Written and translated by Rabbi Robert Jacobs based on an article published in
TAGESSPIEGEL on 29 June 2011

In an article by Thomas Loy, the Berlin Tagesspiegel reports the placement of a Memorial Tablet on the wall of the Antelope House recalling the Aryanisation of the Zoo following the Nazi takeover in 1933. Loy writes: “The Berlin Zoo needed more than 70 years to place its Nazi-era past in view. The result is a memorial plaque that was ceremonially unveiled on Tuesday (28 June).

During the discrimination and confiscation, Berlin Jews were “criminally removed” declared zoo-director Gabriele Thöne. The descendants of the former Jewish stakeholders, such as New York Professor of Sociology Werner Cohn waited long years for this recognition.”

Following the Nazi take-over on 30 January 1933, German Jews were stripped of citizenship, property and profession. Many were forced to sell off highly-valued properties. Although there had been earlier denials of the shares in the Zoo corporation being included in this process, Historian Monika Schmidt described the process by which Jews were first removed from the Zoo’s governing board, and later forced to sell off their shares in the corporation.

Loy reports that there were some 4,000 shareholders in the Berlin Zoo; about one-third were Jews. The Zoo was a cultural treasure then, a centre of cultural life in the German capital city. Professor Werner Cohn was an invited guest for the dedication. He had sought more—suggesting a million dollar gift for an Israeli zoo as reparation for the loss of value by the Jewish victims of this confiscation of property.

The Berlin Zoo has refused this, calling the plaque “a gesture of reconciliation with the descendants rather than a repayment in a legal sense.”

Dr Hermann Simon, Director of the Centrum Judaicum (based in the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Street which houses exhibits and events connected to the history and culture of Jews in Berlin and current Jewish life) said: The memorial plaque should only be a “first step” in the revelation of the Nazi corruption of the Zoo.

“Further steps should follow” including the fate of the individual shareholders and bringing to light the systematic obscuring of this theme after World War II. “It is late, but never too late” for the Zoo to reveal its past.

Plans are also in preparation to make 2013 a year of remembrance for the Jewish citizenry of Berlin as a means of coming to terms with the loss of diversity in the city through the Nazi destruction, as the city owes much to its Jewish citizens.