Status: 04.05.2022 3:35 p.m
Almost 80 years after the end of the Second World War, a war of aggression is raging again in Europe – which makes it all the more important for the Federal Government to initiate the establishment of a documentation center for research into the Second World War.
The federal cabinet has decided to set up a documentation center for the Second World War and German occupation in Europe. Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth presented the draft concept.
The aim of the center was to “keep alive the memory of Germany’s responsibility for the terrible Second World War and the consequences of German occupation,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz after the cabinet meeting at Meseberg Castle in Brandenburg.
Exploring German Responsibility
“It’s war in Europe,” said Scholz. It is therefore good that the new documentation center is being launched at this point in time. The center should continue to deal with German responsibility and promote the necessary research.
The draft was drawn up by the German Historical Museum with the advice of an international scientific working group and the working group “Remembrance and Commemoration” made up of heads of important German Nazi memorial institutions.
The redesign of the policy of remembrance is a “central project of the federal government,” said Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth. “Today we have taken a first step in this direction. We are consciously placing our commemoration policy in the European context. A common future should grow out of common memory.”
Democracy and the rule of law versus dictatorship
The new documentation center is intended to shed light on “how the devastating Nazi dictatorship brought war, destruction and annihilation to the point of the Holocaust’s crime against humanity across Europe, how we convey and research these facts and accept and take them seriously as a challenge for today’s German responsibility”.
It should also be made clear how important democracy, the rule of law and lived diversity are for Germany and Europe. “This commemorative signal is all the more important in these times, when a cruel war of aggression against Ukraine is taking place in the middle of Europe, which is being accompanied by the Putin regime in a historically revisionist way of propaganda that can hardly be surpassed in terms of cynicism,” said the Green Party. Politician.
With the cabinet decision, the federal government is implementing the Bundestag decision of October 9, 2020. In a next step, the concept is to be sent to the Bundestag and the Bundesrat for approval. A location for the documentation center must then be found.