Bitburg

I wonder how the White House would have handled Bitburg if President Reagan, the servant of the people, were in his first term in office now. RICHARD LOWE Canoga Park

A Jewish girl who complained that President Reagan misquoted her during his West German cemetery visit has received a letter from Reagan, who said "I humbly apologize" for a mistake he blamed on a well-meaning aide. Reagan admitted he misrepresented a message from 13-year-old Beth Flom in a speech after his controversial May 5 visit to the Bitburg cemetery, where 49 members of Hitler's Waffen SS are buried among 2,000 other German soldiers.

I am writing to you in regard to the article (Editorial Pages, May 10), "For Jews, the Pain of Bitburg Will Heal, but Not the Scar." This article hit very close to home. I, too, was one of those people who said "Forget Bitburg." All I noticed was the publicity that the media was giving President Reagan's visit. I never really listened to what was said or bothered to try and understand the implications. When I read the article it made me very sad and angry that we could be so insensitive and uncaring toward our Jewish brothers and sisters that we could so easily dismiss what happened only 40 short years ago. I, for one, am very ashamed, and I apologize for my short memory.

I am writing to you in regard to the article (Editorial Pages, May 10), "For Jews, the Pain of Bitburg Will Heal, but Not the Scar." This article hit very close to home. I, too, was one of those people who said "Forget Bitburg." All I noticed was the publicity that the media was giving President Reagan's visit. I never really listened to what was said or bothered to try and understand the implications. When I read the article it made me very sad and angry that we could be so insensitive and uncaring toward our Jewish brothers and sisters that we could so easily dismiss what happened only 40 short years ago. I, for one, am very ashamed, and I apologize for my short memory.

Conine's question suggests one of the reasons for the current dissatisfaction by many with the media's coverage and reporting of the news. How can stories relating to the persecution and killing of people--especially on such massive scales as was the case in Cambodia and is currently the case in Afghanistan--not receive at least as much attention as President Reagan's visit to Bitburg? The point is that the ability of the world press to influence the regimes that threaten the lives of the oppressed people who live under them is perhaps the most important function newspapers, radio and television can perform, and should supersede coverage of "media events" and more mundane stories, which should be relegated, in the press, to the back pages (I am not implying that the Bitburg story was mundane--it was not.)

Amid all the publicity surrounding Reagan's visits to Bitburg cemetery and Bergen-Belsen, the former concentration camp, I have read no mention of Reagan's earlier assertions about his visit in the 1940s to at least one death camp. On March 5, 1984, the Washington Post published an account by Lou Cannon of remarks Reagan made to Yitzhak Shamir in November, 1983, and again to Simon Wiesenthal and Rabbi Martin Hier two months later. In his comments to these men, Reagan "recollected" his experience as a photographer in an Army unit assigned to film Nazi concentration camps immediately after World War II. When the claims were found to be nothing more than the total fabrication of our President, for whom opportunistic invention seems second nature, the impact of the falsehoods simply bounced off that well-worn, but sturdy, Teflon hide.

When presidential aide Michael Deaver visited the German military cemetery at Bitburg in February, the White House now says, snow covered the ground and obscured the grave markings of the World War II veterans buried there.

Conine's question suggests one of the reasons for the current dissatisfaction by many with the media's coverage and reporting of the news. How can stories relating to the persecution and killing of people--especially on such massive scales as was the case in Cambodia and is currently the case in Afghanistan--not receive at least as much attention as President Reagan's visit to Bitburg? The point is that the ability of the world press to influence the regimes that threaten the lives of the oppressed people who live under them is perhaps the most important function newspapers, radio and television can perform, and should supersede coverage of "media events" and more mundane stories, which should be relegated, in the press, to the back pages (I am not implying that the Bitburg story was mundane--it was not.)

The vote was 390 for and 26 against when the House passed a non-binding resolution (H.Con.Res. 130) urging President Reagan to cancel his May 5 visit to the German military graveyard at Bitburg, where Nazi SS troopers are buried. Supporter Wyche Fowler (D-Ga.) said: "As a human being, I am appalled that (Reagan) is participating in ceremonies commemorating the graves of those who implemented the Holocaust, one of the darkest events in the history of humanity." Opponent Thomas Hartnett (R-S.C.

Something has happened that was very important. I heard a President of the United States say there was a Holocaust. He used words like Jew, Nazi, heinous, evil and guilt. And he said these things in Germany. It has been said we must never forget. What better way to accomplish this than by what has occurred with President Reagan in the German city of Bitburg? With so much protest, emotion and publicity revolving around the trip, please let us be able to cut through it all and really see that something truly good took place.

I have never before written a letter to the editor, but the one from R. A. Lee has forced me to respond. While Reagan was safely at home (stateside) doing his military service, I was serving with George S. Patton in the 3rd Army. From Europe I was shipped directly to Okinawa to serve there (June to November, 1945). Frankly, I have been frightened by the realization that a man like Reagan, who never saw his comrades blown to bits, or saw the horrors committed by the Nazi SS troops, is the one with his hand on the atomic button.