An attempt to historicize a debate: DHM President Raphael Gross on the exhibition “Controversial Kinship. Colonial and National Socialist Violence”

Controversial Kinship

An attempt to historicize a debate: DHM President Raphael Gross on the exhibition “Controversial Kinship. Colonial and National Socialist Violence”

2 October 2026 Editors, Raphael Gross 6 Min.

What do colonial and Nazi violence have in common? How do they differ? And why has the question of a possible connection between the two remained controversial to this day? Since the 1930s, questions such as these have been debated by anti-colonial thinkers, journalists, politicians, historians, and Holocaust survivors. The exhibition "Controversial Kinship: Colonial and National Socialist Violence", opening on 16 October 2026, examines a historical comparison that has been debated for nearly a century and extends far beyond the discipline of history. As the first exhibition in the world devoted to this subject, "Controversial Kinship" traces the debate over similarities, differences, and equivalence back to its historical origins. The exhibition also examines the problems and limitations of comparisons.

In the video interview, DHM President Raphael Gross talks about the idea behind the exhibition and the attempt to historicize the debate in order to strengthen historical judgment:

“The exhibition ‘Controversial Kinship. Colonial and National Socialist Violence’ grew out of an unease on my part with a debate that has been conducted worldwide for at least the last ten years, over this comparison between National Socialism and colonialism. My wish was – and I want to say this clearly – initially just to historicize this debate. Not necessarily to take a position on it, but to show: it has existed since the 1930s, continuing through the postwar period right up to the present. And our attempt now is to illuminate this debate historically, to show it, and also, using empirical methods, to show where these debates are polemical, imprecise and vague. And where do they actually have value as knowledge?”