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 rented land. The first burials took place in 1699. When in 1798 the Jews were again permitted to settle within the old city walls of Cologne, the cemetery was also used by this community until 1918. Until the French annexion of Cologne in 1794, following the French Revolution, no Jew was permitted to settle in Cologne. The Napoleonic Code included equality before the law, rights of individual freedom and the separation of church and state. The Government Commissioner Rudler, in his proclamation of June 21, 1798 to the inhabitants of the conquered territory announced: A few months earlier, Joseph Isaac