Willy
Brandt: People and Politics - The Years 1960-1975
- Translated from the German by J. Maxwell Brownjohn - Little, Brown and Co., -
1976 pps 90-92
“Anything is possible in this place. Better get out
of here as soon as possible.”
….A year later on the afternoon of Friday, 22
November 1963, my wife and I returned to Berlin from Africa. At about 7:30 p.m.
a journalist friend called to say that an attempt had been made on Kennedy’s
life in Dallas, and that he might already be dead.
Switching on the news, we soon heard these sad
tidings confirmed. I drove to see General James Polk, the US Commandant, and
express my condolences. After that, the television studio. Then to the Rathaus.
That same November night, unsummoned by officialdom or a political party but
responding to a student initiative, tens of thousands of my fellow-citizens
assembled in the Rathaus square, most of them young and many carrying torches.
Speaking, extempore, I said: The Americans have lost the President of whom it
was believed by so many that he would be able to lead us firmly along the road
to a just peace and a better life in this world. But we in Berlin grieve
because we have lost our best friend . . . I myself am profoundly moved and
shocked tonight because I fell that I have lost someone - as, indeed, I have -
- with whom I was privileged to consort in trust and friendship.
Many flowers were deposited on the Rathaus steps
next day. That evening the people of Berlin put candles in their windows as
they had long done on special occasions, notably to symbolize the unity of
divided families on Christmas Eve.
Our sorrow in the West was matched in the
East. Concern and dismay could be observed throughout the globe. Seldom before,
in a torn and divided world, had a political leader, so ably succeeded in
kindling people’s hopes for a brighter future. The citizens of East and West,
not only in our partitioned land but in the communist-dominated world, together
with those of the young and non-aligned nations, shared our feeling that John F.
Kennedy was a man with a deep and genuine commitment to world peace - a man to
be trusted..........
On 24 November I flew to America to pay my
last respects to President Kennedy, I met Jean Monnet on the plane from New
York to Washington, which was also carrying Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands
and other mourners. Many of them recalled the atmosphere that had succeeded the
Reichstag fire. I was greeted at the airport by Klaus Schutz, who had just
concluded an official visit, accompanied by three Berlin schoolchildren who had
seen the President at the White House some days earlier. Schutz was greatly
concerned. Watching television a few hours before, he had witnessed the
shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by bar-owner Jack Ruby while remanded in custody.
Schutz: Anything is possible in this place. Better
get out of here as soon as possible.
. . .While I was attending the funeral ceremony as a
friend of the family, the square in front of the Rathaus in Berlin was renamed
Kennedy-Platz. That afternoon, the new President, Lyndon B. Johnson, who had
been hurriedly sworn-in, received foreign-guests at the State Department. I was
talking to King Baudouin, when the head of protocol came with a message from
Jacqueline Kennedy, inviting me to call at the White House. After greeting me,
Robert Kennedy left me alone with the President’s widow. I found her no less
courageous than she had seemed to the entire world when tragedy struck at
Dallas. Bobby saw me to the car. I guessed that he was afraid I might ask who
had really killed his brother.
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