Old Furies

It was an awkward moment. Larry Speakes had just announced President Reagan's intention to visit a German military cemetery near Bitburg when he travels to Europe next month to attend an economic summit meeting and commemorate the 40th anniversary of V-E day. A reporter asked who is buried there. The White House spokesman said he believed there were graves of both American and German soldiers at the site. Not so, an aide reported later: there are only Germans.

The incident illustrated the awkward way that the White House has handled several sensitive issues surrounding the President's upcoming trip. James Hubbard, deputy director of the 2.6 million- member American Legion, accused Reagan of "ignoring Allied graves . . . while recognizing members of the Third Reich who fought to conquer the world." The White House announcement added insult to injury for American Jews who were already offended because Reagan had vetoed a stop at the site of a concentration camp during his six- day German tour. "Visiting the gravesites of one's former enemies is an act of grace," said Nathan Perlmutter, national director of the Anti- Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. "Doing so while bypassing the gravesites of the victims of that enemy--especially so brutal an enemy--is insensitive." Charitably deflecting the blame from the President, Perlmutter said that Reagan "has been the victim of awful advice."

The clumsy treatment of these deeply felt moral issues began when Reagan rejected the idea of a visit to the Dachau concentration camp, saying that it would be "out of line" with the message of German-American reconciliation that he and Chancellor Helmut Kohl hoped to promote. Some Reagan aides added that, although the President was advised to stop at Dachau, he was reluctant to go through the wrenching experience of visiting the camp. At a news conference last month, Reagan rambled into an even less understandable explanation: among the German people, he said, there are "very few alive that remember even the war, and certainly none of them who were adults and participating in any way." Besides being so obviously untrue, Reagan's statement shocked Jews and many others for whom it is an article of faith that the horrors of the Holocaust should never be forgotten or dismissed. As Hyman Bookbinder of the American Jewish Committee pointed out last week, Kohl himself is to visit one of the concentration camps this Sunday.

In the meantime, the White House also managed to offend the West Germans. Kohl had been bypassed when Washington originally announced that Reagan would be in West Germany on V-E day, May 8. Later, without consult- ing Kohl, the White House announced that the President would address the European Parliament instead. The seeming ineptitude surrounding the Reagan plans is particularly surprising since it is the final project being handled by Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver, the President's usually masterly impresario, be- fore he leaves the White House for private life.

When the President returns to Washington this week from his Easter break, his plans may once again be reconsidered. Aides say that he might add a visit to a German synagogue "to balance" his itinerary, or cancel the cemetery stop. Nonetheless, the unsettling series of decisions and statements emanating from the White House will make it difficult for Reagan to assuage the indignation he has aroused.