“Seeing is believing?” – Dialogical thematic tour for students “On Displaying Violence: The First Exhibitions on the Nazi Occupation in Europe, 1945-1948”

How did the public remembrance of the Holocaust and National Socialist war crimes in Europe begin? Which images left their mark on the collective memory of the participants? What role did the first exhibitions play in coming to terms with the crimes and the remembrance of the victims? And what impressions do these stagings make on us today? Between 1945 and 1948, exhibitions were organised in London, Paris, Warsaw, Liberec and Bergen-Belsen which reported on the atrocities by means of photographs, films, artworks and historical objects.

A clock and a small Madonna figure attest to the massacre in Oradour-sur-Glane, while original newspaper articles and notations in visitor books of the early exhibitions document the debates in the societies of the time. Sequences from documentary films give an impression of those exhibitions and the often distressful reactions of the visitors. The DHM presentation also shows why it was not possible to display a Jewish amulet for babies in the Bergen-Belsen exhibition, or which objects about Jewish resistance fighters were presented. More than 280 original objects and reproductions document the conceptions of these early European exhibitions and illustrate the tragic history of the victims by means of evidence left by the perpetrators and by personal belongings. The tour opens new research perspectives in dialogue with the guides and takes up individual priorities and interests of the students.

90 minutes

Languages: English, French, Spanish, German (further lanuages on request)