by visiting a concentration camp, which he said would run the risk of "reawakening the passions of the time." Kohl had told him that 60% of the present German population had been born since the war, and Reagan exaggerated that point at his press conference: "Very few [of the German people are] a live that remember even the war, and certainly none of them who were adults and participating in any way." The careless and obviously untrue words fed the notion that Reagan was amazingly naive about history, a charge that was to plague him throughout the controversy.

Aides to the Chancellor insist that Kohl wrote Reagan a letter shortly after his Washington visit that repeated his hopes for a presidential trip full of upbeat symbolism. One paragraph, they say, mentioned Dachau as a Konzentrationslager that Reagan should see out of respect for its victims. Reagan aides would not confirm that such a suggestion was repeated by Kohl. Moreover, they contend, lower West German officials expressed pleasure that Reagan had publicly announced his intention to avoid such an appearance. A senior Bonn official concedes, "Quite a lot of German people were pleased about the decision not to go to Dachau because it is like going backward."

The President's decision not to pay homage to Holocaust victims raised little fuss in the U.S. until White House Spokesman Larry Speakes two weeks ago announced Reagan's intention to visit the military cemetery. Asked who was buried there, Speakes replied that he "thought" both American and German soldiers were interred at the site. He later refused to ex plain where he had received that impression or whether the President had also assumed this to be true. The furor broke when reporters discovered that not only were there no Americans in the cemetery but that the notorious SS officers were among the dead there.

The misunderstanding between the two allied leaders was amplified by a second letter from Kohl to Reagan last week. In the letter, which was made public in Bonn, Kohl stressed that he had proposed the visit to the Dachau memorial site and added: "I ... request you to either include the concentration memorial site in Dachau or another memorial for the victims of Fascist terror in your visiting program." When the letter was received at the White House, one U.S. official said, "The President read it and looked up in astonishment. He took off his glasses and said, 'Hell, do you see what this says?' "Reagan later in the week told several audiences that he had only then realized that he had been officially invited to mark V-E day with a visit to a death camp.

Reagan could have blunted the controversy by admitting he had made a mistake. He could have canceled the wreath-laying ceremony at the cemetery and simply given a speech outlining his commitment to American-German amity. The reason he had not done so by week's end apparently stemmed from his concern for Kohl, who would lose face if Reagan backed out of the Bitburg ceremony.

That was made clear on Friday in a personal telephone call to Reagan by Kohl. Indirectly, Reagan raised the possibility of bypassing Bitburg for a less explosive site. Speaking in a somber tone out of keeping with his amiable personality. Kohl advised Reagan that to cancel Bitburg could impair official relations between the two governments and, more important, hurt "the feelings between Germans and Americans." Reagan assured Kohl that he would not buckle under to the pressure at home.

Despite the strains imposed on old friendships by the cemetery fiasco, broader common interests would surely prevent lasting ruptures. West Germany and the U.S. are staunch NATO allies and major trading partners. More personally, few Jews see Reagan as harboring any traces of anti-Semitism. His credentials as a champion of Israel remain unchallenged. Even his most effective critic, Elie Wiesel, spoke more in sorrow than in anger. It was obvious there was a concern for humanity in what the President was striving to achieve, no matter how awkwardly he went about it. What disturbed Reagan's friends and critics last week was his impulsive public rhetoric and his shaky grasp of history. Some Reagan watchers wondered whether his fabled Teflon coating was beginning to show some scratches.

Shaken by the reaction in the U.S., a senior official in Bonn looked back at the furor and put the issues in a broader perspective. Said he: "No one could have imagined how thin the ice was we were gliding on. History comes through so easily, so quickly. Now all the controversy is directed against the President. But afterward, it might be directed against the Germans . . . Even 40 years may not be long enough, even 50 years, even an entire change of generation."

Kohl confronted his nation's continued anguish in a speech prepared for delivery Sunday at Bergen-Belsen, where he had long planned to make his first official V-E day observance. "Bergen-Belsen, a place in the center of Germany," he said, "remains the mark of Cain burned into the memory of our people . . . the site of a deluded will to destruction." Kohl recalled that the Nazis' "totalitarian regime was directed mainly against the Jews . . . The decisive question is why so many people remained indifferent . . . even if Auschwitz was beyond the power of human comprehension, the unscrupulous brutality of the Nazis was openly recognizable." Then the Chancellor noted that more than 50,000 Soviet prisoners of war also died in the Bergen area. "Germany bears the historical responsibility for the atrocities of the Nazi dictatorship. This responsibility expresses itself in the shame which can never expire."

That view may prove overly pessimistic. Yet it was only too obvious last week that the war's psychic scars remain tender after four decades. Statesmen who try to hasten the healing, for the most laudable of reasons, must do so cautiously and with respect for the ghosts of the past. --By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington and William McWhirter/Bonn, with other bureaus

With reporting by Reported by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington, William McWhirter/Bonn, with other bureaus