25 Years of Work by the Advisory Board of the Foundation Memorial

With these words, Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse addresses the members of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation Memorial on December 16, 1999, which had convened for its constituent meeting on that day. This future advisory board should consist of 12 people and advise the Board of Trustees and the Executive Board of the Foundation. Wolfgang Thierse calls on the Board of Trustees members to submit proposals for the upcoming meeting – on January 27, 2000.

However, these arrive only slowly. The representatives of the then governing parties SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens initially do not submit any names, but some recommendations are made by members of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group and the support group around Lea Rosh: Both lists include the conservative historian Horst Möller, Director of the Institute for Contemporary History. Additionally, György Konrad, Holocaust survivor, writer and then President of the Academy of Arts, and the former Federal Minister and Governing Mayor of Berlin, Hans-Jochen Vogel (SPD), are brought into play. Here, too, it becomes apparent: The project of the future memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe, decided by the Bundestag, is highly political, with every detail being contested.

From January 27, 2000, another half year will pass until the Foundation’s advisory board then meets for its first session on June 21, 2000. Thierse’s proposal for a composition with diverse political, professional, and personal connections has been implemented – except now there are no longer twelve, but 16 nominations. 15 people take up their work, only the chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, Romani Rose, stays away. Among the representatives are four survivors or those directly affected by Nazi persecution, as well as representatives of memorial sites and activists speaking for non-Jewish persecuted groups, and scientists. At its constituent meeting, the advisory board unanimously appoints Wolfgang Benz, Director of the Center for Research on Antisemitism, as its spokesperson.

Wolfgang Benz, who will celebrate his 84th birthday on June 9, continues to hold this office to this day. The advisory board has achieved much. The committee sees its essential mission as bringing to life the task entrusted to the Foundation, to remember all victims of the Nazis. As early as 2000, the advisory board concludes that remembering one group of Nazi persecutees requires special efforts – those convicted by military courts, especially former deserters. At that time, their sentences had not yet been annulled. The initiative for a traveling exhibition led to the show “” What Was Right Then…“- Soldiers and Civilians Before Courts of the Wehrmacht” in 2007, which has since been seen at over 50 locations in Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, and Belgium. Three national memorials are created in addition to the Holocaust Memorial: the Memorial to the Persecuted Homosexuals (2008), the Memorial to the Murdered Sinti and Roma (2012, expanded 2022), the Memorial and Information Point for the Victims of National Socialist “Euthanasia” Killings (2014). A memorial for the persecuted and murdered Jehovah’s Witnesses has now been approved by the Bundestag. And the advisory board’s proposal from November 2019 to honor the 230 million people under German occupation in Europe between 1939 and 1945 with a documentation center is in the process of implementation. The traveling exhibition “The Denied Ones” has been remembering those persecuted as “asocials” and “career criminals” under National Socialism since 2024. Not all of these projects are original projects of the advisory board, but its persistent reminder of gaps in remembrance has contributed to their realization.