 My name is Thomas Lutz by profession. I'm a teacher in history, political science and sports. I work in this field of dealing with Nazi crimes in Germany now professionally since about 30 years. For the 10 years for an organization called Aksun Zünderzeichen Friedensdienste, Actionary Consolidation Service for Peace, and now since about 20 years for the Topography of Terror Foundation. My special task here is to be the head of the Memorial Museums Department. That means I coordinate the work of Memorial Museums for the Victims of the Nazi Regime in Germany but more and more also with international relations. That means I publish a newsletter four times a year. I have an internet news and other communication platform for Memorial Museums. I advise people on very different levels from civil action groups until governments like or until UNESCO, which makes the job for me quite interesting because it's so so vivid on one hand and so different on the other hand. The topography by themselves is not a Memorial Museum, it's a documentation center because it's on the side where after the Nazis came to power in 1933, first it was the headquarter of the Gestapo of the secret state police in the state of Prussia and became larger during the last years. Then it was the headquarter of the Gestapo and from 1936 on Heinrich Himmler, who was the leader of this institution, had this long title, Reichsführer SS and Chef der Deutschen Polizei im Reichsministerium des Inneren. That means he was Reichs' leader of the SS on one hand of the Party column and on the other hand he was also the chief of the whole German police, not only the Gestapo, also the criminal investigation police and the order police. And so you can say this was combined then with the beginning of the Second World War to the Reichsicherheitshauptamt, the Reich Security and Main Office, that this side here was the center of the institution who were responsible for the persecution during the Nazi regime. After the liberation by the Red Army, the decision was made to split Berlin in four sectors and we are here in the American sector and on the opposite side of the street was the Soviet sector which became later on the capital of the GDR and then from 1961 on also the wall. So we were here located really on the end of the Western world and it was this area here felt into oblivion until the end of the 70s. And then you could see it here if you look to the opposite side of the street. You could see there was an international building exhibition to build new buildings. There was one architect who was also an historian who said, oh, before you build anything new on this side, please have in mind what happened here during the Nazi regime and that was a starting point for cultural debate. We had the first exhibition here about the Gestapo, the S.S. and the Reich Security and Main Office and this was only planned temporarily and then because the interest was so large from the very first year and we had more than 100,000 visitors on this very small exhibition but also in the cultural field there was a discussion going on that one should not only commemorate the victims but also one has to ask who was responsible for this and that was the reason then that at the beginning of the 90s the foundation was established who really had the task to deal with this site here as an international documentation center to have exhibitions, to have a library, to have an archive, to have seminar rooms for school classes, students, other people who are interested to go more in depth into this issue. And that was also a long process with the architecture, with the building of this and since now about a little bit more than three years we have this new building here. On the side before this we had an open air for 20 years, we had an open air exhibition only but at the end before it stopped four years ago we had also 350,000 visitors on this open air exhibition and we were located with our institutions close by in rented locations and now everything is here, the exhibitions are here, all the things which are necessary to run an institution so the bureaucracy, the people, the staff members, the library, the archives, everything is now in this building here and we have a growing number of visitors so in the first year we had about a little less than 900,000 visitors and we estimate that this year if the numbers will go on as we count in the first months we will get more than one million visitors on this side. It's a foundation by public law. It means the law is by the state of Berlin and we are funded half by the state of Berlin and half by the federal government and we have three bodies for this foundation the first body is the Stiftungsrate, the most important body where the chair is the senator for cultural affairs of the state of Berlin normally and there are people from the federal, from the state government and from the federal government and there is the chairperson of the international board the chairperson of the scientific board and the chairperson of the council of Jews in Germany in this board and then we have two other board who advise us that is an international board with about 25 people from all over the world, historians, people from other memorial museums, victim organizations and we have this scientific board that's asked 8 or 10 persons and that means that the idea is you need in Germany public money to run such an institution with private money maybe it's for some projects it's possible to get private money but compared to the United States also it's impossible to run such an institution here with only with private money but to have this structure with these two boards who are very strong in this structure and who should bring together on the one hand the public interest and on the other hand the interest of the society and of the scientists and so on and to combine this in the structure of the foundation that's also the reason why we do have an independent foundation and not the department of the minister of culture that's a good thing because we are an independent foundation with these two strong advisory bodies it's not so easy to reign from one person from one political party to this this is different to other foundations we have the situation that during the last 10 years of politics more and more see that they can use the memory for their own political what they would like to do and especially and maybe that's different in Germany between West and East Germany and in new federal states you have the situation that you have more or less three strong parties the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats and the Left and two of them can have a coalition and sometimes you have a coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats and sometimes of Social Democrats and Left and because many of the people who were during the Nazi regime political opponents and survived or went to Moscow or to other places and came back afterwards we are also much engaged in the development of the GDR and because we had also during the GDR dictatorship which is totally different from the Nazi regime but nevertheless it was a dictatorship there's a way to use these both histories against the Left Party and that's a strong political impact on party politics from daily politics with the structure of this independent foundation we try to put it away as much as possible nevertheless the Memorial Museum is a political institution and we also have political interests we have our political opinion we would like to have our goals which we would like to fulfill with the exhibitions with the education no doubt about it, it's also political but it's not the party politics and it's not so much concentrated on what's going on this day with politics it's more on a general more open, more pluralistic argumentation among us also it's especially for the Memorial sites I think they are cultural institutes and that means in the future they will have more and more to compete with other cultural institutions and at the moment we have a policy here which cuts the financial support especially for most of the financial institutions and if this politics will continue so we will get more cuts in this field and also the Memorial Museums will get cuts in this field they have to compete with other kinds of cultural institutions so I think it will become more and more normal to deal with this issue which is not the worst thing on the other hand I believe that the large institutions like the topography like the large Memorial Museums also like smaller ones if you go to Cologne or to Düsseldorf or to Münster where you have a few staff members and we have several ten thousand visitors and we have large exhibition spaces and good programs for students and other people they will survive in the future for me the one important question is that the movement to establish this Memorial Museums at the end of the 70's it started during the 80's and 90's now these people have retired or are quite old and it's not so easy to see how it will continue with the small institutions which were run by private action groups in 10 years and 15 years it's not the reason that we don't have youngsters who are interested in this field but they have totally different living plans for our society it was very important to have this movement and to have this much small memorials because until the end of the 70's if someone spoke about the Nazi regime they said oh it was in Berlin it happened in Poland it had two people, three people Himmler and Heitrich and it has nothing to do with the people in Germany and because of the Memorial Museums they asked what happened in our city what happened in our industrial complex what happened in our region so it was clear for the people that it's connected with their living situation nowadays because there are so many connections between their living situation nowadays and what happened 60, 70 years ago in the same area also people with the structures have changed dramatically sometimes during this 12 years of the Nazi regime and so it affects the life nowadays it was so important to really get an acknowledgement that it wasn't a German thing and not only a thing of few perpetrators and mass murders and it was very, very important and I think with the passage of time you need an institution who run this memory in the future they have heard about the Holocaust in the school but not about the system of persecution they really don't know the difference between the Gestapo and the SS or the Secret Service of the SS what's the difference between the Secret Police and the Secret Service of the SS so they don't know it they need this historical knowledge and they are interested in this but for them the Nazi regime and other dictatorships or other crimes against humanity like in Wanda or so that's not the difference for them they have the same humanitarian questions to the history and not like me so it's a specific German thing the Nazi regime, that's not more the same question for them so it will change and that means for us that we have to to give better or we have to give other arguments or other explanations why it's so important to support us and it's not so important to support us because the Nazi regime was unique it's so important because up to now it's an important part of the German history and without understanding the Nazi regime you can't understand the German states or the development in Germany afterwards also if you see the Nazi regime you have in a in a burning class you have also the development before the Nazi regime at least the foundation of the German Reich 1870 and the first world war so many things are connected in this and you need, if you would like to understand how we deal and how our society functions up to now you have to know about the Nazi regime it was such a vivid change in the society and on the other hand also such a brutal period of history you can see so many things which are problematic very clear what happened if you put people on the edge of the society if you start to persecute them what happened if you don't follow human rights if you cut civic freedom and so on and so on and also you can see that it's more on the structure level you can explain how what's necessary that it's possible to kill so many people in a modern bureaucracy which is also quite important because for me the step between a democracy and a dictatorship is very small and also back from the dictatorship to the democracy it's very small and on the individual level you can see also that the monsters or the beasts are ordinary persons and to understand this and to think what does it mean if I make education with people who work now in the administration have power in the police in the army all the system of prison in the social welfare system and so I think there's so many things which you can see so clear what it means if you are not careful how you behave nowadays and I think there are many links which are not straight red line but if you go back to the history and start and think about it you can find so many important questions for yourself that I think these institutions will become important also in the future maybe more important without people who can give a report about this and the other experience is I can't explain exactly why but if you have the same questions and you ask this questions on such a historical side or on a side a kilometer away from it so the discussions are different so the motivation to be very concentrated on the issue and go in depth and with very clear and very intimate discussions you can do it on such historical side much better as on a neutral side and I think also there are many reasons why it's so important to have these institutions here the time of memory changes but it's not over first of all now since few years we have for the first time lists of inmates of concentration camps but now we can commemorate their names and for many concentration camps we don't have all the names or if you go and we have other possibilities to commemorate the people I think also though the commemoration it's not maybe if you would like to commemorate someone you need to know something about the person if you go to Poland if you go to France it was totally different and to acknowledge first of all that the victims were the others the owns was an important development in our society and then if you would like to commemorate you need to know something about them about the biography you need to know why he or she was persecuted, deported and whatever and maybe that becomes stronger that you need more information that you can commemorate the people but nevertheless all the memorial museums and all the work is concentrated on gathering at least the names but also as much information about these people who suffered under the large regime as possible but nevertheless we know much more about this side we have much more evidences from the east from archives in the east from the Red Army collected immediately after the liberation we have much more eyewitnesses reports audio videotaped we have much more sensitivity how to deal with this issue we have much more money also to collect this material and now the problem is really to collect it in a proper way for example during the 80s we had made many videos on tapes and now they are if you don't change it in digital things so they will vanish during the last years that's a more important problem and maybe though we will have the possibility also in the way of commemoration to commemorate things which were impossible to speak about earlier so maybe 20 years ago that the communist acknowledged that the homosexual was also a victim of the Nazi regime was not so easy that they give them each other the hand and say yes they acknowledge that you were also persecuted but now that's quite normal or of course in the hierarchy of inmates of concentration camps the problem is that many of the capos had green triangles so for the people with the red triangle it was impossible to speak about a capo but also we know that some of the capos exemptions but nevertheless were important especially if they came during the period of the foundation of a concentration camp to this camp and if they were not corrupt and not looking only for their own faith they could do many good things for the living of the concentration camp inmates and so I know in some memorial museums in the exhibitions which were established 5, 6, 7 years ago it was impossible to explain this but maybe in the next new exhibition also they can explain such things so that means also that we have taboos also in this field and we can open taboos without the narration of people also with a passage of time and also dealing with perpetrators was for the survivors a big deal they won't speak about the perpetrators also as we started my colleagues started to work here about 25 years ago there were people who say you should not deal with the perpetrators you should commemorate us you should explain our faith, our history but they fear if someone deals with the perpetrators with the ideology they start to understand a little bit what they have done and also if you see the SS in proud uniform strong strong males maybe also youngsters could be attracted by this but also I think if you do it in a proper way first you can do it and also I think also if I see it during the last let's say 15 years we need not to be so careful, we should be careful and sensitive but also we could be more open also to deal with these people and also to explain that there was a fascination also of these guys because otherwise you can't understand why also people were attracted and went to this units and to this organizations I can say here the topography of terror up to now during the last 25 years I have never seen one event by right wing extremists so that you decide here for any kind of event I have seen right wing extremists all small groups you could see what they were but they were quite although there was not a problem with the other visitors and so that's at least for our institution I can say we don't have problems that's different in some other memorial museums if you go to the Wefelsburg with the dark sun so that's a much more emotional symbol for right wing extremists in there they have much more problems with right wing extremists as we have here for example. My father was an officer in the German army during the Second World War he fought in France in Russia and in Italy so and he fortunately for him was captured in Italy by the US troops and so as I was a youngster I asked him about the stories about his former life and he told me stories from the war but only stories which has not to do with with fighting and also which had nothing to do with crimes committed during the war so he told me as I was 8 years, 9 years old that he never killed someone by its own I could not grab the meaning of this now I have another idea of what it could mean with this and then because we had totally different opinions as I was a teen so I had no chance to discuss it with him and then afterwards as I were a student and we had to get a better connection again he died very early so that I had no chance to discuss him afterwards so and for me I have to say I didn't feel guilty I felt I didn't feel guilty what happened during the Second World War for me it was the most I don't know the correct English word for this maybe where I felt most uncomfortable was that I had especially during the 80s as I started this work so many meetings with people who survived the Second World War and who told me stories that you could say also after the Second World War they went to a second persecution so if they would like to get a restitution they went to the same people who had positions during the Nazi regime they were not acknowledged as Nazi victims they had no not the same possibility to make a good living like the people who were bystanders or perpetrators unfortunately I have to say also because I work more and more also with other dictatorships and other public crimes that's normal after the end of a dictatorship the people who suffered under the dictatorship except normally of one small group who was afterwards the leading people, the people who suffered under the first regime also have not the same possibilities to make a good living as the people who were perpetrators or bystanders that was a problem for me and then the other thing is that maybe most of the people who worked in this field in my age we had the feeling that we had a critical approach to our own state and our own society and so we felt that we started to acknowledge the others so we were on the right side in the corner and as I say in 1992 I was for the first time for a lecture to the United States which was funded by the Foreign Office in Germany I switched because I was seen in the United States as an official representative of Germany and for me it was a new situation that I also I pushed the state and I said you have to do this you have to establish memorial museums you have to get teachers who teach this you have to do it in curricula in school classes you have to pay restitution to people who suffered under this regime and now for the first time I was the official German and maybe this has changed for most of us that now more and more we are acknowledged as cultural institutions and also the politicians would like to have advice from us, not only if it's concentrated on the side where we work but also more and more in the area in the city where you live with there are other events who deal with this history of people and the institutions also if they are quite small normally they are acknowledged and they are acknowledged as fruitful cooperation could be fruitful and at least an advice is sometimes necessary and helpful I feel that I have to be sensitive and if I am in contact with such people and also with the relatives of them because I had the chance to make a good living because of my parents and so they had good jobs and I had a good education and I could pay for this and could afford this and then but I can't say that I really feel guilty for what happened during the Nazi regime also another thing if I am going back from my individual situation to the institutions and coming back to the question of commemoration the memorial museums also have a task let's say as in the direction of social work so to get information about the people who suffered there, who died there who do not have a proper grave there for relatives now quite often we have the situation that the second or sometimes also the third generation comes to memorial museums and asks about the fate of their relatives and that's I think especially in this if you go to the six sites where the gas chambers stood for the T4 action where this about about 10,000 or more than 10,000 people were killed they have now more relations with relatives as they had normally they didn't have any relation to anyone who is involved in this biographically or personally as they started their work during the 80s so it's not over that it's necessary to deal with this issue so it's changed to the third generation some quite often maybe this is the so called euthanasia it's the largest taboo in the germ society concerning the Nazi regime because this could happen to everyone that's the reason why many people also would not speak about it so they said oh your aunt died in the hospital and now maybe sometimes before people die or in their notes now the second and third generation can hear or can read that they aren't dying in the hospital in the euthanasia program and then they start to would like to know more about it now we have a discussion also to have a new memorial on the place where the T4 will last where the center of the organization of this and what so there is maybe it's the peak of establishing this and finding new new issues new complexes of persecution is over but nevertheless in specific areas there is an ongoing discussion up to now so the GDR was not such a democracy like any it was not such a dictatorship like the Nazi dictatorship or also like the Franco dictatorship or like the Pinochet dictatorship also on quantity and on quality there are differences nevertheless from my point of view it's necessary to deal with all different kinds of persecution of state persecution, public persecution but that's difficult because if you would like to compare different kinds of persecution first of all you need to have the knowledge and normally someone is knowledgeable in one of the systems and not in many of the systems and that means that especially as I pointed out earlier between East Germany there was a use of comparing is okay but of equalizing or equalizing the both systems and not because of historical reasons and not because of scientist reasons but because of political reasons. If I have here a group and someone and I tell him something about the Gestapo and he asked me what's the difference to the Stasi and he or she has an interest in this question so I have to answer it and then I compare it and that's we have to do this and also we have to acknowledge that it was not and people have many restrictions in the GDR and maybe in other Eastern European countries much more as in GDR and many people who deal with this post-war dictatorship in the GDR call it Stalinism from my point of view it was not a Stalinism regime, it was a dictatorship but Stalinism was if you go to the 1930s if you go what happened in Ukraine and other places in GDR it's totally different to what happened here but the use is terms really for their political opinions for their political reasons and that means if you do it in this way then you start to minimize the crimes committed during the Nazi regime and their importance for us nowadays and that's a political discussion behind us and that's the difference between the necessity or the necessity to deal with all of the different dictatorships and to compare it and be open to it and maybe also the Stalinists or if you go to Khmer Rouge or to other things they were not they were maybe much more brutal and the duration which is important was much more in the present time as a Nazi dictatorship so that's a reason why also it affected many people up to now and it's necessary also to deal with this structural societal and also biographical things that's no doubt about it my problem with this is if you use it to equalize it and it's for Germany it's an easy way out to say all the others were also brutal there were also dictatorships that's the reason why we don't have to deal with our Nazi dictatorship and as I pointed out if this means that we are only victims and also if you go to the new films and film as a media it's important to spread our idea to have a discussion in a society about history also terms explained more and more as victims first it started as victims of the expulsion of the refuge from the east then it starts as victims of arson attacks also all of these are personally are victims no doubt about it you have to contextualize it that's important I think the important question in Germany that maybe from my point of view before Stalingrad after it was impossible for the German army to conquer Moscow it was clear that Germany couldn't win the war and also during the last months or during the last years there were so many losses in Germany why supported the Schirm Society the Nazi regime until the last day what was the reason for this and from my point of view the reason for this was that the people maybe didn't know exactly what happened but they had an idea that they supported such a brutal regime that they fear that the same thing could happen to them and that's the reason also also if Berlin was totally demolished they did not make any kind of uprising against the Nazi regime so we have to contextualize it now we have the situation that the communist regimes fell down the only country which became larger in Europe was Germany all others normally became smaller and they look for a new national identity in the Baltic states in Hungary and Czech Republic I know it a little bit and the problem is that this was not only the way to look for a national history but for a nationalistic history that's the crucial point behind this and for me you can see it very clearly in this House of Terror if you look to one memorial museum though the way one problem for Germany is that they equalize the air crosser and the support from Germany to the air crosser and the Stalinist regime which they call that's the one problem but the most important problem is that they explain Hungary only as victims first as victims of the Nazi regime and then as victims of the of the USSR occupation and the question how Reichmann with 160 staff members could deport 500,000 Jews in 3 months from Hungary to Auschwitz that's not explainable with this and I think if they would like to start this question in the society this would lead to an open to a pluralistic and to a democratic development in the society but the society is not willing to ask this questions and maybe that's a little bit the same this nationalistic approach you have also in the other countries and that's goes back to a revanchist policy and so that's it reminds me very much on what happened here after the first world war so that the only people the only countries where the victims or maybe they didn't spoke about victims they spoke about heroes but the heroes were their own soldiers and all the others were the enemies and also this leads to many problems in the society going especially in dealing with minorities and to understand this as a part of Europe heritage and to understand that so many people were affected in this and it's necessary if you will overcome this to accept that there is a there is a historical development and that people quite often are especially the civilians are thrown in this situation and you have to be open to this and you have to give them the chances to make a good living nowadays and to also to have this different approaches to have different religious different cultural things but to accept this Mosaic I think that's very important from my point of view would be important also if you deal with the Nazi regime the Nazi crimes were a European crime not only in Germany it started in Germany but without the collaboration in all the occupied countries the collaboration was very different in the different countries and you had also the opposition but without the collaboration it couldn't be committed and I think that's hopefully maybe it's not so easy to say this as a German but hopefully we deal with in a more European way also we accept that there was a collaboration and maybe France and maybe Belgium and maybe some others now start a little bit to accept this but there's a gap which we have to to jump over if you would like to have a German European view to the society not only to have this nationalistic view also the people who asked for a European view to the 20th century normally they are nationalists in their own countries