Reagan Now Ready to Visit Nazi Concentration Camp

President Reagan, reversing his position in an attempt to calm an international furor, announced Tuesday that he is now willing to visit a Nazi concentration camp to pay homage to the victims of the Holocaust when he travels to West Germany next month.

Reagan said that he previously rejected West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s suggestion that he visit the Dachau death camp near Munich because of a “mistaken impression” that it would not be part of his and Kohl’s “official agenda.”

Reagan, speaking publicly for the first time on what he admitted is “a storm of controversy,” declared that he still will visit a German military cemetery at Bitburg. Buried there are 1,887 German soldiers--including a few dozen members of Waffen SS units--killed in the final months of World War II, primarily in the nearby Battle of the Bulge.

The Waffen SS was composed of elite combat troops, a part of a much larger SS organization that also administered concentration camps and other Nazi activities.

The President’s decision did not satisfy all Jewish leaders, six of whom met with White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan on Tuesday to appeal unsuccessfully for cancellation of the cemetery visit.

Elie Wiesel, chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, told reporters after meeting with Regan: “A visit to a cemetery where SS men lie, even if their tombs are among other tombs, is, to me, inconceivable. . . . The SS symbolize what we call Holocaust.”

However, Kenneth Biadkin, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said that although he regrets the cemetery visit “we reaffirm our conviction that this President has a deep compassion and understanding and appreciation of the Holocaust and the problems of its victims.”

The Bitburg cemetery also contains the graves of about 1,000 German soldiers killed in World War I.

An official involved in planning Reagan’s trip, interviewed by The Times in Bonn on the condition that neither his name nor his nationality be identified, conceded that in scheduling the cemetery visit, both sides forgot that German aggression in World War II--with all the Nazi atrocities--continues to evoke far more heated emotion than Germany’s role in World War I.

Spoke to Religion Leaders

Reagan, speaking at the White House to about 200 religion leaders, said that he made the decision to visit the Bitburg cemetery but not the Dachau concentration camp.

“It was, and remains, my purpose--and that of Chancellor Kohl--to use this visit to Germany on the 40th anniversary of the war’s end in Europe to commemorate not simply the military victory of 40 years ago, but the liberation of Europe, the rebirth of German freedom and the reconciliation of our two countries,” Reagan said.

“My purpose was, and remains, not to re-emphasize the crimes of the Third Reich in 12 years of power, but to celebrate the tremendous accomplishments of the German people in 40 years of liberty, freedom, democracy and peace. It was to remind the world that since the close of that terrible war, the United States and the Federal Republic (of Germany) have established an historic relationship--not of superpower to satellite but of sister republics bound together by common ideals and alliance and partnership.”

Reagan added, in a forceful tone: “It is to cement the 40 years of friendship between a free Germany and the United States, between the German people and the American people, that Chancellor Kohl and I agreed together to lay a wreath at the cemetery for the German war dead. That’s why I accepted the invitation to Bitburg--and that’s why I’m going to Bitburg.

“As for the decision not to go to Dachau, one of the sites of the great moral obscenity of that era,” Reagan said, “it was taken because of my mistaken impression that such a visit was outside the official agenda. Chancellor Kohl’s (Monday) letter to me, however, has 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 in Germany exploring a site that will fit into our schedule there.”

‘Day Peace Began’

His audience, at a session of the International Conference on Religious Liberty, burst into applause.

When asked at a March 21 press conference why he had decided not to visit a Nazi concentration camp, the President said he felt “very strongly” that “instead of re-awakening the memories and the passions of the time . . . we should observe this (V-E) day as the day when, 40 years ago, peace began. . . . They (Germans) have a feeling, and a guilt feeling, that’s been imposed upon them. And I just think it’s unnecessary.”

In Bonn on Tuesday, a key portion of Kohl’s new letter to Reagan was read to reporters by a West German government spokesman. It indicated that Kohl had originally suggested both the cemetery and Dachau visits for purposes of public relations balancing.

“This was the reason why I proposed the visit to the Dachau memorial,” Kohl wrote. “I would like therefore to come back to my original proposal and request that either a visit to the concentration camp memorial in Dachau or another memorial for the victims of Fascist terror be added to your program.

“You certainly won’t be able to lift all the public protest even with this, but you will with certainty find support and understanding from all those who are serious about the reconciliation and friendship between our two peoples.”

Final Decision Later

A White House official, who asked not to be identified, said that although it appears that Reagan will add Dachau to his itinerary, a final decision on which concentration camp--or Jewish cemetery or synagogue--to visit will not be made until the President confers with Deputy Chief of Staff Michael K. Deaver on Thursday.

Times reporter Tyler Marshall in Bonn contributed to this story.