German activists who installed the memorial say it contains a soil sample with the human remains of Holocaust victims. The group wants to send a message to Angela Merkel's conservatives: Don't work with the far-right.
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An art installation that claims to contain the ashes of Nazi victims appeared outside Germany's parliament on Monday.
The group says it spent two years digging up soil and testing rivers near areas where the "Nazis perfected and industrialized mass murder."
"At one of the horrific sites we found ashes and bone char a meter deep. This column contains the sample from this soil that has been preserved for all eternity."
Dubbed the "Resistance Column," the solemn gray cylinder is partly illuminated from the inside with an orange light — giving viewers a chance to look at the soil sample contained inside.
Defending against criticism about desecrating human remains, the group said in a statement: "There were no graves where we sampled the soil."
"The only likely path to power for the AfD is through the conservatives," the Center for Political Beauty said.
Merkel's center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) have ruled out working with the far-right on a national and state-wide level.
At the local level, however, the success of the AfD has led some CDU politicians to team up with the far-right. Recently, a group of CDU politicians in the eastern state of Thuringia called for talks with "all democratically elected parties."
The Center for Political Beauty said it picked the location for its Holocaust memorial carefully. Located between the Bundestag and the chancellery, the artwork stands where the Kroll Opera House once stood — the site where German members of parliament gave dictator Adolf Hitler virtually unlimited authority in 1933.
Jewish community calls memorial 'problematic'
The Central Council of Jews in Germany said although it welcomes political protests to combat the rise of the far right, the memorial in Berlin raises several concerns.
"From a Jewish perspective, the Center for Political Beauty's latest campaign is problematic because it violates Jewish religious law about not disturbing the dead," council president Josef Schuster told DW in a statement.
He noted that if the human remains in the soil sample are actually Jewish victims of the Holocaust, then Jewish religious leaders need to be consulted on the best way to deal with those remains.
"It would be a welcome gesture if a rabbi were consulted when dismantling the 'Resistance Column' in order to ensure at least a respectful and correct handling of the ashes according to halacha," Schuster added.
Police have only granted permission for the memorial to remain in place until Saturday. The activists have put out a call for collections so they can pour concrete to make the memorial permanent.
Jewish memorials in Berlin
The Holocaust may have been eight decades ago, but it is never to be forgotten. Large and small memorials all over the German capital commemorate the victims of the Nazis.
Image: DW/M. Gwozdz
The Holocaust Memorial
A huge field of stelae in the center of the German capital was designed by New York architect Peter Eisenmann. The almost 3,000 stone blocks commemorate the six million Jewish people from all over Europe who were murdered by the Nazis.
Image: picture-alliance/Schoening
The "Stumbling Stones"
Designed by German artist Gunther Demnig, these brass plates are very small — only 10 by 10 centimeters (3.9 x 3.9 inches). They mark the homes and offices from which people were deported by the Nazis. Around 10,000 of them have been placed across Berlin.
Image: DW/T.Walker
House of the Wannsee Conference
Several high-ranking Nazi officials met in this villa on the Wannsee Lake in January 1942 to discuss the systematic murder of European Jews, which they termed the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." Today the house is a memorial that informs visitors about the unimaginable dimension of the genocide that was decided here.
Image: Paul Zinken/dpa/picture alliance
Track 17 Memorial
White roses on track 17 at Grunewald station remember the more than 50,000 Berlin Jews who were sent to their deaths from here. 186 steel plates show the date, destination and number of deportees. The first train went to the Litzmannstadt ghetto (Lodz, Poland) on October 18, 1941; the last train to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on January 5, 1945.
Image: imago/IPON
Otto Weidt's Workshop for the Blind
Today, the Hackesche Höfe in Berlin Mitte are mentioned in every travel guide. They are a backyard labyrinth in which many Jewish people lived and worked — for example in the brush factory of the German entrepreneur Otto Weidt. During the Nazi era he employed many blind and deaf Jews and saved them from deportation and death. The workshop of the blind is now a museum.
Image: picture-alliance/Arco Images
Fashion Center Hausvogteiplatz
The heart of Berlin's fashion metropolis once beat here. A memorial sign made of high mirrors recalls the Jewish fashion designers and stylists who made clothes for the whole of Europe at Hausvogteiplatz. The National Socialists expropriated the Jewish owners. Berlin's fashion center was irretrievably destroyed during the Second World War.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Kalaene
Memorial at Koppenplatz
Before the Holocaust, 173,000 Jews lived in Berlin; in 1945 there were only 9,000. The monument "Der verlassene Raum" (The Deserted Room) is located in the middle of the Koppenplatz residential area in Berlin's Mitte district. It is a reminder of the Jewish citizens who were taken from their homes without warning and never returned.
Image: Jörg Carstensen/dpa/picture alliance
The Jewish Museum
Architect Daniel Libeskind chose a dramatic design: viewed from above, the building looks like a broken Star of David. The Jewish Museum is one of the most visited museums in Berlin, offering an overview of the turbulent centuries of German Jewish history.
Image: Miguel Villagran/AP Photo/picture alliance
Weissensee Jewish Cemetery
There are still eight remaining Jewish cemeteries in Berlin, the largest of them in the Weissensee district. With over 115,000 graves, it is the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe. Many persecuted Jews hid in the complex premises during the Nazi era. On May 11, 1945, only three days after the end of the Second World War, the first postwar Jewish funeral service was held here.
When the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse was first consecrated in 1866 it was considered the largest and most magnificent synagogue in Germany. One of Berlin's 13 synagogues to survive the Kristallnacht pogroms, it later burned down due to Allied bombs. It was reconstructed and opened again in 1995. Since then, the 50-meter-high golden dome once again dominates Berlin's cityscape.
Image: Stephan Schulz/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa/picture alliance
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Searching for remains
The Center for Political Beauty said it collected over 240 samples from 23 locations across Germany as well as in previously Nazi-occupied areas in Poland and Ukraine.
Lab results found traces of human remains in over 70% of the samples, the group said in a statement.
The samples were taken from areas near Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka and other sites of Nazi German concentration camps where the ashes and remains of victims were spread in nearby fields and rivers.
At Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp, over 1.1 million victims — including some 1 million Jewish prisoners — were killed. The ashes of hundreds of thousands of bodies were disposed of in the lakes and grounds surrounding the camp.
Earlier that year Höcke dubbed the memorial in Berlin as a "monument of shame" and has called for a reversal of Germany's culture of remembrance surrounding the Holocaust.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27. Numerous memorials across Germany ensure the millions of victims are not forgotten.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
Image: picture alliance/Markus C. Hurek
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
Image: picture-alliance/Daniel Karmann
German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
Image: picture alliance/Klaus Nowottnick
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.