Both Germanys Ratify Treaty for Unification : Europe: The document was the last one needing approval before the nations unite Oct. 3.

With joyous singing and handshakes, both Germanys today ratified a treaty that will dissolve East Germany in 13 days and join it with its rich Western neighbor.

The treaty was the last one needing approval before the Germanys unite on Oct. 3.

The Bundestag, West Germany’s Parliament, approved the treaty by a 442-47 vote. It was passed earlier in the day by East Germany’s Volkskammer 299 to 80.

Volkskammer members stood up, hooted with joy and shook hands after passage of the treaty.

Bundestag members loudly applauded their own vote and broke into a chorus of the national anthem.

In Bonn, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher used the occasion to deliver a moving denunciation of Germany’s Nazi years.

“We lost first our freedom and then our peace after Jan. 30, 1933, when Fascism descended upon Germany,” Genscher told the Bundestag before the vote.

He made special mention of the Holocaust, in which more than 6 million Jews died.

Genscher said that when the two Germanys unite on Oct. 3, that will “open up the historical chance for we Germans to make our common contribution to a peaceful, free and united Europe.”

Genscher has assured the neighbors of a united Germany that it will not strive for more power.

“The Germans want nothing else but to live in freedom, democracy and in peace with all peoples,” the veteran diplomat said.

The vote in the Volkskammer was well over the two-thirds majority required to amend, and effectively abolish, East Germany’s Communist-written constitution.

The ruling Christian Democrats, Free Democrats and almost all of the opposition Social Democrats voted for the treaty.

The former Communist Party, now renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism, and most of the civil rights and ecologist movements that led last year’s democratic revolution rejected the treaty, saying it sold out East German interests.

The vote came less than a year after mass protests forced the ouster of Stalinist leader Erich Honecker and the opening of the Berlin Wall, which had kept East Germans from traveling freely to the West for 28 years.