W. German Quits Over ‘Crystal Night’ Speech : Parliament Leader’s Remarks About Hitler, on Anniversary of Nazi Rampage, Provoke Furor

The Speaker of the West German Parliament was forced to resign Friday amid an international furor over his speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht , the Nazi rampage that ushered in the pogrom against the Jews.

Philipp Jenninger, 56, who ranks in protocol second only to West German President Richard von Weizsaecker, stepped down from the Bundestag post during an outcry touched off by his nationally televised speech Thursday, in which he described the years of Adolf Hitler’s political triumphs as “fascinating” and said they “created an atmosphere of optimism and self-confidence” among Germans.

In a Friday statement, Jenninger, who is a political crony of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, said, “The reactions to my speech yesterday before the German Parliament have shocked me, and they depress me.

“Many listeners did not understand my speech the way I had intended.”

What Jenninger apparently intended to do was to put the events of November, 1938, into historical perspective, to draw a portrait of the German nation and to describe the mood of the German people at that time.

In his speech, he denounced the Nazis’ anti-Semitism, referring to the “insidious deprivation of the Jews,” to the “public terror” they experienced and deploring how the majority of Germans merely “looked away and said nothing.”

However, other parts of his speech, in which he dealt with the initial euphoria that Germans felt after Hitler came to power in 1933, proved offensive to many of his listeners. About 50 legislators walked out of the Bundestag chamber during the speech, which was delivered before an audience that included Von Weizsaecker, Heinz Galinski, head of the West German Jewish community, and Israeli Ambassador Yitzhak Ben-Ari.

During Kristallnacht --translated as “crystal night” and often referred to as the “night of broken glass”--Nazi mobs ransacked Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues, killing and injuring hundreds of German and Austrian Jews, rounding up thousands for concentration camps and leaving streets littered with shards of glass.

This week, services have been held throughout West and East Germany and in Austria in remembrance of the event.

Israeli officials expressed outrage Friday over Jenninger’s remarks.

“We were astonished to read the speech by the president of the Bundestag,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Alon Liel. “The way the history and the background of the Nazi period were presented in his speech cannot be accepted by any member of the Jewish people.”

For the past week, Israel has recalled Kristallnacht with numerous newspaper accounts of the terror and with an exhibition of photographs in Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem museum of Holocaust exhibits.

The photographs show both the extensive physical damage done to Jewish stores and homes and the humiliation on the faces of the stunned victims. Some of the photos show synagogues being burned or vandalized during the rampage. Others show the surviving synagogues in their current roles as private homes, dance halls, pubs, churches, theaters and banks.

The anniversary also marked an opportunity for Israeli Jews to ponder their relations with present-day Germany and with Germans, East and West. Some of the thoughts reflect concern that Germans are overly eager to gloss over the brutalizing and mass murder of the Jews during the Holocaust.

Writing in the English-language Jerusalem Post, Yohanan Meroz, a former ambassador to Bonn, commented: “When heinous crimes are described as having been committed ‘in the name of Germany,’ when in fact they were committed by legions of Germans, one cannot fail to wonder whether the lesson of history has really been learned.

‘One-Time’ Event

“Too many Germans . . . continue to insist on interpreting that past as a one-time, albeit unspeakably tragic, accident.”

In New York, Abraham H. Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said that Jenninger’s speech was insensitive and distressing but that it was “all the more regrettable since Mr. Jenninger has had a record of sympathy and support for the Jewish people and for Israel.”

Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president of the Union of American Jewish Congregations, said: “His (Jenninger’s) intentions were earnest. If they were awkwardly expressed and if his resignation is a recognition of the collective new spirit in Germany, I applaud that resignation.”

The World Jewish Congress expressed its “shock” and demanded an “urgent explanation for these reprehensible comments.”

On Friday, a group of four American clergymen invited by the Bonn government for Kristallnacht ceremonies in Frankfurt announced that they were canceling the trip and leaving for home because of Jenninger’s remarks.

‘Poisoned the Atmosphere’

“The speech poisoned the atmosphere within which our proposed reconciliation would take place,” said Msgr. Michael J. Carroll of Philadelphia. “It was irresponsible and reprehensible. That it happened is symptomatic of the sickness that still prevails.”

Jenninger has never been noted for any particular right-wing sentiments, but he is viewed as a provincial politician who, sources said, probably did not seek any expert assistance in preparing his speech, which was clumsily and confusingly worded.

Thus, he was accused of showing an alarming insensitivity in the construction of the speech--given the delicate nature of the occasion, the Bundestag’s official remembrance of Kristallnacht.

Some of his comments were clearly intended to denounce the events of Kristallnacht. At one point he said:

“Far more than 200 synagogues were burned down or demolished, Jewish cemeteries were ravaged, thousands of businesses and homes damaged and plundered. About 100 Jews found their death, about 30,000 were dragged to concentration camps; many of them never returned. What cannot be described in numbers is the torment, oppression, humiliation, mishandling and degradation.”

A close reading of Jenninger’s 26-page text indicated that it was meant to reflect the reactions of most Germans to Hitler in the 1930s. However, when he read the speech in Parliament, it struck many listeners as more a justification of the period than an explanation, and hardly an apology.

“Wasn’t Hitler someone selected by Providence, a fuehrer who would only be given to a people once in 1,000 years?” Jenninger asked rhetorically.

The Speaker said Hitler had restored self-confidence to the Germans after the crippling depression of the 1930s.

The years between 1933 and 1938, he said, “are fascinating because history has hardly seen a parallel to Hitler’s political triumphs in those years.”

‘Atmosphere of Optimism’

“Instead of despair or hopelessness,” he continued, “it created an atmosphere of optimism and self-confidence. Anti-Semitism existed in Germany--like in many other countries--long before Hitler.”

Jenninger then added, in an historical allusion, that Jewish businessman were involved in the industrialization of Germany--a process, he said, that had left some citizens “with an inferiority complex.”

But the Speaker’s remarks failed to distance himself from the historical facts, or to make absolutely clear whether he was recounting the mood at the time or giving an opinion. In his view, he was characterizing the mood among Germans when he said:

“And as far as the Jews were concerned, hadn’t they, in the past, measured themselves for roles that did not suit them? Didn’t they have to finally accept restrictions? Didn’t they perhaps even deserve to be shown their place?”

During the speech, Ambassador Ben-Ari slumped in his seat, and Von Weizsaecker and Galinski looked increasingly stony-faced.

Galinski later said, “We endured the entire Parliament session in silence, and sometimes one can express more with silence than with words.”

Yet a cautionary note came from Michael Fuerst, the deputy leader of the West German Jewish community, who said that Jenninger had actually expressed the blunt truth about German feelings toward Jews under Hitler. Commenting before Jenninger announced his resignation, Fuerst said the Speaker should stay in office.

“If he resigns now,” Fuerst said on television, “the Jews will get the blame.”

Jenninger’s remarks were received with scathing criticism by members of Parliament from all parties, and Chancellor Kohl was forced to convene meetings with his aides Thursday night to discuss the situation.

Kohl is still blamed in many quarters for insisting that President Reagan in 1985 visit the West German military cemetery at Bitburg, which contained the graves of soldiers from Hitler’s elite SS regiments. The SS included personnel who ran the concentration camps.

Kohl to Meet Reagan, Bush

And Kohl is traveling to the United States next week to see Reagan and President-elect George Bush and is scheduled to speak in New York on Monday at a ceremony honoring Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal on his 80th birthday.

On Friday morning, the German papers were filled with reports and comment on the Jenninger speech, with many editorialists calling for him to resign.

“Why did he have to speak?” asked the Frankfurter Rundschau.

“Resign!” demanded the Sueddeutsche Zeitung of Munich.

And the official East German news agency declared, “Jenninger caused a scandal on Thursday when his speech gave the impression in many places of a justification of the Nazi regime.”

On Wednesday, Kohl was heckled during ceremonies in a Frankfurt synagogue for his role in bringing Reagan to Bitburg, but Kohl’s speech itself was regarded by the German press as an articulate expression of atonement for the Nazi period in German history.

Times staff writer Daniel Williams, in Jerusalem, contributed to this article.