Degussa and Holocaust Memorial, Part 2

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

The debate over the role of Degussa is the latest issue to bedevil the 
Holocaust Memorial project, which, after many years of discussion, was approved by 
the German parliament in 1999. Even after that, there were fierce arguments 
about the memorial's location, cost, design and even the materials used in its 
construction.

Work on the project, designed by the American architect Peter Eisenman, 
finally began this year in a large open field in central Berlin, a few hundred 
yards from the Brandenburg Gate and adjacent to the site of the future American 
Embassy. So far, about 25 of the 2,700 memorial steles have been installed, and 
work is expected to be finished in 2005.

Some have questioned why Memorial Foundation board members raised no 
objections to Degussa's participation earlier, even though its role was well known to 
them. In fact, Degussa itself is not even directly involved; its product, 
reputedly the best anti-graffiti material on the market, was to have been supplied 
by another subcontractor.

According to some people familiar with the board's decision, objections were 
first raised by Holocaust survivors. One of them, whose parents were murdered 
at Auschwitz, told board members that she would not be able to visit the 
memorial herself if the distributor of Zyklon B was allowed to supply the material.

"We all know that it's a very sensitive issue," Sibylle Quack, a spokeswoman 
for the Memorial Foundation, said in a telephone interview. "On one hand you 
have survivors of the Holocaust who can't stand a firm like Degussa being 
involved in the memorial, and on the other hand you will hardly find firms in 
Germany that were not involved with the Nazis.

"But more than 40 percent of Degesch was owned by Degussa, and Degesch 
distributed Zyklon B," Ms. Quack continued, "so this is a very important symbolic 
issue. Zyklon B symbolizes the murder."

In many ways, two principles oppose each other in this emerging debate: one 
is the principle of a sort of forgiveness for a company that has taken real 
action to atone for its past. The people who work at Degussa are not the same 
people who worked for it 60 years ago. According to this principle, it is wrong 
to penalize them for something that they had nothing to do with.

The company itself seemed to embrace this point. In a statement issued on 
Tuesday, Degussa said that it "regrets" the Memorial Foundation's decision "but 
respects it." But the company also said it would be difficult to explain the 
decision to its employees, given its record of the recent past.

In an editorial to be published Thursday, Michael Naumann, co-editor of the 
weekly newspaper Die Zeit, expressed irritation at people who insist on a sort 
of eternal and insurmountable German guilt.

"After four decades of intensive research, after many Holocaust movies and 
books, nobody can accuse the Germans of remaining oblivious to their history," 
Mr. Naumann writes. "Some of the accusers and those who would educate us about 
history have turned into impersonators of their own righteousness. They have 
usurped the role of victim."

The competing principle is that, whatever the abstract rights and wrongs of 
the decision involving Degussa, the most important element in the picture is 
the feelings of the Holocaust survivors themselves.

"You can't say anything against this argument, in my opinion," Klaus 
Hillenbrand, editor of the newspaper tageszeitung, said. "You can't argue to the 
survivors that Degussa has become a very fine company, so you have to change your 
view of this case.

"It's a personal question," Mr. Hillenbrand said. "If there are survivors of 
the Holocaust who feel this way, you just have to accept it."
kwp 
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