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 area of the Cologne Rathaus in 1953 two fully conserved tombstones were found on the northwest corner of the building in a large bomb crater. They probably came from the Jewish cemetery of Judenbüchel and were used as building material. The inscription of the tombstone of Rachel said: The few Jews who remained in the city, began to re-establish a community in right-Rhenish Deutz, whose rabbi called himself later "Country Rabbi of Cologne" ("Landesrabbiner"). Rabbi Vives was known by this title during the mid-15th century. In 1634, there were 17 Jews in Deutz, in 1659 there were 24 houses inhabited