Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 11, 1990 TAG: 9003112595
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: FRANKFURT ON THE ODER, LENGTH: Medium
Mobbed by an excited crowd of Poles who had braved a cold rain to cheer perhaps the only German who is genuinely popular in their country, Brandt traversed the bridge over the Oder River, which forms the Polish-East German frontier here.
Near the Polish end, he was greeted by regional Polish officials and received flowers and kisses from a young woman.
Walking back to the East German side, the former West German chancellor said he had made the hour's detour from a campaign swing on behalf of this country's Social Democrats because it would have been "cowardly" to come to Frankfurt and not do so.
"I came to tell our Polish friends that I belong to the overwhelming majority of Germans who think they must not return to all that nonsense of the past," Brandt said, speaking in English.
"We have to live with the borders as they are and do everything possible to make borders more transparent."
He said he meant by this a Europe where borders no longer separate peoples and all of the continent becomes a "common homeland."
Chancellor Helmut Kohl had made the Polish-German border an issue in this country's campaign for its first pre-parliamentary elections March 18, by ambiguous remarks about recognizing it.
Brandt said Kohl's comments had not harmed the outlook for German unification, although "some of the expressions of the chancellor were not an expression of the highest art of statesmanship."
Brandt, who has been elected honorary chairman of the East German Social Democratic Party, a post he also holds in West Germany, made the border issue a major theme in his speech.
The former chancellor said he did not believe that the way the borders were drawn after World War II represented perfect justice.
But he continued: "We have to say that terrible injustice occurred before. At one point, Europe must pull out of this devil's circle of injustice, injustice and new injustice."
Strong applause by a crowd of about 10,000 on a square of the city, which still bears many scars inflicted by World War II, interrupted the speech at that point.
"Europe cannot afford a big state like Poland that is pushed back and forth as if on wheels - sometimes toward the East, sometimes toward the West," Brandt said.
Poland received the formerly German regions of Silesia, Pomerania and parts of East Prussia in compensation for large formerly Polish areas seized by the Soviet Union.
by CNB