Kohl Triggers Furor With Remark on ‘Concentration Camps’ in East Germany

Chancellor Helmut Kohl has accused East Germany of maintaining concentration camps for political prisoners, a charge that touched off a political tempest Monday.

East Germany denied the charge, which Kohl made Sunday at a political rally in Dortmund opening the final phase of the campaign for parliamentary elections Jan. 25.

“We must never forget,” Kohl said, “that the political regime is holding 2,000 of our fellow countrymen over there in East Germany as political prisoners in prisons and concentration camps.”

Kohl’s press spokesman, Friedhelm Ost, on Monday defended the chancellor’s reference, saying that East German prisoners have frequently referred to “concentration camps.”

The assertion was immediately challenged by the East German Foreign Ministry, which issued a statement saying there are no concentration camps in East Germany. It said the only West German prisoners are people who have been convicted of espionage.

War Crimes Prisoners

The only political prisoners, the statement said, are people who have been sentenced for war crimes under the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler or for crimes against humanity.

The East Germans also objected to Kohl’s use of the term “countrymen.” They reject West Germany’s constitutional commitment to German reunification.

“East German citizens convicted of crimes are no fellow countrymen of Kohl,” the Foreign Ministry statement said.

Kohl’s remark, which apparently referred to East Germans arrested for attempting to flee the country or for criticizing the state, also drew criticism on the West German side of the frontier. The opposition Social Democrats said Kohl’s words were meant to appeal to right-wing voters and will damage relations with East Germany and the Soviet Union.

Peter Glotz, the Social Democrats’ campaign manager, said that “a West German chancellor should never forget that gas ovens burned in many concentration camps,” a reference to the extermination of Jews and others under Hitler.

Retraction Urged

The Free Democratic Party, which is aligned with Kohl’s Christian Democrats in the coalition government, urged Kohl to retract the reference to concentration camps. The term is usually applied to a place where political dissidents and members of minority ethnic groups are imprisoned.

“We have no reason to stay silent when human rights are violated in East Germany,” said the Free Democrats’ parliamentary leader, Uwe Ronneburger, “but comparisons with the Nazi era are not appropriate. The election campaign is not a tribunal for associating foreign governments or the other German state with our Nazi past.”

In an earlier controversial remark dealing with the Nazi era, Kohl compared Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to Hitler’s propaganda chief, Josef Goebbels. This remark, made in an interview with Newsweek magazine, caused a freeze in Bonn-Moscow relations and has been a cause for concern among members of both the Social Democrats and the Free Democrats.

Kohl has refused to apologize to Gorbachev.