Reagan Backs Down, Will Visit Concentration Camp : Don’t Forget Holocaust, He Says

President Reagan reversed himself today and said he will visit a former Nazi concentration camp or other appropriate site during his state visit to West Germany next month to remind the world “we must never forget the Holocaust.”

Reagan had earlier decided to bypass an invitation to visit a concentration camp on grounds that most Germans, he said, did not remember the atrocities committed by the Nazis and because he wanted to emphasize 40 years of friendship between America and Germany.

Reagan, acknowledging that the decision “provoked a storm of controversy,” told a group of religious leaders: “As for the (original) decision not to go to Dachau, one of the sites of the great moral obscenities of that era, it was taken because of my mistaken impression that such a visit was outside the official agenda.”

Part of Itinerary

But Reagan said Chancellor Helmut Kohl wrote him and “made it plain that my invitation to visit a concentration camp was indeed a part of his planned itinerary. So I have now accepted that invitation and my staff is now in Germany exploring a site that will fit into my schedule there.”

As the audience applauded, Reagan said, “For years, I’ve said it, and I’ll say it again today and I’ll say it again on that occasion--we must never forget the Holocaust nor should we ever permit such an atrocity to happen ever again.”

Then, echoing the cry of Jewish groups, he said, “Never again.”

On Monday, the White House dispatched a top-level team, headed by presidential adviser Michael K. Deaver, to search out an appropriate site after a blast of controversy greeted Reagan’s decision to lay a wreath at a military cemetery in Bitburg, where Nazi soldiers are buried.

Cementing Friendship

Reagan said today he still intends to go to Bitburg because Kohl invited him to do so.

Reagan said he hopes that visit will show that the United States and West Germany have turned their backs on the atrocities of war and are able “to cement the 40 years of friendship” between the two peoples.

“That’s why I accepted the invitation to Bitburg and that’s why I’m going to Bitburg,” Reagan said.

The President is traveling to Europe to participate in the economic summit in Bonn, just before the 40th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany in May, 1945.

In Bonn today, government spokesman Peter Boenisch read to reporters the letter he said was sent “recently” by Kohl to Reagan.

Anger ‘Understandable’

In it, Kohl acknowledged that anger by Jewish and veterans’ groups over the Bitburg ceremony was strong, but “understandable.”

Kohl then repeated his earlier suggestion that Reagan add to his agenda a visit to the Dachau concentration camp outside Munich, where 32,000 inmates perished during World War II, or another “Jewish memorial.”

Boenisch said another option under discussion was a stop at a synagogue.

Kohl, in his letter, made it clear he still wanted the Bitburg ceremony retained on the visit itinerary.

He said it would demonstrate reconciliation between the two wartime enemies in a gesture similar to Kohl’s linking of hands with French President Francois Mitterrand before German and French war graves in Verdun last fall.

“We have learned from our bloody history,” Kohl wrote.