Germany refuses Xi Jinping's request to visit Holocaust memorial sites during tour of Europe
Beijing wanted trip to be part of Xi's itinerary this month
Germany has declined two Chinese requests to include Holocaust memorial sites in the official itinerary of President Xi Jinping, who is due to pay a state visit to Europe’s largest economy at the end of the month, a German magazine reported.
Beijing planned to make that a key theme of Xi’s trip in an effort to contrast Germany’s atonement for war crimes with Japan’s ambivalent stance.
Merkel’s government declined to include a visit to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin’s largest Holocaust memorial, in the itinerary, Der Spiegel said.
Merkel’s government also declined a Chinese request for a joint visit by Xi and Merkel to the Neue Wache, another war memorial in Berlin.
Xi was, however, welcome to visit the memorials on his own, the sources told the German magazine.
Agreeing to the Chinese request could have upset Japan, said Dr Stephen Nagy, assistant professor at the Department of Japanese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.