In 1984, the West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl invited the U.S. President Ronald Reagan to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe by attending a memorial service at a military cemetery in Bitburg. Reagan accepted the offer, unaware that members of the Waffen-SS were buried in the Bitburg cemetery, and when this was reported in early 1985, many Americans urged Reagan to cancel the planned visit to Bitburg under the grounds it was offensive for president of the United States to lay a memorial wreath honoring those SS men who died fighting for Hitler. Kohl insisted that if Reagan snubbed the Bitburg ceremony that it would be the end of his chancellorship, saying the majority of Germans would find it offensive. Reagan stated those Waffen-SS men who died fighting for Hitler were just as much victims of Hitler as the Jews exterminated in the death camps. Reagan argued to place a memorial wreath honoring the sacrifices of the SS men buried in the Bitburg cemetery was no different from placing a memorial at the Auschwitz death camp for the SS and the Jews killed by the SS were all equally victims of Hitler. This clumsy attempt at public relations damage control only increased the controversy, with both veterans' groups and Jewish groups in the United States being adamantly opposed to Reagan attending the Bitburg ceremony. Reagan also refused to visit a concentration camp to balance out the visit to the Bitburg cemetery by saying the Germans "have a guilt feeling that's been imposed on them, and I just think it's unnecessary". The Franco-Romanian Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel issued a public letter to Reagan saying: "That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS". After Wiesel's letter, which helped to crystallize opposition in the United States to the Bitburg service, Reagan and Kohl very reluctantly agreed to visit the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to honor the memory of who died there, though both Reagan and Kohl went out their way to insist the visit to Bergen-Belsen should not be the cause for Germans to have any "guilt feelings" about the Nazi past.