WEBVTT

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My name is Peter Hallamma,
I’m a historian at the University

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of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
in France

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and I work on contemporary European
and East Central European history.

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Today we are at the

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German Historical Museum,
in the exhibition “On Displaying Violence.”

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It focuses on early historical

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exhibitions right after 1945
about the Nazi occupation of Europe.

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One of the sections here in this exhibition
at the German Historical Museum

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is dedicated to the exhibition
at the Grand Palais in Paris.

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“Crimes hitlériens” —
Hitler’s crimes.

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One of the highlights of that exhibition
were the so-called dioramas.

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It was a corridor — the curator
Jacques Billier called it

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“the path of suffering
of a patriot” —

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visitors would walk down
a rather dark passage,

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where several scenes were
rebuilt, reconstructed,

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partly using authentic objects,

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especially authentic pieces
from the Natzweiler-Struthof camp,

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the only concentration camp
on French soil.

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And these three-dimensional reconstructions,

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again partly made with authentic objects,

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have really become part of today’s
iconographic memory

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of the Second World War,
deportation, and the Holocaust.

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One remarkable aspect

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of the exhibition “Crimes hitlériens”
is its European dimension.

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And this becomes clear immediately
when visitors enter the exhibition.

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The very first room they step into
is a large hall with

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an oversized, giant map of Europe.

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On this map, the occupied territories
of Europe were shaded in gray.

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But why have such exhibitions at all?

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In Paris, two aspects were
particularly important.

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One was the legal reckoning
with Nazi crimes.

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The other was the effort to reunite
nations after the Second World War.

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In September 1946

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the “Monument to Nazi Barbarism”
was opened in Czechoslovakia.

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The chosen location was Liberec.

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Why Liberec?

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Liberec, known in German as Reichenberg,
was part of the so-called Sudeten territories.

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This exhibition therefore dealt
on the one hand with the depiction

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of Nazi crimes committed against
Czechs and Czechoslovakia.

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But it also reflected the perspective of

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the conflict between Czechs
and Sudeten Germans.

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The main purpose was to show
how the German minority in Czechoslovakia

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had betrayed the Czechoslovak state.

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And that interpretation made sense

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if we consider the historical context.

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In 1946, the expulsion of Germans
from Czechoslovakia was still ongoing.

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As in other exhibitions,
the Holocaust and Jewish victims

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were almost completely marginalized
at the Monument to Nazi Barbarism in Liberec.

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This is already evident
from the site itself.

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The so-called Henlein Villa
had actually belonged before 1938

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to a Jewish family,
the Hersch family,

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who emigrated before
the Munich Agreement of 1938.

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The villa was then “Aryanized,”
that is, confiscated.

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And this fact was completely ignored,
never mentioned in the museum.

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The second example is the focus on,
the representation of Theresienstadt.

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Reconstructions from Theresienstadt
played an important role in this monument.

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But only one part of Theresienstadt
was represented here — the Small Fortress,

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the former Gestapo prison.

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The Theresienstadt ghetto, however,
where far more

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people were imprisoned —
140,000 Jewish men and women —

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was completely ignored,
not addressed at all in the Liberec exhibition.