Israeli President Meets With German Resistance Veterans

Israeli President Ezer Weizman broke a political taboo Monday to meet with surviving members of the wartime German resistance against Adolf Hitler.

On the second day of his state visit to Germany, Weizman laid a wreath at the Ploetzensee prison in Berlin where the Nazis executed about 2,500 resistance fighters from Germany and abroad between 1933 and 1945.

Eberhard Baethke, a participant in the meeting who was close to executed resistance theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, marveled at the fact that the head of the Jewish state would visit the site.

“This is something that was rejected by the Israelis before for many understandable reasons because there were a lot of anti-Semites among resistance figures,” he told German radio.

“There is no stronger proof that things have changed and we have started a positive dialogue than this visit here today,” he added. “It is an extraordinarily moving event.”

Ludwig von Hammerstein, a member of the group that injured but did not kill Hitler with a time bomb planted in his “Wolf’s Lair” hideaway, was also impressed at the unprecedented meeting.

“There is no question that it was moving to hear the president of Israel at this spot, to hold talks with him,” he told German radio afterward.

Weizman began his four-day visit Sunday by paying homage to Jews who died at the Sachsenhausen Nazi concentration camp outside Berlin.

He is scheduled to address the German Parliament today and to end his visit Wednesday with a trip to the Volkswagen car plant in Wolfsburg and a Siemens plant in Dresden.