Leader Warns Germany to Remember Past

With its Nazi past, Germany must take care not to go too far in the fight against terror, President Johannes Rau warned Sunday at the opening of a new exhibit on Nazism.

The Nazi era showed how easy it is for a society to abandon its democratic principles, Rau said in Nuremberg, the favored parade grounds for Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists.

The government that preceded the Nazis failed not because of rightist or leftist extremism but because “there were not enough upright democrats in the middle of society,” he said.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., the German government has approved a bill that would allow officials to outlaw any Islamic organizations that abuse their religious status to engage in criminal activities.

Three of the suicide hijackers involved in the attacks are believed to have been part of a Hamburg-based terrorist cell.

A law banning support for German terrorist organizations also is to be extended to groups based abroad.

Rau said the German government must continuously assess whether it is taking the right steps and whether the measures are working.

“The ends do not always justify the means,” he said.

With the new documentation center at the Nazis’ unfinished meeting hall, Nuremberg is making a bold attempt to confront its past with an exhibit that explores the allure of Nazi propaganda and its role in the Holocaust.

The new exhibition, “Fascination and Force,” combines educational exhibits with propaganda film clips and yellowed photographs of the huge Nazi rallies in Nuremberg. It also highlights the Nuremberg anti-Jewish “race laws” that paved the way for the Holocaust.

The $9-million exhibition, which opens to the public today, took seven years to complete.