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High-ranking officials of Germany's Lutheran church have inaugurated a memorial for the so-called "dejudification institute" that was founded 80 years ago to eliminate all Jewish influence from Christian life in the country then run by the Nazis.

Lutheran Bishop Ilse Junkermann unveiled the memorial Monday in the eastern German town of Eisenach in conjunction with several members of state Lutheran churches from across Germany whose predecessor organizations founded the institute in 1939.

The institute had aimed to delete all positive references about Jews in the bible and to push out Jewish converts from the church.

The memorial, a two-meter-tall (yard) metal board, shares information on the dejudification institute.

One inscription says the institute's employees had sought to justify "the persecution and million-fold murder of Jewish citizens."