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BERLIN — Seldom has a mezuzah in Germany attracted as much attention as the one nailed this week to the door of the newly opened American Jewish Committee office here.

There was such a crowd of television journalists and photographers jostling for a good vantage point that few of the invited guests could even view Monday's dedication.

The office is the first branch in Germany of a major American Jewish advocacy organization, and the events surrounding its opening attracted more than 500 American and German government officials, businesspeople and community leaders.

Its location in the heart of Berlin symbolizes the growing importance of German Jewish affairs both within Germany and among American Jewry. Germany's rapidly growing Jewish community now numbers some 70,000.

David Harris, executive director of the AJCommittee, told reporters at the opening that the organization expects its new office to facilitate contact between Germany and American Jewry, strengthen ties between American Jews and German Jews, and monitor anti-Semitism and racism in Germany.

"Our ultimate aim in Berlin is to ensure that nothing like the Holocaust will ever happen here or anywhere else, ever again. When memory fades, it strengthens those who want to repeat history," he said.

The AJCommittee's European director, Rabbi Andrew Baker, said the Berlin branch will help the organization expand its European outreach through conferences, exchange programs, research ventures and publications. The office will also help coordinate activities in Central and Eastern Europe.

Many commentators hailed the new AJCommittee presence as the return of Jewry to Germany and to Berlin, a city whose cultural identity in the 19th and 20th centuries was heavily influenced by Jewish scholars, artists and writers.

The opening also comes at a time of renewed focus on the Holocaust because of a debate in Germany about a planned national Holocaust monument in Berlin.

Israel's ambassador to Germany, Avi Primor, called the opening "a breakthrough — something new. It represents a new spirit."

Robert Rifkind, AJCommittee president, said American Jews brought mixed emotions to the gathering in Berlin, warning that the opening of the new office did not reflect any absolution by American Jewry of German responsibility for its past.

"We close no books, we settle no accounts," he said to the mixed audience of Germans, Americans, Israelis and representatives from European Jewish communities.

"American Jews do not have the authority or the power to do that. What we can do is build a bridge to the future."

Germany's foreign minister, Klaus Kinkel, who delivered the keynote speech at Monday's dinner, emphasized Germany's responsibility for the Nazi era, promising that Germany will never forget the victims of the Holocaust.

"Indeed, the desire in Germany to remember and face up the to the past is not waning but growing in strength. Young people, especially, are demanding to know what happened," he said to guests sitting in an overfilled ballroom in the prestigious Adlon Hotel.

Kinkel made numerous deviations from his printed speech to emphasize the extent of Jewish suffering under the Nazis as well as Germany's commitment to prevent the renewed spread of racial hatred and anti-Semitism.

Despite the clear language, the message contained no new analysis of German-Jewish relations and seemed more geared for a domestic audience than for the visiting guest.

Many of the visitors also had one question after the dinner: Where was Helmut Kohl?

The German chancellor, who has often met with AJCommittee representatives during their visits to Germany, was invited but did not attend events.

He reportedly sent a message of congratulations on the office opening too late for it to be read aloud during the three days of events surrounding the inauguration.

Both German and Jewish officials attributed his absence in part to tensions surrounding the recently completed negotiations between Bonn and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which resulted in Germany's agreement to pay Jewish Holocaust survivors living in former Soviet-bloc countries.

The AJCommittee office is on Leipziger Platz, near the Brandenburg Gate, on property that was returned to the Mosse family, a prominent Jewish publishing family in prewar Germany.

A printed statement from family representative George Mosse, a professor of history in the United States, said the presence of the AJCommittee in the building on his family's property preserves a continuity in German Jewish tradition.

Before the war, he said, Jewish organizations frequently met at the site, then occupied by his grandparent's home.

Visiting AJCommittee member Martin Bresler was deeply moved by the opening. Bresler said that when he watched the mezuzah being affixed to the door of the office suite, he found himself saying involuntarily, "`Take that, Joseph Goebbels.' What he represented is gone and we are still here, and that makes me weep."