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Spielberg offers Germany the gift of history

DIRECTOR Steven Spielberg is offering Germany his visual history archive of Holocaust survivors as part of a memorial or museum in Berlin, a magazine reported.

In an interview with Stern magazine, Spielberg said it would be "wonderful if I could contribute."

His offer follows media reports that Germany's new center-left government wants to bring part of Spielberg's Shoah Visual History Foundation to Berlin, instead of building a Holocaust memorial.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's culture secretary, Michael Naumann, has refused comment on reports attributing the idea to him. He is an outspoken critic of the decade-old plan to erect a memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe in the heart of Berlin.

Our opinion

  MICHAEL Naumann, Michael Naum-- . . . Oh yes, that is the German publisher who told David Irving that his Churchill manuscript was the best he had ever read, bought it for Rowohlt Verlag, found his publishing-staff refused to publish it (for reasons which never became clear), demanded the money back, and had Mr Irving sent to prison in England for contempt of court, in the best Dr Goebbels-Nazi style. He'll make a very "cultured" minister.