The government’s plan Berlin –which does not function as another town hall but is one of the three German cities recognized as one of the 16 lands that make up the Federal Republic of Germany – of demolish or give away to anyone the villa where the propaganda minister of the Nazi regime spent his weekends, Joseph Goebbels has caused alarm in Jewish organizations, since on the one hand they criticize the possibility of a historical place of that importance disappearing and, in addition, they also point out that depending on who the new owner was, the place could become a neo-Nazi pilgrimage center.
Just like explained Libertad Digital, the complex was given to the Nazi leader by the city of Berlin as a birthday gift and Goebbels used it to spend his weekends. After the war it remained in the hands of the youth of the communist regime of the GDR, which makes it even more valuable as a historical site, until with unification it was recovered by its original owner, Berlin, who stopped using it in 1998.
Since then the maintenance cost is around 250,000 euros per year and, despite that, the house is getting worse and now some repairs would be necessary. very expensive works to recover it and put it to useso the Berlin minister also threatened that if no owner was found he would proceed to demolish the complex.
Alarm in Jewish organizations
The Berlin proposals have alarmed European Jewish organizations and the largest of them, the European Jewish Association (EJA)has published a letter calling for the site to be converted into a Global Center to Combat the Propaganda of Hate.
“Turn the mansion of the worst of all engineers of consciousness in the history of humanity into a center for political psychology, communication and the fight against hate speech It would be an important moral victory“says the president of the EJA, Rabbi Menachem Margolinin the letter.
Margolin further highlights that at this time and “91 years after the Nazis came to power,” the world “is once again facing waves of hate” motivated by “poisonous propaganda” and the “creation of a virtual reality with the sole purpose of sowing destruction and violence.”
The president of the EJA highlighted “precisely these days” is when the Goebbels house “should not be demolishedbut rather converted into a center for the fight against hate speech that protects the free world from the dangerous trends that are repeated throughout the Western world and in Germany in particular.
The letter also recalls that “right now” and “in a chilling resemblance to what is happening now in another place where they seek to destroy the Jewish people” – in reference to Israel – last week “exactly 79 years passed since Goebbels poisoned his six children and committed suicide” in a bunker in Berlin. One more reason, according to Rabbi Margolin, to make the place where “absolute evil was spread a source of spreading good”, which would be “an important moral victory.”
