Outrage Forces Reagan to Seek 2d German Site to Visit : May Pick Camp or Synagogue

The White House, reacting to public outrage over President Reagan’s plan to visit a German military cemetery, today sent two top aides back to West Germany to look for a concentration camp or other site Reagan could also visit next month.

Presidential spokesman Larry Speakes said that West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl wrote Reagan requesting that he go ahead with plans to lay a wreath at the cemetery at Bitburg and that the President still plans to do so.

But Speakes said White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan ordered the return planning trip to look “at other opportunities” for Reagan to visit during his six-day stay in West Germany.

Speakes said that could mean Reagan will visit a World War II concentration camp but that no site has been determined.

Synogogue Visit Possible

White House officials had suggested earlier that a visit to a synagogue also was possible in an effort to “balance” the President’s appearances during his state visit.

Speakes said Deputy Chief of Staff Michael K. Deaver and advance chief William Henkel, who were among those arranging Reagan’s European schedule, would leave today to see other potential memorial sites.

Asked if the planning trip was a result of outrage and concern expressed by Jewish and veterans’ groups following disclosure of the Bitburg cemetery plan, Speakes acknowledged that it was.

The decision for Reagan to participate in a wreath-laying at Bitburg was made by Deaver and described by some other White House officials as a public relations disaster.

SS Question Dodged

In Bonn, government spokesman Peter Boenisch said consultations are under way on possible changes in Reagan’s itinerary and refused three times to say whether there are graves of elite Waffen SS soldiers in the Bitburg cemetery.

“This is a question of secondary importance,” said Boenisch. He said the real purpose of the Reagan visit was to demonstrate reconciliation between wartime foes and not to honor any individuals or military units.

Reagan had ruled out a visit to a Nazi concentration camp site, saying on March 21 that, instead of “reawakening the memories” of the war, he wanted to commemorate the postwar friendship between the United States and West Germany.

Jewish Leaders Protest

In recent days, both West German and U.S. Jewish leaders have expressed outrage at Reagan’s plan to visit the German military cemetery and urged him to visit a concentration camp instead.

Reagan is slated to visit West Germany May 1-6 for a seven-nation economic summit and state visit. May 8 marks the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.

The Bitburg cemetery, located in the Eifel hills southwest of Bonn, is the resting place of 1,983 Germans killed in the Battle of the Bulge, the December, 1944, clash that was the last major German offensive of World War II.

Ignatz Bubis, the chairman of Frankfurt’s 5,000-member Jewish community, has termed the planned Reagan visit “outrageous,” while Werner Nachmann, the chairman of the Executive Council of West German Jews, said Reagan would have been “better advised” to visit a concentration camp site.

In Israel, the conservative Maariv newspaper also criticized Reagan’s plans today. “How is it possible to explain or justify the decision not to honor the victims of the Nazis and at the same time to take part in a demonstration of forgiveness for those who fought to conquer the world?” Maariv asked in an editorial.

Soviets criticize visit, Page 12.