Pay To Enter: Concentration Camp Memorial Imposes Fee
It’s hardly as bad as a proposed mall across the street from Auschwitz, but some are still upset about the new fee being charged at Sachsenhausen, the former concentration camp near Berlin.
Earlier this month, officials at the camp began charging one euro for each member of organized tours of the site, where more than 200,000 people were imprisoned during the Nazi regime. The fees are not for profit, but will help to cover education costs and training for tour guides. Nevertheless, they mark the first time that a Holocaust-related site in Germany has charged visitors, stirring unease.
“A concentration camp memorial should not impose barriers on visitors,” the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, told the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Until now, Holocaust sites in Germany have been maintained and kept completely free for visitors by the government.
In defense of the fee, officials at the Sachsenhausen site note that it was approved by the board of the camp’s foundation, which includes survivors.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO