Germans Mull Controversial Memorial Concept

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) chose the day carefully. Thursday was the 51st anniversary of the worker's uprising in East Berlin on June 17, 1953. It seemed like a fitting date to introduce what has proven to be a highly inflammatory plan.

The controversial motion outlined in the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, foresees the government combining funding of memorials for victims of the Nazis and East Germany's communist dictatorship, and managing and funding the sites as "memorials of exceptional national significance." These could include former Nazi concentration camps as well as sites such as the former East German State Security, or Stasi, headquarters in Berlin.

A bad comparison?

Given Germany's deeply troubled relationship with its past, a debate was inevitable.

The opposition dismissed the subsequent claims that their plan puts the post-World War II communist regime on equal footing with the Third Reich. But critics insist the concept unreasonably equates the tyranny of the two regimes.

The plan's architect, CDU Bundestag member Günter Nooke, a former civil rights activist and dissident in East Germany, plays down the political implications. "It's ridiculous to say this implies a shift change in the politics of memory," he insists. "Anyone who says it does, hasn't read the motion."

According to Associated Press, Nooke maintains that "remembering the victims of the 20th century's two totalitarian regimes, Nazism and communism, is one of the elements of a reunited Germany."

A "singular crime"

After withdrawing his first motion outlining a "broad concept based on a dignified remembrance of all victims of Germany's two dictatorships" in early January, Nooke reworded the proposal to include a clause stating that the Nazi's murder of millions of Jews "was a singular crime which will always occupy a unique place in our memory."

Salomon Korn, vice-Chairman of the Jewish Central Committee, told the Berlin daily Tageszeitung that "the added sentence is not enough," and he objected to what he described as an inadmissible obfuscation and parallel-drawing.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's State Secretary for Media and Culture, Christina Weiss, demanded that the CDU recall the application. "Anything that suggests we are relativizing our past can only damage Germany's reputation," she said.

Angry protest

Over the years, Germany has erected some 3,500 memorials for the victims of National Socialism. In contrast, the victims of the 44-year history of political persecution in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the German Democratic Republic are commemorated with just 350 monuments.

But Nooke's request that the government overhaul its distribution of funds has triggered an international outcry.

Albert Meyer, head of Berlin's Jewish Community, told the Berliner Zeitung that "the concept must be thrown out," while Avner Shalev, chairman of the Central Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem, called the proposal "an affront to historical truth" and wrote an open letter to CDU leader Angela Merkel urging her to reconsider the motion.

But Nooke and his supporters say that more attention needs to be paid to the dark chapter of German history that followed World War II. In an interview with German daily Die Welt, Nooke stressed it was unacceptable that "Nazi memorials are granted funding while Soviet Occupation Zone and German Democratic Republic memorials are not."

For the time being, the Bundestag has deferred a vote on the opposition's motion. And with public funds for remembrance policies continuing to shrink, it is unlikely Berlin will be able to invest in many more memorials -- at least not for the time being.