The Simon Wiesen-thal Center at Yeshiva University has urged the chairmen of West Germany’s five major political parties to press for legislation to ensure that all former concentration camp sites in that country be preserved as national shrines to the victims of the Nazi Holocaust
Letters, signed by Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Center and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean, were sent after the West German Ambassador to the United States, Peter Hermes, confirmed to the Center that a portion of the former Neuengamme concentration camp and slave labor center outside of Hamburg was being considered for other purposes.
The letters, dated January 30 — to coincide with the 51st anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power — stated, in part, that conversion of the Neuengamme camp for other purposes “would send the wrong message at the wrong time ….(to) our youthr–tomorrow’s leaders –and give solace to those in Germany and elsewhere who seek to whitewash the unprecedented crimes of the Nazi era.”
Last year, the Wiesenthal Center protested to Hamburg city officials over proposed changes at Neuengamme, where over 50 percent of its estimated 106,000 inmates perished between 1938 and 1945.
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