German remembrance provokes the Poles
Irish Times; Aug 12, 2006
GERMANY: A new exhibition threatens to sour relations between Berlin
and Warsaw, writes Derek Scally.
The bronze bell that went on display in Berlin this week last tolled
aboard the ship Wilhelm Gustloff when it was sunk by Soviet torpedoes
on the night of January 30th, 1945.
More than 9,000 people, including thousands of children, died in the
icy waters of the Baltic Sea that night in history’s worst maritime
disaster.
Compared to the sinkings of the Titanic and the Lusitania though, that
of the Wilhelm Gustloff is largely unknown, because it occurred in the
chaos of wartime and because the victims were German.
It marked the beginning of a dramatic episode in German history: the
westward march of 14 million Germans and ethnic Germans expelled from
their homes in eastern territories handed over in 1945 to the
countries who suffered the worst horrors of the Nazi regime and had
lost territory further east.
Between one and two million Germans died during the march, from hunger
and disease and at the hands of victims of Nazism out for vengeance.
However the story of the expulsion was played down in West German
history books, denied in East Germany and ignored in the West.
Now, four years after G’nter Grass published the novella Crabwalk
about the Wilhelm Gustloff, the debate about German civilian victims
of war has culminated in a new and controversial exhibition, “Enforced
Paths: Flight and Expulsion in 20th Century Europe”. The exhibition,
dubbed the end of six decades of German penance, opened in a charged
atmosphere on Thursday evening in Berlin.
At least three different Polish and German groups protested outside
and their bitter arguments showed how and why this issue above all
others still taints German-Polish relations.
Two dozen Polish protesters held their national flags in a silent
vigil outside the museum. They see the exhibition as the thin end of
the wedge, an attempt to spin history so that future generations will
view expelled Germans as another victim group of the second World War,
alongside Jews and Poles.
“You cannot put German victims in the same pot with Polish victims,”
said Krystian Kaminski, one of 20 protesters from the All Polish
Youth, a far-right youth organisation.
“These people are known revisionists. This exhibition is just the
beginning for them: if we don’t raise our voices now they will think
they can say anything they like in the future.”
Near the Polish protesters, a left-wing German group held up banners
reading “German Perpetrators are not Victims” while an extreme-right
group held up banners that read “No Statute of Limitations on
Genocide: Justice for Expelled Germans”.
Seen one way, the exhibition is a further step in Germany’s new,
unburdened exploration of its past, similar to another Berlin
exhibition exploring 2,000 years of German history or even this week’s
Der Spiegel cover story on the Holy Roman Empire.
There is a fine line though between taking a lighter approach to
Germany’s Nazi history and retelling that history by showing disregard
for the feelings of Nazi victims.
That’s the line walked by Erika Steinbach, the chairwoman of the
Federation of Expelled Germans and the driving force behind the
exhibition.
In Germany she is a Christian Democrat (CDU) backbencher little known
outside political and media circles. In Poland she is public enemy
number one.
“We would like everything that is linked to the name of Erika
Steinbach to end as quickly as possible because nothing good will come
out of it for Poland, Germany or Europe,” Polish prime minister
Jaroslaw Kaczynski said on Thursday.
He called the German expulsion “sad, even tragic”, but said it was
important to remember “who was the perpetrator and who was the
victim”.
For Ms Steinbach, Poland’s allergic reaction has become a means to the
end of reviving interest in the fate of the German expelled.
“We have to take note of [ Polish] concerns but we cannot do nothing
as a result. For us in Germany there is a need to work through our
history, in particular the expulsion that affected a quarter of the
population,” she said.
“We have to find our identity and sooner or later they will have to
realise this. I wouldn’t over value the mood in Poland. I hope it will
one day reach a moderate level where it is possible to discuss these
things calmly.”
The exhibition, privately funded by the Federation for the Expelled,
is a sober, modest affair that tells the stories of nine European
peoples who were displaced as the consequence of the idea of an
ethnically homogenous nation state.
This broad historical approach was taken to counter criticism that an
exhibition solely about the German expulsion would lack historical
context.
The exhibition frames the German expulsion as a consequence of Nazi
crimes, but some critics have suggested that juxtaposing it with the
Armenian genocide and the ethnic cleansing of Bosnians is an attempt
to achieve a moral equivalence between all mass expulsions.
Ms Steinbach is deliberately ambiguous when pressed on this point.
“Expulsions have a completely different background but there’s always
the same reason behind them: wanting to get rid of a people who are
stigmatised and then either driven away or simply killed,” she says.
The German government sees this as a no-win situation and has so far
kept its distance.
The temporary exhibition may be allowed to run beyond its October
closing date and Ms Steinbach is optimistic that it will serve as a
stepping stone to her long-standing goal of a publicly funded centre
documenting the fate of the German expelled.
If so, a new diplomatic ice age between Berlin and Warsaw lies ahead.