The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

The feelings of shock and revulsion linger 40 years after Ronald Reagan's California Air Corps unit assembled film of Holocaust victims for the general staff in Washington.

"It was unbelievable to sit there and see that film of not only the dead and the ranks of dead, but the condition of the living," the President said. "I remember one shot--I can never forget. There was a building that looked like a warehouse. The floor was entirely carpeted with bodies. And in that film, while we were looking at that, out in the middle of all those bodies, suddenly, slowly one body moved and raised up, a man on his elbow, and tried with his other hand to gesture. He was alone, alive with the dead."

The pain in the President's face is real, though he is in the Oval Office and thousands of miles away from Germany. But it is only a few hours before he is going there, both in body and in spirit. His mission is to make clear his feelings and those of his country about the Nazi horrors. Reagan is plainly anguished by the controversy that his trip and his statements created in the U.S.

"That whole day's ceremonies are so morally right that all that has taken place now, the whole furor, has blinded everyone to the purpose. Isn't it time for us to look back to that day at the end of the war and then recognize, if there's any celebration, it is a celebration of what has followed, that from the end of that war came this complete turnaround that has led now to 40 years of peace, plus our onetime enemies' being, you might say, our staunchest allies. Bitburg was picked because that is where there are German and American forces working together on the NATO line."

The outcry, Reagan admitted, has been the sharpest personal criticism he has received since the 1966 election in California when there was an attempt to portray him as anti-Semitic. "And I must say, the Jewish community of California rose to my support because they knew very much different and they knew of many things that I had done that revealed the lie of that. But this, yes, has been very painful, because no one has said oftener than I have that we must never forget and that the Holocaust must always be remembered with the knowledge that it must never be repeated. To suddenly make this as if it was something that I was doing that was hostile to the people who had suffered in the Holocaust . . . I can never forget what I saw (in the films). Granted, it wasn't equal to the living visits that some had been able to make at that time or those who were the victims. Anyone who went through that--I realize there's no way we can understand the depth of their wound. And we have to realize that, yes, they're going to have an emotional response to anything that they think might be toward forgetting what took place. I understand that."

His duty as President tugged at him. "We're not going there in the sense of forgive and forget. What I believe is needed is a recognition of what has been accomplished in Germany, that here is a Germany that is certainly the most democratic regime the German people have ever known. You know, you could see where a country that had done what they did might have bulldozed out of existence those camps and said, 'Let's pretend it never happened, and let's never mention it again.' No, they have preserved those camps with enlarged pictures to show all the horrors for people to come and visit. They themselves have said we will preserve the memory of this so it never happens again. And now, today, you have a German people who are our staunchest allies and friends, for 30 years an ally in NATO, 40 years of peace. And it began virtually with the end of the war and revealed how widespread must have been the hidden repugnance of many Germans for what was going on. Now this is what I think is needed, and for the benefit of the Germans, to recognize what they have accomplished. They certainly live with a sense of guilt of what happened then. Yes, there are some there who are old enough to have been part of the other. But about two-thirds of the Germans either were not born or were small children and so had nothing to do with that."

Don't forget--but move on. These two themes impel Reagan on the eve of his trip. "I am hopeful that when people see and hear the tone of that day of remembering they will understand. I recognize that when I said once in answer to a question that the people in that cemetery, even though they were the enemy, the conquered enemy, that they too were victims of Nazism, someone interpreted that as meaning that they were as much victims as were the people in the Holocaust. No. The people in those camps have a memory that I doubt any other people on earth have ever had. That memory must be preserved. What I meant was that it was Nazism, not just the camps and that horror, that brought on the war, that brought on the Battle of Britain, just as there were victims within their own country of our own bombings in Hamburg, and so forth. So this is to recognize that all of our young men who gave their lives were victims of this obscene regime that was responsible for so much hatred and destruction. ) And you know, other wars in the past, and particularly in Europe, have all led to the next war. The settlements of the wars were such that the grudges and the hatreds and the rivalries remained. But the miracle that took place 40 years ago, the cleansing that has taken place now, has led to this peace for these 40 years."

As the President does so often, he will rest his case with the young people. "I am going to have an opportunity to speak to several thousand young people about high school age, and I am really looking forward to it because I found out that that generation of younger Germans is unhappy. They are pessimistic. They know that they have to feel this shame about what their country did, when they didn't have anything to do with it. And then, coupled with that, what hope is there for them? I am going to try to tell them something about the job that their country has done and that there is hope."