Word: bitburg
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...TIME Bonn Bureau, which played host to the visiting colleagues, the economic summit turned out to be an interlude in reporting on the Bitburg controversy. Bureau Chief William McWhirter interviewed government officials about the contretemps, as Correspondent John Kohan reported on a commemoration by U.S. Jews at the Dachau concentration camp and the official observances at Bergen-Belsen. The bureau's planning, together with that of dozens of staff members in New York, enabled TIME to have one of its latest closings ever, and to bring readers, only hours later, the dramatic events of the summit and Bitburg...
Reagan's pilgrimage, which also featured a stop at the grave of Konrad Adenauer and a bitterly controversial ceremony of reconciliation at a military cemetery in Bitburg, climaxed a drama that could hardly have been more unexpected or perverse. What began as a ceremonial addendum to his duties at the economic summit in Bonn had escalated into the most passionate dispute of his presidency. A gesture of friendship had instead revived memories of the Holocaust and World War II, strained relations between the U.S. and West Germany, and provoked worldwide debate. As the tumult raged on all last week, Reagan...
Reagan and Kohl next flew to the western town of Bitburg for the reconciliation ceremony. It was this act, symbolizing the restoration of friendship, that stood at the heart of the controversy roiling around them. Buried in the soil of Bitburg were the remains not only of ordinary German fighting men but also of 49 members of the Waffen SS, a branch of the elite Nazi guard that ran the death camps, though the Waffen SS did not serve in that capacity...
After all the anger stirred by the cemetery plans, both Reagan and Kohl were determined to keep the wreath laying there as low-key as possible. They succeeded. Air Force One carried the two leaders into a U.S. air base on the outskirts of Bitburg, a pleasant town in the Eifel hills where 11,000 Americans live in friendship with a roughly equal number of Germans. A motorcade took them through open country, then into a residential area and to the small cemetery. There the flat markers, arranged in 32 rows, had been polished for the visit, and flowers were...
Republicans swatted their House leader Robert Michel for being defeatist on contra aid. Reagan bashed Congress for "surrendering" to Communists. USIA Director Charles Wick, a close Reagan friend, zapped his old buddy for wanting to lay a wreath at the Bitburg cemetery. Jewish groups continued to denounce his German itinerary. Reagan has been a great booster of the military, but that did not stop the American Legion from getting in some licks about Bitburg...