BERLIN—Germany’s Jewish community is angry at plans to build a museum celebrating a local sausage delicacy on the site of a facility where the Nazis held Jews before sending them to the Buchenwald concentration camp in the eastern state of Thuringia.
Friends of the Thuringian Sausage, an association that runs a museum in honor of the delicacy named after the region, want to move to a new building to be located on land where the Nazis held prisoners in a so-called subcamp in World War II.
“We are shocked and irritated by the total lack of sensitivity,” said Reinhard Schramm, head of the Jewish community in Thuringia, home to some 800 Jews.
“We are in talks with city officials and hope we can find a solution that honors the victims.”
The site of the former subcamp lies on the outskirts of the city of Muehlhausen, some 50 miles northwest of Buchenwald, on a patch of land that a private investor bought from the government in 2008.
The investor now wants to build a theater, a hotel, and a building to house the new sausage museum—a project that has received the backing of the city.
The Muehlhausen city council held a meeting Jan. 31 attended by representatives of the Jewish community to find a solution, Schramm said.
One idea being considered is to ensure that the new project includes some kind of memorial to the victims of the Nazis.
A spokesman for the First German Sausage Museum, currently located in Holzhausen, 37 miles south of Muehlhausen, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
