MUNICH (EJP)---The southern German city of Munich inaugurated a new Jewish museum on Thursday, almost 70 years since the Nazis’ crackdown on Jews. Was taken to a new level in the city.

The museum is part of a new 71 million euros Jewish complex which also includes a synagogue, school and community centre opened last November on the Jakobsplatz in the city’s centre.

The opening ceremony took place not at the museum but at the Old City Hall where Joseph Goebbels gave the order on November 9, 1938, for Nazi thugs to rampage through Germany torching synagogues, looting businesses and killing Jews in what became known as ‘Kristallnacht’, or Night of Broken Glass.

"Munich can once again be seen as a centre of Jewish life, the practising of the Jewish religion, culture, tradition and a Jewish future," Munich mayor Christian Ude said.

He said it was a "godsend" that, given its past, the Jewish community in Germany had chosen Munich as the site of the centre.

The site of the synagogue was the target of a foiled plot by neo-Nazis to bomb a ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone in 2003.

Modern Jewish art

The museum will exhibit modern Jewish art and concentrates on contemporary Jewish life.

"We want to go against the usual flow of portraying Jewish life in historical terms, often with the Holocaust as the main factor," said Bernhard Purin, the Austrian-born director of the museum.

The three-storey, 900-square-metre museum, is much smaller than Berlin’s huge, modern Jewish Museum, but comparable in size to the Jewish museums in Frankfurt and Vienna.

While models of five former Munich synagogues are on display, a city official said Thursday the focus was on the "Jewish way of art."

Much of the space has been reserved for one-off exhibitions, with the first year devoted to the fruits of Jewish art collecting.

"One topic will of course be the confiscation of such art by the Nazis," Purin said.

A person walks past the new synagogue in Munich that is reflected in the glass facade of the southern city's new Jewish Museum, 21 March 2007. The museum opened its doors for the public on Thursday.

Priceless Jewish manuscripts kept in the pre-1919 Bavarian royal art collection will also be displayed.

Next year, contemporary Jewish artists will be exhibited at the museum.

The city of Munich paid the 14.5 million euros bill to build the museum and its running costs.

An organisational blunder slightly soured the opening, with museum staff inviting Charlotte Knobloch, head of the Munich Jewish community and president of the German Council of Jews, to the opening ceremony, but not to speak at a news conference the previous day.

Knobloch who campaigned for years for the museum and for public financing, declared:"This is absolutely inexcusable."

Ude, who apologized, said there had been a misunderstanding among the staff.

The museum, going back to an idea which Munich Jews first discussed in 1928, completes the redevelopment of Munich’s Jewish facilities, with the new site replacing synagogues built after WWII.