Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 8, 1990 TAG: 9005080139
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WEST BERLIN LENGTH: Medium
On the second day of the congress' annual meeting, a U.S. Justice Department official said Washington has rejected Austrian President Kurt Waldheim's repeated requests for a lifting of the ban that keeps him out of the country. The official said the ban remains in effect because of Waldheim's role in "Nazi-sponsored persecution."
The three-day meeting in Berlin is the Congress' first in Germany since the organization was founded in Switzerland in 1936 amid the horrors of the Third Reich.
Some delegates declined to attend, saying a visit to Berlin, the former Nazi capital, would be too traumatic. Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis between January 1933 and May 1945.
Today, Congress officials will visit Berlin's Wannsee Villa, where on Jan. 20, 1942, leading Nazi officials plotted the Third Reich's so-called Final Solution to exterminate Jews worldwide.
A solemn ceremony at the villa will coincide with the 45th anniversary of the Nazis' unconditional surrender in World War II.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir used the anniversary to speak out against arms sales to the Jewish state's Arab enemies. He told Israel's Parliament that a united Germany should "learn the lessons of the past" and not sell weapons to Arab nations.
At a news conference Monday in the heavily guarded West Berlin Jewish Community headquarters, World Jewish Congress leaders warned about present dangers and emphasized the need to recall past tragedies.
"The Jewish people have something to say to the new Germany that is going to be created in a short time," said Congress President Edgar M. Bronfman.
He opened the meeting Sunday by saying a united Germany must "forever teach" about the Holocaust, "the lowest point ever reached in man's inhumanity to man."
Congress leaders said that in Eastern Europe there were indications of growing anti-Semitism, fueled in large part by economic hardship.
Decades of communist mismanagement have driven the economies of East European countries to the brink. Many jobless youths have turned to right-wing extremism, often blaming Jews and foreigners for economic ills.
"Unfortunately, as the economic situation worsens . . . and the search for scapegoats goes on, the age-old scapegoat - the Jew - again takes his place in the forefront of those to be kicked around," Bronfman said.
by CNB