Reagan Plan to Honor War Dead Rapped

WASHINGTON —  The American Legion joined Jewish groups today in attacking President Reagan’s plans to honor dead Nazi soldiers next month in West Germany, saying the President risks alienating millions of veterans who fought Nazi oppression.

While Administration officials said they might reconsider, Jewish leaders said they were outraged and flooding the White House with calls, letters and telegrams. The chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, Elie Wiesel, said he was convening an emergency meeting Monday of the panel, all Reagan appointees, to appeal to the President.

“I have rarely seen such outrage,” said Wiesel. “I know the President. I know this is not his sentiment.”

Legion ‘Disappointed’

The American Legion, which represents 2.5 million veterans, said in a statement that it supports Reagan’s trip to Europe next month and the need for solidarity with members of NATO, including West Germany. But it added, “We are terribly disappointed that President Reagan has decided to visit the German military cemetery at Bitburg.”

“Honoring German war dead, while ignoring the thousands of Allied war dead who fought there and the millions of European Jews who were the victims of the Third Reich, has nothing to do with reconciliation,” the Legion said.

“The Allies of World War II did not fight for world conquest; the Germans of that era did.”

Wreath to Be Laid

Presidential spokesman Larry Speakes said in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Thursday that Reagan planned to lay a wreath at the Bitburg cemetery where German soldiers from both world wars are buried. (Story on Page 4.) The cemetery was the German staging area for the bloody World War II “Battle of the Bulge,” and many Nazis killed in that battle are buried there.

Plans call for Reagan to join West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on May 5 in a service at the cemetery, while the President is in Germany on an 11-day European trip.

“There is no active reconsideration of it at present. But that’s not to say there won’t be,” said one White House official, speaking privately. “We may or we may not” review it.

Concentration Camp Skipped

Reagan earlier had decided not to visit a concentration camp during his visit, which coincides with the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II, saying he didn’t want to reawaken “the memories and . . . the passions” of those times.

Mark Talisman, Washington director of the Council of Jewish Federations, said Jewish groups want Reagan to visit a concentration camp and make that, not the German cemetery, the focus of any war remembrance.

“I think it’s a tragic error. It’s a historic kind of mistake,” Talisman said.

He said it was particularly stunning to learn during Passover that Reagan would honor “those who supported the cataclysm of the Holocaust” where millions of Jews died.

“I just can’t believe the President won’t reverse himself. I just can’t believe it,” he said.