ABSTRACT
A. M. Rosenthal, born in 1922, is a regular columnist to the New York Times on foreign affairs. A New York Times correspondent since 1946, Mr. Rosenthal was United Nations correspondent, executive editor, and associate editor and columnist. He won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1960. This column originally appeared in the New York Times on 4 February 1990. On Friday, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze of the Soviet Union at last brought forward the fears of the German past. He called for world discussion of unification, an idea that Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany immediately, rejected. Soviet policy on Germany is still murky and undecided, but Mr. Shevardnadze did himself honor. Apologies are necessary for bringing up the hidden words, no apologies for insisting that they bear on discussion of Germany's future. To keep the words hidden is to kill the murdered twice, this time with the forgetting mind.
