A new museum dedicated to the long-silenced trauma of German civilians forced to flee eastern Europe at the end of World War II opens next week after decades of wrenching debate.
Perhaps reflecting what its founders call their delicate “balancing act,” the new institution in Berlin carries the unwieldy name of Documentation Center for Displacement, Expulsion and Reconciliation.
About 14 million Germans fled or were ejected from what is today’s Poland, Russia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Baltic states, Romania, Slovakia and the former Yugoslavia between 1944 and 1950.
Photo: AFP
Escaping the Russian army and later forced out by occupying powers and local authorities, an estimated 600,000 Germans lost their lives on the trek. Those who fled included people who had settled in Nazi-occupied territories as well as ethnic Germans who had lived for centuries as minorities.
Seventy-six years after the conflict’s end, director Gundula Bavendamm said Germany was finally ready to talk about their suffering, while still acknowledging the unparalleled guilt of the Nazis.
“We are not the only country that needed quite some time to face up to painful and difficult chapters of its own history,” she told reporters at a preview of the museum before it opens to the public on Wednesday. “Sometimes it takes several generations, and the right political constellations.”
The 65 million euro (US$78 million) museum takes pains to place the Germans’ plight firmly in the context of Adolf Hitler’s expansionist, genocidal policies.
It is located between the museum at the former Gestapo headquarters and the ruins of Anhalter railway station from which Jews were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Just opposite is a planned Exile Museum devoted to those who fled Nazi Germany.
Access to the second-floor space spotlighting the Germans’ exodus can only be gained through a darkened room covering the Holocaust.
The first-floor exhibition looks at the “universal” refugee experience, covering mass displacements in countries such as Vietnam, Myanmar, Lebanon and India after the 1947 partition.
“Hyper-nationalism is one of the prime causes of war and forced migration — they almost always go together,” curator Jochen Krueger said.
A folding bicycle used by a Syrian asylum seeker crossing from Russia into Norway in the spring of 2016 resonates particularly in Germany, where more than 1.2 million people arrived at the height of that refugee influx.
An estimated one-third of Germans have family ties to the mass exodus at the war’s end and the museum presents their often poignant heirlooms.
A haunting cross-stitch with a rhyme about kitchen tidiness hangs unfinished, a dark thread still dangling from the cloth, because the woman working on it suddenly had to run from advancing Soviet troops.
A girl’s leather pouch is marked with her address in Fraustadt, now the Polish town of Wschowa: Adolf Hitler Strasse 36, displayed in a case near a well-thumbed Hebrew dictionary.
Keys from a villa in Koenigsberg — today’s Kaliningrad — that was fled in 1945 and from a house in Aleppo, Syria, abandoned in 2015 symbolize the enduring hope of returning home one day.
“Everything you see displayed here is a miracle, because it survived the journey,” Bavendamm said.
The about 12.5 million people who made it to what would become East and West Germany, as well as Austria, often faced discrimination and hostility. Now, decades on, the museum’s library offers assistance to families hoping to retrace their ancestors’ odyssey.
An audio guide provides context in English, Polish, Czech, Russian and Arabic in addition to German.
A “Room of Stillness” allows people to sit and reflect on difficult memories.
A shroud of silence and shame long covered the suffering experienced by German civilians during and after the war.
Groups representing the expelled in the post-war period sometimes had links to the far right, and occasionally agitated against government efforts to atone for Nazi aggression.
Only after the Cold War and a long process of international reconciliation did incidents such as the devastating Allied firebombing of Dresden or the 1945 sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff ship carrying German refugees gain an airing.
The far right’s claiming of such events to underline German victimhood also complicates efforts to find the right tone to broach the subject.
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
EUROPEAN FUTURE? Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama says only he could secure EU membership, but challenges remain in dealing with corruption and a brain drain Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama seeks to win an unprecedented fourth term, pledging to finally take the country into the EU and turn it into a hot tourist destination with some help from the Trump family. The artist-turned-politician has been pitching Albania as a trendy coastal destination, which has helped to drive up tourism arrivals to a record 11 million last year. US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also joined in the rush, pledging to invest US$1.4 billion to turn a largely deserted island into a luxurious getaway. Rama is expected to win another term after yesterday’s vote. The vote would
ALLIES: Calling Putin his ‘old friend,’ Xi said Beijing stood alongside Russia ‘in the face of the international counter-current of unilateralism and hegemonic bullying’ Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday was in Moscow for a state visit ahead of the Kremlin’s grand Victory Day celebrations, as Ukraine accused Russia’s army of launching air strikes just hours into a supposed truce. More than 20 foreign leaders were in Russia to attend a vast military parade today marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, taking place three years into Russia’s offensive in Ukraine. Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and has marshaled the memory of Soviet victory against Nazi Germany to justify his campaign and rally society behind the offensive,
Myanmar’s junta chief met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the first time since seizing power, state media reported yesterday, the highest-level meeting with a key ally for the internationally sanctioned military leader. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing led a military coup in 2021, overthrowing Myanmar’s brief experiment with democracy and plunging the nation into civil war. In the four years since, his armed forces have battled dozens of ethnic armed groups and rebel militias — some with close links to China — opposed to its rule. The conflict has seen Min Aung Hlaing draw condemnation from rights groups and pursued by the
RSS