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Deutsche Welle
Berlin, October 26, 20003

"Lea Rosh" (right) has long championed the costly memorial

Work on Holocaust Memorial Stopped over Degussa Role

David Irving comments: LEA Rosh -- where have I heard that name before?    It sounds Jewish, but then of course it was meant to. Her real name is Edith Rosch, but she changed it many years ago when she realized that the path to a successful career in post-war Germany was to have Jewish origins.    It cleared obstacles, and provided what the Germans call a Senkrechtstart, a vertical take off, for the hopeful. So Edith became Lea, or Leah, and Lea eventually rose to head Norddeutscher Rundfunk and many a politically correct government foundation as well. Nobody dared to question her origins. THIS thick-lipped, unlovely creature -- once seen at an airport returning from a dirty weekend in Israel with Professor Eberhard Jäckel, the Hitler "expert", together with whom she used fake photographs to document the Holocaust in Europe for TV -- is the driving force behind the even more unlovely memorial to be constructed in Berlin to the Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. The former Berlin mayor Eberhard Diepgen fought tooth and nail against the mischievous project.    I have yet to see a proper memorial in Germany to the innocent civilians of WW2 killed by Allied bombing. The only one I have seen is a demure tablet on the wall of a dusky railroad station passenger tunnel in southern Bavaria, marking the place where one American bomb killed 200 civilians huddled during a 1945 air raid.    Shades of Baghdad: nowadays, of course, the Pentagon would claim that the tunnel was a secret underground command post, and that Adolf Hitler was using Nazi civilians to shield it from attack.     BUT I digress. Does Edith/Lea really believe she is doing any good with this cement monstrosity, 2,700 stone pillars erected on a patch the size of two football fields, sprawled across prime real estate in the heart of Berlin? Does she hope it will not inflame feelings?    I suspect that the Jewish community secretly hope that it will, because they seem to thrive on being hated and despised. Odd, but for all that not entirely despicable, folks.    A small footnote: Rosh's committee asked Yad Vashem to supply Six Million names to inscribe on the monument. Sensible enough request. Yad Vashem spluttered apologetic noises, and said that in fact they had nowhere near so many names on their books, and that there were so many duplicates (Abraham Rosenberg, etc.) that such a task would invite more skepticism than sorrow.    Not to mention all the Rosenfelds who submerged at the end of WW2, to re-emerge as Rákosis, or with Hebrew names in Palestine, and claim massive compensation for the now "missing" Rosenfelds, if you see what I mean.    Degussa incidentally was heavily involved in the uranium enrichment operations for Hitler's secret atomic bomb project, and they willingly provided me with company records for my book The Virus House. But that is another story. Mr Irving's comments on the Berliner Morgenpost David Irving starts a new US tour this Fall 2003. Locations include: Atlanta, New Orleans, Houston, Arlington (TX), Oklahoma City, Albuquerque, Tucson, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland (Oregon), Moscow (Idaho), Sacramento, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Louisville. The theme is comparisons - Hitler, Churchill, Iraq, war crimes law, and Iraq. [register interest]

WORK on Berlin's much-delayed Holocaust memorial has been halted following objections to the participation of chemicals maker Degussa, which once had a unit involved in the production of poison for Nazi death camps.

The foundation charged with the construction of a high-profile monument to Jews killed by the Nazis during the Second World War announced on Saturday work had been stopped indefinitely as it sought a replacement for Degussa, which was to coat the memorial to protect it against graffiti.

According to reports in the German media, foundation board member Lea Rosh (left) said that contracting Degussa could offend many Holocaust survivors, since the company's former subsidiary Degesch supplied "Zyklon B" hydrogen cyanide gas pellets to Nazi concentration camps.

"The problem we discussed is very complicated," Rosh told the Berliner Morgenpost on Sunday. "We asked ourselves: Where should one draw the line? And we came to conclusion the line is very clearly Zyklon B."

Berlin's "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" has long been plagued with delays. In the planning for over 15 years, there have been disputes over its location, design, cost and building materials. Designed by U.S. architect Peter Eisenman the memorial will consist of a maze of 2,700 large concrete pillars and is being built close to the city's landmark Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag parliament building.

For many board members the association with the gas used in the execution of so many Jews appeared to make the Degussa's participation untenable, even though the Düsseldorf-based firm has never tried to hide its past and has paid into a Holocaust reparations fund.

Degussa unable to make amends

President of the German parliament the Bundestag and memorial foundation chairman Wolfgang Thierse pleaded for all parties not to engage in smearing the name of a company that now had a respectable international reputation.

"We'll stop the work and will check the possibilities for using a comparable product for graffiti protection," Thierse told German ARD television.

Architect Eisenman had previously said he didn't want the concrete steles to be treated with a special anti-graffiti agent, arguing sprayers and vandals would find a way to paint the pillars if they really wanted to.

It's unclear whether the decision to replace Degussa will postpone the completion of the memorial scheduled for 2005. Eisenman was only able to place the first pillars of the $27 million project on the site this August. Rosh, however, remained optimistic the delay would not be very long.

"Another company can be found," she told the Associated Press on Sunday. She added that other firms had bid for the contract alongside Degussa, which offered to do the coating at a lower price as a sort of informal attempt to help set the past right. "Even if they had done it for free it wouldn't have worked out. They offered their hand, but we weren't able to take it," Rosh said.

Degussa said in a statement released over the weekend that the company will respond to the matter at an appropriate time.

Lea Rosh and Prof Jäckel proved to have used fake photographs for a TV documentary on the Holocaust

Jul 2001: Lea Rosh's Holocaust Memorial Campaign Aims to Shock Germany | Der Spiegel: "Welches Plakat?" | Holocaust Memorial Donations Sought | 'Holocaust Never Happened' ad prompts survivor's lawsuit | Provocative German Holocaust Denial Poster Removed

The 1947 Bruno Tesch trial (whose Degesch firm distributed the Zyklon B pesticide product East of the Elbe)

Data on Lea Rosh

New History, new Memories, but old Problems remain

Art versus memory