LEAGUE OF DESCENDANTS OF LVOV`S PROFESSORS MURDERED BY GESTAPO IN JULY 1941

The answer of president Johannes Rau:

_______________________________________________________________

(a dry seal: German eagle)

The President

of the Federal Republic of Germany

Berlin, the 8^th August 2002

To the

League of Descendants of Lvov's Professors murdered by Gestapo in July 1941

55-120 Oborniki Śląskie

ul. Modrzewiowa 20

Poland

Dear Ladies and Gentelmen,

thank you very much for your letter with a request I may express myself in the name of Federal Republic of Germany with respect to the murder committed by Gestapo on Lvov's Professors in 1941.

The democratic Germany is conscious of the terrible heritage thrown down on it in the period of national socialism as well as of a large number of crimes commited during the German ocupation of Poland. For this reason, the federal chancellor Willi Brandt has made excuses on knees in the name of the Federal Republic of Germany, in front of the Monument of the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw, for the by Germans and in the name of Germany executed heinous deeds.

Until now, my official predecessors have repeatedly acknowledged the responsability resting on us. As to myself, the mutual German-Polish understanding lays me particularly on heart, and for instance, at the sixtieth anniversary of the begin of the 2^nd World War, in Gdańsk on the Westerplatte, I have pointed to the unexpressible pain inflicted by Germany to the people in Poland. Roman Herzog took the opportunity in 1994 of the 50^th anniversary of Warsaw Insurrection to speak about the grief and shame of Germans because of pain and suffers that Germans have brought to Poland. And Richard von Weizsäcker during his state visit to Poland in 1990 has also thought of the shudder caused by the War initiated by Germans, of the crimes in concetration-camps and of unexpressible pain delivered to many Polish people.

And also the German Parliement passed the bill concerning the German-Polish border on 21^st June 1990 "conscious that a terrible pain has been inflicted to the Polish nation by crimes of Germans and in the Germans name.

These explanations comprise all injust actions, among them those you have described. Therefore, may I ask you for comprehension that as federal president I can give a declaration only in general form and in deputy range and can't remember every particular case even as horrible it might have been?

With friendly regards

yours,

Johannes Rau ( -- )