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Berlin (dpa) - The Jewish Museum in Berlin rejected Wednesday an attack by a national Jewish leader who says the museum is the wrong venue for a historians' seminar on how Dresdner Bank helped the Nazis.
The remorseful bank, now a subsidiary of the insurer Allianz, has funded a decade-long investigation of every connection it ever had to the Nazis and plans to publish the findings on February 17 as well as hold the seminar in a museum conference hall.
Salomon Korn, deputy chairman of the German Council of Jews, accused the museum of "cosying up" to the bank, the Berliner Zeitung reported Wednesday. He said his organization was so offended at the venue that it would not attend the seminar.
The award-winning museum in Berlin is devoted to the entire history of Jews in Germany.
W. Michael Blumenthal, head of the museum, told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa on Wednesday that a principal mission of the museum was to explore the Nazi period and it had hosted a variety of symposia on the Holocaust.
The museum was not expressing any opinion about the content of the Dresdner study, he said.
Dresdner Bank added through a spokesman that it was not unveiling the study at the museum, but rather at its Berlin office, with scholars invited to the seminar at the museum afterwards.
Both Blumenthal and the bank rejected charges that the invitation had been influenced by Dresdner's donation of money to cover a museum courtyard with an expensive glass roof designed by the museum architect, Daniel Libeskind.
They said Dresdner had supported the museum financially over many years.
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
