National Socialist Documentation Center in Munich: Opening with neo-Nazi demonstration – Tagesspiegel

12:22 clock

The National Socialist Documentation Center in Munich has finally opened after years of delays. The ceremony on Thursday was overshadowed by a court decision that allowed a neo-Nazi demonstration close to the center.

With a ceremony has been inaugurated the new National Socialist Documentation Center in Munich on Thursday. The Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer
(CSU) praised it as a new space of memory. On the former site of the party headquarters of
Nazis “We call on the darkest chapter of German history to mind,” Seehofer said on Thursday at the inauguration of the new
Memorial Museum. He reacted like any other guest speaker with incomprehension on the decision (BayVGH)
the Bavarian Administrative Court, which allowed a demonstration of neo-Nazis within sight of the new center
had.

He was a ” big fan of the independence of the judiciary “and the separation of powers, said Bavaria’s Prime Minister. He had
but wished that “the decision of the City of Munich is also accepted by the judiciary”. The hope had been destroyed with
the court decision, he stressed at the ceremony in America-house not far from the new National Socialist Documentation Centre.

Seehofer underlined the crimes of the Nazis met “us German with shame”. Take the responsibility of
the past very seriously. “We do not displace, we keep the memory alive and to work for a well-fortified democracy in
the future,” stressed the Prime Minister.

Romani Rose recalled the role of the churches in the Nazi era

Munich mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) said, more than any other German city is the Bavarian capital connected to the
rise of Nazism in his persecution and repressive apparatus. “When the stand outside because the
Documentation Centre questioned they give us here and now the best reason to open it,” Rider said, referring to the neo-Nazi demonstration
. Anti-Semitism and right-wing propaganda had in Munich no place.

The president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, Charlotte Knobloch, expressed the hope that the
documentation center could contribute to, “that people as people meet “. They never will forget
“as exclusion feels like,” said the former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, which was born in 1932 in Munich and
survived hiding in a Catholic family, the Nazi era.

Romani Rose, Chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, also recalled the role of the churches during the Nazi terror.
They would have “the killers not decisive enough resists, despite of exact knowledge
the dimension of destruction had, “he said. Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, his father had refused to visit the
Munich Residenz and then wrote in his diary: “No, can not provide assistance in view.” This sentence
> appeared to him “as a symbol of the moral failure of the former Church leader,” Rose said.

had the Bavarian Administrative Court on Thursday in an urgent decision by the neo-Nazi party “The
rights” pending Demo approved against the opening of the center. The city of Munich had tried to ban the march, and get so in the first instance also right.

The court’s decision was revealed about 13 clock, it had the Nazis 15-19 clock a demo in
sight of the Nazi documentation center conceded. According to the police appeared ten neo-Nazis to rally them were
temporarily more than 150 vocal counter-demonstrators against. The National Socialist Documentation Center is open from today Friday for the audience – in the first three months of the entry is free. The construction costs of 28.2 million euros, the Federal Government, the Free State of Bavaria and the city of Munich have shared one-third each. The
design for the building comes from the Berlin architect Bettina Georg, Tobias Scheel and Simon Wetzel. EPD