Bonn Rejects Congress’ Appeal on Cemetery Visit

The West German government said Friday that it “took seriously” an appeal by 257 U.S. congressmen asking Chancellor Helmut Kohl to cancel plans for President Reagan to visit a German military cemetery with him here next month but declared that the visit will still take place.

However, government spokesman Peter Boenisch declined to confirm whether Reagan would lay a wreath at the cemetery as previously believed.

“I have already said the visit to the Bitburg cemetery is taking place,” he told a news conference here.

When asked specifically about the wreath-laying ceremony, he said, “I will not comment on the details of individual points until the program is finalized.”

Referring to the congressional appeal, Boenisch noted that the Bundestag (Parliament) had expressed its own sentiments Thursday, voting by 398 to 24 against removing the Bitburg stop from Reagan’s program.

Democratic Duties

“It is in keeping of the duties between democratic nations that they take each other seriously and that means, just as we take a letter from 257 congressmen seriously, so must these congressmen take a vote of the German Bundestag seriously,” Boenisch said.

The furor over Reagan’s plans to visit the cemetery where nearly 2,000 German soldiers are buried centers on the presence of 49 graves of members of Adolf Hitler’s Waffen-SS.

The SS, an abbreviation for schutzstaffel , or protection group, was an elite corps responsible for secret police duties and concentration camp administration, but it also included front-line combat divisions, known as Waffen-SS.

It is believed that the SS soldiers buried at Bitburg were all combat troops, many of them drafted during the final months of the war. Most were killed in late 1944 or early 1945 during the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s last, futile offensive against the Allied troops in the West.

Kohl digressed from a parliamentary debate Thursday on government domestic policies to underscore the importance of the Bitburg visit and to clarify the role of the SS buried there.

“Many of those very young soldiers did not have any chance, like everyone at that time, to evade conscription by the Waffen-SS,’ he said.

Kohl’s remarks were sent to the congressmen. In an unusual move, they were also immediately translated into English and hand-delivered to the offices of American reporters resident here.

In a radio interview, Mayor Theo Hallet of Bitburg indicated that he might request Reagan’s visit be cancelled if what he termed “insults” persist against the German soldiers buried at the small, austere cemetery.

In the interview, Hallet condemned the “slander and insults towards the 49 Waffen SS soldiers” buried there.

“When someone is dead, the fact they were the enemy should be forgotten,” he said. “The dead have no defense lawyers.”

Hallet had originally said that 47 SS soldiers were buried at the cemetery, but a subsequent count after the controversy erupted revealed two additional SS graves.

In an interview with The Times last week, Hallet expressed dismay that the Reagan visit, instead of advancing reconciliation, had launched a search for possible war crimes.

A Public opinion poll published Friday by the West German firm INFAS indicated that 72% of the West German people believe Reagan should go to Bitburg, while 77% believe he should also visit, as he has announced he plans to do, the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.