"All of us, whether guilty or not, young or old, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it," he said in that 1985 speech.

Yet, even as his speeches carefully articulate the distictions between personal the guilt of the perpetrators of Nazi crimes and the collective guilt of the German nation, critics charge that von Weizsacker's own failed effort to come to terms with his family's role in the Nazi regime illustrates the inexorable instinct of people to forget a painful past.

Critics, including a Rice professor of history and Harvard Professor of Law Alan Dershowitz, claim that the younger von Weizsacker has distorted the historical record to exonerate his father. Even defenders of the German president concede that he may have a blind spot when it comes to assessing his father's role in Nazi Germany.

Von Weizsacker father was tried by an American tribunal at Nuremberg, and sentenced to five years in prison, for assisting in the deportation of 6000 French Jews to a Nazi death camp. To this day, the younger von Weizsacker--who served among his father's lawyers at Nuremberg--insists that his father did not know that the Nazis were planning to kill those Jews who were deported.

In an interview with The New York Times in 1985, the president said that his father had "failed" as an officer of the Third Reich, but said, "I really believe that he did not know about the existence of the gas chambers and systematic mass killing. I believe he knew a lot of people were dying, but not how."

But the many Jewish leaders who praise the statesman say that such media attention on his father's actions during the war is misplaced when assessing the younger von Weizsacker's actions. Rather they point out that in an era where president of Austria Kurt Waldheim has covered up his own Nazi past, von Weizsacker's frankness about his own guilt is practically unique on the world stage, and therefore worthy of honor.

"President von Weizsacker is one of the most courageous, outspoken voices of modern Germany," says Abraham H. Foxman, the head of the international affairs commission of B'nai Brith's Anti-Defamation League.

"He has articulated the consciousness of responsibility, that's what he should be honored for," says Foxman, who is himself a Holocaust survivor.

Almost alone among Germans, von Weizsacker has argued that Nazism is something that the world has a duty to remember, he says.

"Anyone who closes his eyes to the past is made blind to the present. Whoever refuses to remember the inhumanity is prone to the new risks of infection," the German president said in his Bitburg speech.

His supporters point to his Bitburg speech as a monument in European history because it came directly after President Reagan, and others, had sought to downplay the relevance of the Nazi years. To some, because 40 years have passed since the Third Reich was conquered, and because its successor government is an ally of the United States, the atrocities of the Nazis should not be inveighed so frequently.

"The vast majority of Germans seek reconciliation with the victim nations. They are also inclined to forget the past and tend to resent the unceasing recollection of it; it is against these tendencies that von Weizsacker made this speech," says Erich Goldhagen, who teaches a course on the Holocaust.

Another success in von Weizsacker's diplomatic time has centered on strengthening West German ties with Israel. He and President Chaim Herzog swapped visits this spring, delivering carefully measured speeches that indicate an era of greater possibilities for the two countries.

This spring, when Herzog reciprocated by visiting Germany, von Weizsacker said, "I think we do understand those of your countrymen who have conflicting feelings at the thought of their president visiting Germany as a representative of the people of Israel."

Von Weizsacker concluded: "I was conscious of these feelings during my visit to Israel--how could it be otherwise? We must be honest with one another and that means first of all being honest in our recollection of the past. Only in this way can a credible and lasting relationship grow between the generations who at that time had not been born and who, today and tommorrow, will have to live and get along with another in this one world."