Reagan’s speech at Germany’s Bitburg cemetery, May 5, 1985

Reagan’s speech at Germany’s Bitburg cemetery, May 5, 1985 BITBURG, West Germany — After taking what he called a “painful walk into the past” at a death camp site, President Reagan laid a wreath Sunday at the Bitburg cemetery, where the German war dead include 49 SS combat soldiers, and later solemnly declared his regret that his decision to go through with the ceremony had reopened “old wounds.” Before flying to Bitburg, Reagan paid an emotional tribute to Holocaust victims at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Gazing over the mounds of mass burial sites containing more than 50,000 victims, he spoke of the horrors of the Holocaust and sounded the Jewish refrain: “Never again!” The President, attempting to mollify the many critics of his participation in the Bitburg ceremony, delivered two stirring speeches Sunday, one at Bergen-Belsen on the Holocaust, the other at the U.S. air base at Bitburg after the brief visit to the cemetery, on the theme of reconciliation. REAGAN_050585_bitburg_speech_whole