c. 2004 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin, American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Saint Leo University.)

(UNDATED) Adoring historians will soon attempt to set Ronald Reagan’s achievements into solid concrete, and just as quickly, the revisionists will also have a go at the record of our 40th president.

But before that happens, it’s important for people to remember the late president as he really was and not as he will appear in future history books.

The only time I met Reagan was at a 1985 White House meeting that occurred during a serious international crisis. Earlier that year members of the president’s senior staff had visited the German military cemetery in Bitburg. They proposed it as a possible site where the president and Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor, would walk together within the burial ground. It would represent a visible sign of U.S.-German reconciliation 40 years after the end of World War II.

But when the American officials were in Bitburg, snow covered the graves. As a result, the Reagan advance team did not see the markings on the gravestones. Had they done so, they would have immediately noticed that no American soldiers were buried there, while there were graves of Nazi SS officers.

The dreaded SS was Adolf Hitler’s ideological shock troops who, as “racially pure” Nazis, committed many war crimes including the execution of American soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge. The SS actively participated in the Holocaust mass murders.

Reagan’s Bitburg visit created a firestorm of public criticism. Many American veterans of WWII were outraged that a U.S. President would visit any cemetery containing graves of the hated SS. Angry Jewish groups protested the proposed presidential visit to Bitburg, and they were joined by prominent Christian leaders who were also concerned Reagan’s presence would provide legitimacy to the SS.

To stem such criticism, the White House invited Jewish leaders to meet with the president for a briefing session to explain the upcoming Bitburg visit. The meeting was quintessential Ronald Reagan.

He listened intently as the American Jewish representatives expressed their opposition to the cemetery visit. It was made clear to the president that while we supported American-German reconciliation, a military cemetery with SS graves was not the appropriate place to give symbolic expression to that goal.

In response, Reagan was his characteristic charming self. Neither defensive nor petulant, the president indicated he was keenly aware of our concerns. However, because he had made a public promise to Kohl, he told us the cemetery visit would not be cancelled.

Reagan then spoke poignantly about the Holocaust. His remarks were not maudlin nor did he pander, as many politicians do, to a particular group of voters. The president’s effective and empathetic response lowered the anger level in the room.

I was impressed that an allegedly “disengaged” president had paid such close attention to what was said, and I was equally impressed that Reagan incorporated some of our group’s suggestions into his final German itinerary.

At the White House briefing, we made several specific proposals about Reagan’s trip to Germany, two of which were ultimately accepted. The president was urged to make a formal visit to the grave of post-war Germany’s first chancellor, the anti-Nazi Konrad Adenauer. We also proposed a presidential visit to the Bergen-Belsen death camp in Germany, a Holocaust killing place made immortal because Anne Frank, the young Jewish diarist of Amsterdam, Holland, was murdered there.

The Jewish people will always recall Reagan’s strong support for Israel’s security and survival. Indeed, the president repeatedly spoke of his admiration for the Jewish state: “In Israel, free men and women are every day demonstrating the power of courage and faith. … Israel is a land of stability and democracy in a region of tyranny and unrest.”

During the 1980s my American Jewish Committee responsibilities included working with the late Roman Catholic nun, Anne Gillen, the executive director of the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry. Under Sister Anne’s leadership, the task force built public support for the human rights and religious liberty of Jews and other oppressed religious groups in the former Soviet Union.

The Reagan administration was a strong advocate of Soviet Jews, especially their right to leave the USSR for Israel and other lands of freedom. Sister Anne and I, along with our colleagues in the Soviet Jewry cause, appreciated the president’s vigorous support of our efforts. Indeed, the president made sure the Soviet Jewry issue was included in his meetings with Soviet leaders.

That’s the Ronald Reagan I will remember.

DEA/JL END RUDIN