At a time when polls show most Germans are eager to forget the past, the government has opened its first national memorial to the Jews murdered by the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945.
The ceremonies took place in a once posh villa in the suburb of Wannsee on the shores of one of the scenic lakes outside Berlin. The building, on a street called Am Grossen Wannsee, has been renamed Memorial House of the Wannsee Conference.
That conference of the highest-ranking Nazis exactly a half century ago, launched the “Final Solution,” the extermination of European Jewry, of whom some 6 million perished by the time the war ended in 1945.
Now it will serve as a museum housing a permanent exhibit of Nazi atrocities and a meeting hall for seminars and lectures about the Holocaust.
In a statement issued on the museum’s inauguration Sunday, Chancellor Helmut Kohl said the date of the Wannsee Conference, Jan. 20, 1941, “perhaps more than any other reminds us of the darkest chapter in our history — the genocide of Europe’s Jewish population, systematically planned and executed by the Nazi tyrants.
“The secret minutes of the Wannsee Conference record in bureaucratic, pitiless language the outcome of a meeting attended by senior SS and ministerial officials on the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question,’ as it was called,” Kohl said.
The chancellor pointed out that in actuality, the decision to exterminate the Jews had already been taken and plans were largely completed months earlier.
Berlin Mayor Eberhardt Diepgen said the Wannsee Villa, a symbol of unspeakable crimes, would now serve as a center to promote knowledge about the Holocaust and would also serve as a warning against the hatred and violence currently perpetrated by neo-Nazis against refugees and other foreigners in Germany.
A DESIRE TO FORGET THE PAST
Heinz Galinski, leader of Germany’s Jewish community, warned of continued attempts to play down the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis.
Rita Sussmuth, president of the Bundestag, who attended the inaugural ceremonies, spoke of the latest opinion polls showing a majority of Germans would prefer to forget the past and substantial numbers harbor hostility toward Jews.
But, she added, whoever knows the dimensions of the Nazi crimes against the Jews would resist the temptation to forget and suppress a terrible chapter in the country’s history.
The Hamburg-based weekly Der Spiegel published poll results last week showing that 13 percent of Germans have anti-Semitic biases.
The poll showed that 36 percent of the respondents agreed that “Jews have too much influence in the world”; 18 percent agreed “Jews are trying to draw benefits from the past and make Germans pay”; and 19 percent hold Jews guilty of killing Jesus.
Another 15 percent think reports of atrocities at concentration camps were exaggerated.
According to the poll, 12 percent of Germans between 18 and 29 have anti-Semitic biases.
Such tendencies are four times more prevalent in democratic former West Germany than in former East Germany, which just emerged from 40 years of Communist rule.
The poll-takers believe the anti-Israel policy of the former East German regime had little effect on popular attitudes, while the government’s official anti-Nazi attitude influenced people.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
