NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne The NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne () was founded by a resolution passed by the Cologne city council on December 13, 1979 and has become the largest regional memorial site in all of Germany for the victims of the Nazis. Since 1988, it has been housed in "EL-DE Haus," the EL-DE building, named for the initials of its owner, Catholic businessman Leopold Dahmen. This building was the headquarters of the Cologne Gestapo (secret police) between December 1935 and March 1945. In the final months of the war, several hundred
History of the Jews in Cologne Bonn to Cologne. He belonged to the families who built the first Cologne community of Modern Times. Oppenheim, Jr. traded with cotton, linen, oil, wine and tobacco but his main activity was banking. Already in 1810 his bank was the second largest in Cologne after "Abraham Schaffhausen". Within the new Cologne Jewish community, Oppenheim, Jr. took an outstanding position in the social and political life. He was in charge of the community school but he was also the deputy of the Cologne community, who sent him to the congress of Jewish Notables in Paris in 1806–1807. A modest hall of