'Hypocrisy' cries greet memorial: Germany unveils its first, controversial, national commemoration of those who died in the Second World War

'WHAT'S all the fuss about?' protested Dorothea, part of the modest Berlin crowd that braved yesterday's drizzle to witness the inauguration of Germany's first national memorial to the Second World War dead. 'Do we have to worry about what the rest of the world thinks of us all the time? Why shouldn't we be able to commemorate our dead like everyone else?'

The answers were largely provided by some of the younger members of the crowd. 'Hypocrites]' they yelled as Chancellor Helmut Kohl and President Richard von Weizsacker went to lay their wreaths at the controversial memorial. 'Nazis out]' and 'German executioners are not victims]'

Given the nature of yesterday's ceremony, and Germany's continuing agonised relationship with its own past, such protests were inevitable. But although there were fears they would turn violent, police reported that only eight people had been arrested by late yesterday afternoon following light scuffles.

For Chancellor Kohl, the ceremony, timed to coincide with Remembrance Day, marked the end of a three-year battle for a memorial which he believed would serve both as a symbol of German unification and reconciliation. 'To the victims of war and tyranny' reads the inscription in front of the statue of a mother grieving over her dead son at the centre of the new memorial.

Originally, Mr Kohl wanted those to be the only words in the memorial, prompting protests from Germany's Jewish community and groups representing victims of Nazism that the perpetrators of crimes were being lumped together with their victims. In the end, a compromise was found. Two plaques were added, on which were listed the various categories of people who suffered as a result of Nazism; to Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, soldiers (on all sides) and even East Germans persecuted under the Communist regime.

Some, including the Central Council of Jews in Germany, accepted the compromise. Others, including Berlin's own Jewish community, did not, protesting that it was still unacceptable to commemorate the victims of Auschwitz, for instance, at the same place as SS officers who died in the war.

'Given our history, I think we should go without this sort of memorial,' said Christine Fischer- Defoy, head of Berlin's 'Active Museum of Fascism and Resistance'.

'We were guilty of starting two world wars this century and should not behave as though we were victims. We do not need somewhere to take foreign leaders who come here and want to lay down flowers.'

Police detained about 200 right-wing extremists in several German states yesterday who were seeking to reach Halbe, site of a Second World War battle cemetery and focus for an annual neo-Nazi rally, Reuter reports. Outside the town, police confiscated gas pistols, knives, crowbars, banned war flags and Nazi propaganda leaflets.

(Photograph omitted)