- "...Paul Spiegel, the president of Germany's Central
Council of Jews (has demanded) that the entire complex be left to decay.
'This is the only appropriate way to deal with a site with a history like
this,' he said."
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- BERLIN -- The vast, barracks-like
complex is set in rolling countryside close to Germany's border with Belgium
and bears the innocuous name Vogelsang, or birdsong. Yet during the 1930s
it turned 1,000 members of the Nazi elite into true "apostles of National
Socialism".
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- Adolf Hitler stayed there twice and Hermann Goering visited
frequently to hunt deer in the surrounding forests.
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- The hundreds of senior Nazi party members indoctrinated
at the school enjoyed an in-house cinema, swimming pool, a beer and wine
cellar and even a bowling alley. "Race theory" and "total
obedience" were among the subjects taught at Vogelsang. Today murals
inside depict the muscular Aryan "supermen" idealised by the
party.
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- For more than 50 years, Vogelsang's dark past remained
largely forgotten because the buildings and the surrounding country were
a Nato military training ground for the Belgian army. But last week the
whole area, which lies in the idyllic Eifel region, was formally designated
a national park. The Belgian army will withdraw by the end of next year,
leaving Vogelsang open to tourists.
-
- The complex and all its grim associations have suddenly
started a bitter controversy.
-
- Fears that the site will rapidly turn into a "shrine"
for neo-Nazis throughout Europe have prompted Paul Spiegel, the president
of Germany's Central Council of Jews to demand that the entire complex
be left to decay. "This is the only appropriate way to deal with a
site with a history like this," he said. MPs including Burkhard Hirsch,
a veteran liberal Free Democrat, have complained that any attempt to develop
the complex with public funding would be morally indefensible.
-
- But Eifel politicians say leaving Vogelsang to rot is
not feasible because it is in the centre of a national park. They also
point out that demolishing the complex would cost millions because most
of its concrete walls are 6ft thick.
-
- The regional state government of North Rhine Westphalia
is discussing plans to turn the complex into a national park tourist centre,
complete with a youth hostel. Other proposals include building a decorative
lighthouse on the building and turning part of the complex into a golf
course.
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- Yet historians and local councillors warn that these
suggestions fail to deal with the issues raised by Vogelsang's Nazi past.
"Any new plan for the complex has to take account of its history in
a appropriate way," Guenter Rosenke, a councillor in the region, said.
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- Inspired by historians at other former Nazi sites in
Germany, such as the Nuremberg Rally complex where there is a museum on
the Nazi era, some politicians in the region want Vogelsang to follow suit.
-
- Michael Vesper, North Rhine Westphalia's Culture minister,
unveiled a plan last week under which Vogelsang would be used to house
an exhibition, Crimes of the Wehrmacht, which documents atrocities committed
by the German army during the Second World War. Yet even this proposal
seems destined to cause argument. Crimes of the Wehrmacht has provoked
demonstrations by militant neo-Nazis in nearly every German city it has
been shown in.
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=482562
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