Southland Ceremonies Protest Reagan’s Role in Bitburg Rites

President Reagan’s visit to Bitburg Cemetery in West Germany sparked several protests in Los Angeles Sunday, including a ceremony at the Veterans Cemetery in Westwood and a mock funeral procession to the steps of a Bel-Air church.

About 400 veterans, Holocaust survivors and relatives led by U.S. Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica) and Assemblyman Gray Davis (D-Los Angeles) gathered at the Sawtelle Veterans Cemetery for services timed to coincide with the one in Germany.

Levine said it was “almost incomprehensible” that the President should lay a wreath of honor at a cemetery which is the burying place for 49 members of the SS--the notorious Nazi “elite guard” pledged personally to Adolf Hitler.

“It was (the SS) who carried out the worst atrocities against American armed forces in the European theater,” Levine said.

Smaller--but more dramatic--was the 50-man Jewish Defense League procession led by a hearse and empty casket that marched to the steps of the Bel-Air Presbyterian Church, where President Reagan’s pastor, the Rev. Donn Moomaw, left his congregation inside to come out and talk with them.

JDL National Chairman Irv Rubin said Moomaw was cordial in his greeting, prayed with them, and said he thought the President had made a mistake in honoring the Nazis.

Rubin said the President’s act was “as if we could find the tombs of the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus, and laid a wreath on their graves.”