Sept. 7


GERMANY:

New Museum Strives To Deal With Holocaust


More than any of its contents, perhaps, it is the building itself of the
German Historical Museum that best narrates Germanys tumultuous history.

Built in glorious Baroque fashion in 1730, the building, named the
Zeughaus, or armory, served precisely that purpose for more than a
century. It is from here, then, that weapons were dispatched for the
Napoleonic wars, to continental skirmishes and local uprisings. Converted
into a military museum by Emperor Wilhelm I in 1880, it was one of Hitlers
favorite monuments; Nazi parades, commemorations and ceremonies were held
in the buildings courtyard until 1944. Severely damaged by the Allies
bombs in 1945, the building was once again reconstructed as a museum after
the war, reopening in 1952 under the management of East Germany's Socialist
Unity Party, who turned it into a museum for interpreting history from a
Marxist-Leninist perspective.

Last month, following more than two decades of curatorial work, the museum
was reopened once again, this time as an expansive effort to shed light on
Germanys history, from the first century to the present. Displaying more
than 8,000 objects - from Roman-period coins to a Trabant, the notorious
inexpensive East German car - the museum offers an integrated approach to
history, allowing visitors to look at periodic artifacts before luring
them away to computer screens or texts that provide detailed information,
accompanied by multimedia, about each specific subject.

And while the museum's second floor, where the permanent exhibition begins,
covers nearly two millennia of war, peace and progress, the first floor is
dedicated to the 80 or so years between 1921 and the present.

The discrepancy between distant and near past, said Dr. Rudolf Trabold,
the museums chief press officer, is partly a matter of convenience. "It is
like a tree," he said, "you see the nearest branches first. There are also
more artifacts from that period, and people are more interested in it."

But ultimately, he said, it was the momentousness of the decade between
1933 and 1945 that convinced the museums heads to award it so much space.

"We had a very hard time when it came to how to represent the Holocaust,"
said Trabold. Some officials, he said, suggested that the museum not sway
from its regular course, and deal with the genocide of the Jews by
presenting artifacts accompanied by text and interpretation. Others,
however, thought the straightforward approach would fail to capture the
enormity of the massacre.

"How can you explain to someone what six million people means?" asked
Trabold. "How can you even explain six thousand? Some people, therefore,
thought that the best way would be to have a dark, black room with nothing
in it."

This metaphorical approach, he added, was struck down as well, deemed too
simplistic. Finally, the museum obtained one of Mieczyslaw Stobierskis
models of Auschwitz (the others are in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.), making it
the center piece of an extensive collection of documents, photographs,
objects and texts pertaining to this darkest of periods. Here, for
example, one can see Nazi propaganda films and candid snapshots from
Jewish ghettos as well as concrete artifacts such as Adolf Hitlers desk or
the giant globe at the center of the most memorable scene of Charlie
Chaplin's "The Great Dictator."

"Notice how even the color of the wall changes," said Trabold. "We move
from the light yellow of the 18th and 19th centuries to the lifeless gray of
1933 onwards."

The story of the Jews in Germany, however, does not, of course, begin in
1933, nor does it end in 1945. The museum acknowledges this. Throughout
the timeline of the main exhibition are strewn occasional references to
the countrys Jews: Here they are in the 14th century, falsely accused of
poisoning the wells during the Black Plague, and there again four hundred
years later, when, following Moses Mendelssohn, they marched into
emancipation.

To render the experience more personal, the museums ample interactive
monitors allow visitors to follow the fate of the Chotzen family, a
prominent Jewish family from Berlin, from 1914 to 2004. Here, family
photographs and mementos are presented side by side with a historical
timeline, rendering the Chotzen's tragedy a kaleidoscope through which to
observe the history of both Germany and its Jewish citizens.

But most fascinating, perhaps, are the references to the Holocaust after
the war. In a section titled "Schuld Der Vater," or guilt of the fathers,
a text on the wall reads: "Shortly before the [Frankfurt Auschwitz trials
of 1963] began, an opinion poll indicated that 54 percent of those asked
wanted to consider the thing finished and not to bother the perpetrators
anymore for such a long time. The trial, lasting over 20 months, changed
public opinion." Similarly, the exhibit includes a lengthy discussion of
"Holocaust," the 1978 American television mini-series that helped spark a
major discussion of the topic among third-generation Germans, as well as
Chancellor Richard von Weizsackers historic 1985 speech, the first
official call by a government official to commemorate the Holocaust's
victims.

It is such candor and thoroughness that make the museum particularly
appealing to the Jewish visitor. And while the Holocaust-related artifacts
are, for the most parts, not different than what one would find in any
Holocaust museum around the world, here they are presented not in the
stand-alone context of the persecution and extermination of Jews, but
rather as a strand woven into the larger quilt of German history.

This allows the visitor a rare opportunity to study both the deepest roots
of the Jewish catastrophe - ancient anti-Semitism, for example, as well as
the abysmal conditions of post-World War I Germany - and its aftermath.
Put together, the exhibition tells a complex story, one with many bleak
passages but also plenty of hope, the hope that comes from historical
study, analysis and introspection.

"That's the wonderful thing about this museum, said Trabold. Here, one and
one never equals two."

The German Historical Museum (Deutsches Historisches Museum) is located at
Unter Den Linden 2, Berlin, +49 - (0)30 - 20304 444.

(source: The Jewish Week)