A German sausage museum has apparently canceled plans to move to the site of a former Nazi camp for slave laborers after news of the plan caused anger.
The German Bratwurst Museum was to move from Holzhausen to an area in the town of Muehlhausen that was once a satellite site for the Buchenwald concentration camp. The museum announced on Wednesday that it would be moving to the site, complete with a cannon with a giant sausage in place of its barrel.
Hours later, it turned out that the same site had been a satellite of the Buchenwald concentration camp during WWII, and included a munitions factory that used forced labor. Most of those who were interned there were Jewish women from Poland and Hungary.
“Of course we are upset about it,” said Reinhard Schramm, who leads a Jewish community group in the state of Thuringia. Thomas Mäuser, the deputy director of the museum, said on Friday: “We were totally bowled over. I understand the reaction, but we had no idea.”
Uwe Keith, the head of the association that operates the museum, was quoted late Friday as telling Bild newspaper that “we definitely won’t build there.” He told news agency dpa the group will launch a “complete re-evaluation” of the plan.