The former Neue Wache on Unter den Linden has become the central memorial site in Germany for the victims of war and tyranny. The interior, which has been reconstructed (1993) as it was in 1931, contains an enlarged replica of the sculpture “Mother with dead son” by Käthe Kollwitz. The international documentation and encounter centre “Topografie des Terrors” is situated where the main institutions of the National Socialist tyranny were (such as the Gestapo and the state security service [Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst der SS]). The exhibition shows numerous documents and pictures which provide information on the terror system of the National Socialists. A new documentation centre is being built which will replace the present provisional site.

The memorial and educational site “House of the Wannsee Conference” is in its historical location. In the villa on the Grosser Wannsee a discussion was held in January 1942 between Reinhard Heydrich, head of the security police and security service, with top civil servants about how to organise the “Final solution of the Jewish question” in Europe. A memorial to the six million murdered Jews of Europe will be built on an area of two hectares in the former ministry gardens on Ebertstrasse and Behrensstrasse – after a parliamentary decision in June 1999 which was preceded by eleven years of debate. A majority of the members of the Bundestag voted for the design by the American architect Peter Eisenman which envisages a forest of about 2,500 concrete pillars.

The memorial site to the German resistance, with its court of honour in the historical part of the former high army command in Stauffenbergstrasse, documents the resistance to National Socialism in all its breadth and variety. This was the central point of the attempted revolt of 20th July 1944. The Plötzensee memorial to the victims of National Socialism in Germany and abroad is a site of silent commemoration. Here, in the former execution site of Plötzensee prison, about 3000 people condemned to death by National Socialist jurisdiction were executed between 1933 and 1945, including numerous resistance fighters. In Bernauer Strasse, the Berlin Wall Memorial Site was opened in August 1998. This memorial site is supplemented by a documentation centre and a viewing platform. The Normannenstrasse research and memorial site is situated in the premises of the former Ministry of State Security (STASI) and provides information about its activities, the political system, resistance and opposition in the GDR.