German Jewish leaders have expressed anger over plans by one of the main protagonists of Berlin's new Holocaust memorial to place a tooth taken from a Shoah victim at the site. "I am not only surprised but also appalled," Paul Spiegel, president of Germany's Central Council of Jews, told the newspaper "Tagesspiegel". Lea Rosh, who has been a driving force to build the memorial since the 1980s, had announced earlier that she would place the molar and a Yellow Star of David inside one of the monument's 2,711 concrete pillars. Spiegel called this plan "irreverent" to the victims. The chairman of Berlin's Jewish community, Albert Meyer, also expressed fury and warned of a possible Jewish boycott of the memorial. "If this happens we Jews will have to consider whether we can even set foot in this place," said Meyer. Rosh defended her decision, insisting that she planned to go ahead with her plan. "We have to learn to deal with our history," she said, stressing that she had received approval by the memorial's designer, Peter Eisenman, who is Jewish.