grl@charm.UUCP (George Lake) (05/06/85)
The issue with Bitburg is that it is a military cemetery and a site where there are SS buried. What does reconcilliation mean? We don't reconcillitate with dead people, there are no "dead people", only the dead. We go to a cemetery to honor the dead. When the Coventy cathedral was bombed, it was the first violation of a "gentleman's agreement" between Churchill and Hitler that ancient and hallowed sites would be spared. There is a new garish cathedral known as the Phoenix, but the most impressive things are the ruins. A few years after the war a visiting group of German students collected nails from the remains of the 14th century vault and built a cross. It's crude and fashioned from equally crude malformed things. But, it was a true gesture of reconcilliation. An acknowledgement of a deed done, an honoring of a people and a place and a gesture of hope for the future from an event that should surely have destroyed all hope. The right place for an American president to go in a gesture of reconcilliation is a Hiroshima or Dresden-- not a military cemetery.