A Pilgrimage to Hell

On a wind-blasted heath south of Hamburg, the Germans have made a "Park of Remembrance." It is the site of the hell called Belsen, one of the infamous concentration camps and prisons in which 4,000,000 Jews were done t0 death in Nazi times. Though thousands went on to gas chambers elsewhere, most of Belsen's own 30,000 victims died of typhus, starvation and maltreatment in the two weeks before the British liberated the camp. Their graves are" 13 long, low mounds marked simply and grimly: "Here lie buried 1,000 bodies." "Here lie 2,500 bodies." Among those buried in Belsen's mass graves: Anne Frank.

One day last week, as a wintry noon sun glinted dully on the stunted pines and heather, a long line of sleek black Mercedes limousines snaked past the low mounds to a grey stone obelisk that rises like a warning finger over the baleful site of Belsen's barracks and torture cells. From the leading car stepped Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, come with three of his Cabinet Ministers, members of the diplomatic corps and a group of Jewish leaders to pay tribute to Belsen's Jewish dead. It was the first visit of any high West German official to the place since former President Theodor Heuss unveiled the memorial seven years ago.

"Memory comes alive on a day like this," said the old Chancellor, who was himself twice imprisoned by the Nazis. "In recent weeks things have happened in Germany that we most deeply regret. I ask the world to be assured that we will work with all our strength never again to let happen what happened during the Nazi period."

For the Jewish leaders, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, thanked the Chancellor for his assurances that young Germans would be taught the true story of the Nazi past, but wryly expressed some concern for the future: "We are not worried about Germany so long as Chancellor Adenauer is alive. But peoples change, and what today is small can be large tomorrow."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.