Date: 1985-05-01
Speaker: STANLEY J. WIDES (democrat)
Chamber: H

Executive Secretary. Department of New Jersey. Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A.. Teaneck NJ. DEAR MR. WIDES: I am honored to have been invited to attend this meeting of the New Jersey Jewish War Veterans and its auxiliary. and I very much regret having to miss it. Your assembly observes an anniversary of immense importancethe 40th year since peace came to Europe. Too. it meets at a moment when we are altogether unsettled about what those 40year old events should mean to us now. The socalled Bitburg fiasco leaves meanguished. and. unexpectedly. it also leaves me reassured. The causes for the first sentiment are all too well known to you. I oppose the Presidents visit to Bitburg. and have signed Congressman Robert Mrazeks letter to Chancellor Kohl which asks that gentleman to withdraw the invitation to visit the cemetery. and find another site for the President to pay American respects to the German people. But both the Chancellor and the President apparently feel a commitment to the original plans. So what could give rise to the second sentiment I feel. that of reassurance? Just this: Only a highly moral people could so examine and crossexamine its national conscience. as we have these past weeks. about events so long passed. The acuteness of the pain we still feel. the intensity with which every new public statement about the Bitburg agenda is examined and debatedthese are reproofs to those who say we have forgotten. or wish to forget. We have not forgotten. and we will not forget! If the President must go to Bitburg. what is required of him there? I believe that he should remember. and honor. the victims of the war and the Holocaust. and that he should then reaffirm how great a distance the people of the Federal Republic of Germany have so willingly and so steadily since come. On anniversary day. those must be the twin precepts. they are both simple. both true. Hitlerism was an appalling phenomenon. so appalling that it still defies those who have tried to explain it by reference to the political. social. and economic weaknesses which led to Hitler. The Holocaust was still morp appalling. and was without equal in human history. and has always been remembered as such. But when soldiersyou and your honored brethren from as many nationswhen soldiers crushed the Nazis. they crushed Nazism in Germany. and the subsequent few years witnessed the transformation of that country. at least in its western parts. It was a transformation as complete as the one Hitler himself had worked. Germany has since been pleasant proof of what philosophers like Kant. Montesquieu. and Adam Smith have promisedthat in democratic states. peoples tend to expend their energies in social. economic. and political affairs of kinds well short Of warmaking. The German economy has been one of the marvels of this century. while the German polity is liberal. generous. free. and deeply committed to friendship with the Americans. The attempts some foreign and some German observers make to uncover the pathological ugliness of old crimes in the occasional neofascist bomb. or in a few backalley clubs where illegal Nazi regalia can be purchased. are attempts. and little more. Nothing remains of Hitler in Germany. He is not hiding there. beneath the attractive surface. No one wants him. There is a totalitarian government which today shows insufficient shame. for its own dead despot who helped Hitler divide Poland and thus helped commence the war. But it is not Germany. Germany is instead its democratic answer. First. remembrance. And then. reconciliation. Not with the Nazis. not with Nazism. but with a Germany where. in four decades. neither has found any refuge. Sincerely.