New Berlin memorial honors WWII Germans who helped Jews

A new memorial center in Berlin pays tribute to the thousands of German gentiles who risked everything to save Jews from persecution by the Nazis and documents the stories of those who sometimes spent years in hiding. The Silent Heroes memorial center opens to the public today amid a new focus in recent years on the legacy of the good German - those individuals who resisted Hitler and his policies, were labeled as traitors by the Nazis and were often shunned in decades after the war. "Their accomplishments were totally forgotten, and this is an initiative to bring them back into our memory," said Johannes Tuchel, director of the German Resistance Memorial Center Foundation, which is behind the new memorial. Some 5,000 Jews were able to survive the war in hiding in Germany but it is not clear how many people were involved in helping them, Tuchel said. Research suggests that for each person in hiding, around 10 people were involved in aiding them.