Oppose the demolition of an important anti-fascist memorial in Germany

Dear friends and comrades,

The authorities have privatised this anti-fascist memorial and the new owner wants to destroy it. He plans to build some upper-class houses there, instead of the memorial.

The memorial was built in the 50’s.  The GDR built it to remember the meeting of the leadership, the central committee, of the communist party of Germany (KPD) and its chairman Ernst Thaelmann on the 7th of February 1933. On the 30 January 1933, one week earlier, the Nazis came to power in Germany and that meeting of Thaelmann and his comrades was the first meeting of a German party to organize the anti-fascist resistance. Thaelmann held his famous ‘Ziegenhalser Speech’ there, where he called all anti-fascists to unite and fight against the fascist regime. This meeting, which had to be organised illegally, was also proof that there were far more German anti-fascists than only the resistance of military members: While Stauffenberg needed 11 years and a nearly lost war, the communists needed one week to start the struggle against the Hitler-regime.

After 1989/1990 the Treuhand-Anstalt (a government agency to sell all the peoples’ property of the GDR to private hands and the state) was the owner of the soil, the building and the memorial. They sold it in 2003 to an official of Brandenburg. This guy closed the memorial immediately and has tried – for seven years – to destroy it.

Only wide national and international solidarity prevented its demolition. Now we have to increase our efforts again because the owner wants to destroy the memorial right now and the authorities of Brandenburg are protecting his plans.

These are the reasons we started an international campaign. The authorities have to understand that there are a lot of people – especially outside of Germany – who support our struggle.

We ask you to support our appeal against the demolition of this important and famous memorial. This appeal can be signed – online or on paper.  A link to sign online is at our site: www.etg-ziegenhals.de/Aktuelles

Kind regards, Max Renkl

[Freundeskreis ‘Ernst-Thaelmann-Gedenkstaette’ e.V., Ziegenhals]

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