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Background: These are the ruins of the Berlin Central Synagogue, burnt out then, and it is on this site that the new centre is to be built. The synagogue dated from 1912 and the kaiser had been one of its benefactors.

Many of Berlin's Jewish community - they number only about five thousand five hundred now - were at yesterday's company. Jewish leaders and government and city representatives were among the speakers.

A scroll and a bag of soil that had been sent from Israel were then placed under the foundation stone. Much of the money for the new centre has come from West Berlin's city authorities, and the scroll says: "It is our hope that this building and the spirit in which it was erected will help to dissolve the shadows of the past".

Nineteen years ago to the day almost the Nazi brownshirts destroyed a hundred and seventy synagogues all over Germany.