The next memorial we saw was located immediately in front of the Bundestag.
This row of slabs (which looks like a fancy slate bicycle rack) is a memorial to the 96 members of the Reichstag who were persecuted and murdered because their politics didn’t agree with Chancellor Hitler’s. They were part of the Weimar Republic, the weak and ill-fated attempt at post-WWI democracy in Germany. These were the people who could have stopped Hitler. So they tried…and they became his first victims.
Each slate slab memorializes one man: his name, party, and the date and location of his death — generally in a concentration camp. They are honored here, in front of the building in which they worked.
This only accounts for the elected National leaders who were murdered by the Nazis. It would be a mistake to think that this was the limit of Nazi attacks on the opposition.
The remnants of the Communist and Socialist parties and members of the trade unions actively resisted the Nazi regime. Especially in the early years of the Third Reich, political prisoners were a significant portion of the concentration camp inmates. At the end of July 1933, about 27,000 political prisoners were being held in concentration camps in "protective custody." During its twelve year existence, Dachau was always a camp for political prisoners.
Many of those prisoners never returned home.
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