Upon taking office, Westerwelle opposed the appointment of Erika Steinbach, a German politician and member of Chancellor Merkel's party, to a board overseeing the creation of the Centre Against Expulsions, a place documenting the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe after World War II. In November 2010, together with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, he opened the Nuremberg Trials Memorial permanent exhibition in the Palace of Justice building in Nuremberg.