In October 2020, the Bundestag asked the federal government to create a documentation center on the Nazi occupation in Europe. Experts from the German Historical Museum (DHM) want to present a concept for this at the end of 2021. The Swiss historian Raphael Gross headed the London Leo Baeck Institute and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main. In 2017 he became President of the DHM. Here he describes his ideas for the planned documentation center.
SZ: Mr. Gross, as a Swiss you manage the German Historical Museum with an outside view. What does the documentation center you are planning on the Nazi occupation in Europe mean? for Europe?
Raphael Gross: Germany is, even if it does not force it, something of a hegemonic power in Europe, simply because of its economic strength. This is even more true after Brexit than before. And at the same time, what 230 million people suffered under German occupation between 1939 and 1945 – and in some cases even before that – is still painfully relevant today. This is especially true, but not only, for the descendants of these people in the Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Belarus or the Netherlands; it applies to Jews, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, forced laborers and others. Or take Greece: when Germany demanded more discipline during the financial crisis, many Greeks remembered hundreds of thousands of victims of the German occupation regime. If Germany now prominently documents in the federal capital that it stands by its past as a hegemonic power, it will gain further trust.
At the same time as your project, the Bundestag decided on a Poland memorial, which other nations such as Ukraine are angry about. Do they get satisfaction from you, will you show “German occupation in Ukraine and their victims” in one room and “German occupation in Greece and their victims” in another?
No. Today we are talking about 27 states affected by German occupation and about many more communities and groups. If we were to approach this nationally and try to depict each state or group against the background of the suffering suffered, there would never be a solution that did not lead to even more explosive conflicts. The Ukraine, Poland, Russia and Belarus, to name just four countries, would find it difficult to come to an agreement the way things are today and say: Yes, we agree with how you solved it. We don’t want an enumerating exhibition, through which representatives of a country or a group run with a folding rule and then say: What? We didn’t get more? We had a lot more deaths than … And what would you learn from that?
What does your alternative look like?
We want to describe topics and complexes of offenses: for example, forced labor. Hunger. Hostage shootings, mass shootings. Gassing – first in cars, then in gas chambers. What did euthanasia mean at that time? Why was it carried out, by whom, what did these people do before and after? When we show, for example, that the doctors who were involved in euthanasia before 1933 were later also present during the gassing in the occupied territories, we have also provided information for the German public. This also applies to the subject of resistance. Many of these topics are completely unknown to non-specialists. And I am sure that we will still find something new for specialists.
For example?
Take our current exhibition about the Documenta. Carlo Gentile, specialist in Wehrmacht crimes in Italy, found out that Werner Haftmann, the intellectual head of Documenta 1, 2 and 3, was wanted as a war criminal in Bologna in 1946.
So do you want to go beyond the pure war and occupation?
That makes sense, if not for the permanent exhibition. But later we could describe how the German crimes were punished in the two German states after 1945, or rather: how 99 percent of them were not punished. In later temporary exhibitions we could also look at dynamic memory. Like how the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was later seen in Poland, the GDR and the Federal Republic. This story can be traced from 1945, 1968, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the present day. And we would have – or endure – the relevant debates.
Let me go back to the national dimension. Do you want to hide them completely?
Of course not – but we want to embed them thematically. Perhaps we will show statistics that make it clear which terrorist instrument was used to what extent in Norway, such as in the former Yugoslavia and Romania, in Belarus or in what is now Russia. And of course we seek input from all over Europe. We hold talks with 150 interest groups or representatives of victim groups from all over Europe and ask them about their wishes or perspectives. My colleague, the historian Raphael Utz, has just met an old Jewish lady from Belgium who was hidden as a child and thus survived. The exhibition will have a European dimension, from the Channel Islands to Odessa.
In Gdansk, the founding director of the Museum of the Second World War also involved renowned foreign historians such as Timothy Snyder and Norman Davies in the planning. They also?
I am supported by a working group made up of the heads of important German memorial sites, and of course we also discuss things with a global scientific community. We have another working group with twelve historians from Russia and Ukraine, Norway, Poland, France and so on. They are historians, not representatives of their countries, who always have to threaten to resign if a formulation does not suit them …
… as was the case with the planning of the documentation center “Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation”. But isn’t your project also political, since it was appointed by the Federal Chancellery?
The client is initially the Bundestag, which we owe the initiative for this institution. Our mandate is of course political, but not our project. The historians in our working group, for example, were not appointed by the federal government or their respective countries, but by us.
What will happen after you have handed over your concept at the end of the year? When does the documentation center open?
Always slowly, our concept is just a midwifery study for the establishment of an institution that does not yet exist. It takes at least five years to draft the script for a permanent exhibition of this size. The real work can only begin when the new Bundestag has decided: Yes, we’ll do it – and make money available for it.
The working group for the Poland memorial demands that fast implementation be lashed down in the upcoming coalition agreement. They also?
Yes. Our project can be one of the most important in Europe and should be a priority.
But then it becomes a highly political project. Do you feel no political expectations from the documentation center?
Indeed. We have been to various political hearings. Many politicians and members of the Bundestag are always asked about this or that event from the time of the Second World War abroad and have the feeling: Now we are doing it and are giving all these countries to understand that we are committed to what we did between 1939 and 1945 have done with them. And they expect a kind of conclusion from us, from the coming institution. But we don’t want that right now; we always want to present new knowledge, also with research and ever new temporary exhibitions, and thus signal to the Europeans concerned that this mighty Germany is not putting an end to memory, but is creating a lively institution.