June 26, 1999
Web posted at: 1:38 a.m. EDT (0538 GMT)

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- A prominent U.S. rabbi says Germany should build a Holocaust museum to teach German youth about what happened during that period in history.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said he approves the German parliament's plan to build a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, but he said it should also build a museum to teach German youth what happened.

"That they are going ahead with the memorial is a good thing but I don't think that perpetuates the memory of the Holocaust in the country where it happened," Hier said.

"There are Holocaust museums in the United States and Israel and Germany needs one to basically educate tens of thousands of young people to change their way of thinking," he added.

The German parliament on Friday backed a U.S. design for a central monument in Berlin to the Holocaust's six million Jewish victims, signaling an end to 10 years of argument.

Jewish groups said they welcomed parliament's backing of a design by U.S. architect Peter Eisenman that envisages a maze the size of four soccer fields filled with 2,600 pillars and giving the impression of a huge graveyard.

Bundestag members also voted by 314 to 209 to incorporate a proposal by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government that the monument, to be sited near the Brandenburg Gate, be supplemented with a documentation center.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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