Holocaust Survivor’s Plea Fails to Seay the President : Cemetary Stop Still On in Germany

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, accepting a Congressional Gold Medal from President Reagan today, implored Reagan not to go through with his plan for next month to visit a German military cemetery where Nazi SS troops are buried.

Minutes after the ceremony, however, presidential spokesman Larry Speakes said Reagan still will visit the cemetery, but also will visit the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on May 5 to “honor the victims of Nazism” before flying by helicopter to the cemetery at Bitburg.

Speakes said Reagan, who had spoken by telephone this morning with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and explained his decision to Wiesel during a half-hour private meeting before the ceremony, remained determined to pay tribute to the German dead at Bitburg, whom he has called victims of Nazism “just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.”

Plans Include Wreath

Speakes said Reagan will visit the graves of concentration camp victims at Bergen-Belsen and lay a wreath at a memorial. He said the wreath-laying already planned at Bitburg will be held as far as possible from the SS graves.

Wiesel, chairman of the government’s Holocaust Memorial Council and a prominent author, spoke to a group gathered in the Roosevelt Room for the presentation ceremony. He turned frequently toward Reagan, who sat with his hands clasped, obviously moved by the appeal.

Wiesel, who was a child prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, recalled in vivid detail the horrors he witnessed.

Children Burned Alive

“One million Jewish children perished. If I spent my entire life reciting their names, I would die before finishing the task. Mr. President, I have seen children, I have seen them being thrown in the flames--alive! Words, they die on my lips.”

Reagan, sitting behind Wiesel after presenting the medal honoring the survivor’s work in keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive, listened intently and appeared close to tears.

Wiesel told reporters later that Reagan, during their private meeting, did not apologize for his remarks of Thursday but said he “explained privately that . . . he knows very well that what we went through nobody has ever gone through.”

Wiesel said he thought Reagan would say more about the issue because “the last public word he spoke on this was not good.”

‘Friend of Jewish People’

In accepting the gold medal, Wiesel praised Reagan as “a friend of the Jewish people” and told the President he was compelled “to speak truth to power” and did so with respect and admiration.

“I wouldn’t be the person I am, and you wouldn’t respect me for what I am if I were not to tell you also of the sadness that is in my heart” over Reagan’s plan to lay a wreath at the Bitburg military cemetery.

Saying he was convinced that Reagan didn’t know at the time he made the decision to go to Bitburg that members of the SS were buried there, Wiesel said, “May I, Mr. President, implore you to do something else, to find another way, to find another site. That is not your place.”

The President, who already had paid tribute to Wiesel without mentioning the storm of controversy swirling about the cemetery issue, did not respond when Wiesel finished, except to stand and shake hands with him.