Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger apologized Friday for a recently revealed remark from 1973, where he said it was no concern of the US if Soviet Jews were gassed.
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In recently released White House audio tapes, Kissinger was heard saying: “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy … And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
In his Washington Post article, Kissinger wrote that Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union had never been put forward as a formal US position “not because of moral insensitivity but because intense crises imposed other priorities.”
He added that through a realist approach adopted by the White House, “Jewish emigration rose from 700 a year in 1969 to near 40,000 in 1972.”
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“My answer tried to sum up that context in a kind of shorthand that, when read 37 years later, is undoubtedly offensive,” he wrote. “It was addressed to a president who had committed himself to that issue and had never used it for political purpose to preserve its humanitarian framework.”
Source:
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4004070,00.html