In 1930, Adolf Hitler established the headquarters of the National Socialist German Workers‘ Party in an upscale part of Munich. On Thursday April 30, the 70th anniversary of the city’s liberation by US troops, the same site saw the long-awaited opening of the museum on the Nazi movement’s history in and impact on the town where it was born.

Political leaders stood alongside American war veterans and Holocaust survivors to open the “Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism.” The museum’s director, Winfried Nerdinger, himself the son of a local resistance fighter, admitted that it had taken far too long for the city to open up about its toxic legacy.

“Munich had a hard time with this than all the other cities in Germany because it is also more tainted than any other city. This is where it all began,” said Nerdinger.