Warsaw Uprising Marked in W. Berlin

WEST BERLIN — West Berlin Mayor Eberhard Diepgen, marking the 44th anniversary of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, said Sunday that Germans should never forget the crimes committed against Jews during the Nazi era.

Germans and Israelis can become friends “only if we continue to recall the lessons of this horrible past,” Diepgen said at a brief, annual ceremony marking the ghetto uprising in Nazi-occupied Warsaw in World War II.

He told hundreds of people at the ceremony that Germans can “realize the potential of partnership with Jews, only by accepting the historical roots” that bind the two peoples together.

Heinz Galinski, head of West Berlin’s Jewish community, said West German officials must work to ensure that the lessons of the Nazi era are taught to young Germans today.

Jewish residents of the ghetto rose up against the Nazis, using homemade weapons against tanks, in 1943. In reprisal, German troops killed an estimated 40,000 of the Jews who survived the battle.