On Displaying Violence: First Exhibitions on the Nazi Occupation in Europe, 1945–1948

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At the height of its power, National Socialist Germany occupied almost all of Europe. Some 230 million people in what are now 27 countries lived under German occupation. How did the postwar societies process their experiences of violence and destruction resulting from the Second World War and the concurrent Nazi occupation? A previously overlooked but historically influential form of coming to terms with this desolation are the exhibitions that were organised throughout Europe immediately after the war. In times of social hardship, political instability, enduring violence, and uncertain future, they aimed to document and visualise the consequences of the Holocaust and the Nazi crimes. With “On Displaying Violence: First Exhibitions on the Nazi Occupation in Europe, 1945–1948”, the Deutsches Historisches Museum traces for the first time the history of this pan-European phenomenon, using the examples of early exhibitions in London, Paris, Warsaw, Liberec, and Bergen-Belsen. The DHM exhibition is presented in cooperation with the Documentation Centre “German Occupation of Europe in the Second World War” (ZWBE). It is the view of the project that a joint European remembrance, and thus a joint European future, depends to a great degree on the shared knowledge of the history of the German occupation.

In the early postwar period, the medium of the exhibition offered an effective response to the urgent question of how the unprecedented German atrocities could be narrated and communicated to a broader public. Starting in 1945, exhibitions on the recent past attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors in Eastern and Western Europe. They were organised by state agencies and commissions for the investigation of war crimes as well as by formal or informal groups of Holocaust survivors and associations of former political prisoners. Using photographs, films, artworks, documents, and artefacts, the exhibition organisers in the different countries told their own story of war and occupation, creating rooms for information as well as spaces for remembrance and accusation. In this way the visitors had the opportunity to understand their experiences as part of a collective history of violence, to share their knowledge and feelings, but also to look to the future. As the Cold War began to escalate in 1948, the transnational reckoning with the crimes of the Nazi occupation came to an abrupt halt. The early exhibitions themselves were largely forgotten, but they nonetheless had a lasting influence on the remembrance and commemoration of the German occupation in the respective countries.

London – Paris – Warsaw – Liberec – Bergen-Belsen

The curator Agata Pietrasik focuses on six exhibitions organised between 1945 and 1948 which illustrate the very different occupation histories in Poland, France and Czechoslovakia, the representation of wartime experience in Great Britain which remained unoccupied, and the persecution and mass murder experienced by Jewish communities some of whom found themselves interned in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp. What united these pioneering exhibitions despite their difference and diversity was their unsparing confrontation with the brutal Nazi violence, but also the immediacy and directness with which they raised public awareness of the Europe-wide dimension of the German atrocities.

The London photographic exhibition “The Horror Camps”, which opened as early as 1 May 1945 in the reading room of the Daily Express under the motto “Seeing is Believing”, showed drastic pictures from concentration camps that had been liberated shortly beforehand by the Allied forces, providing evidence of war crimes that was later used in European courts of justice. The French travelling exhibition “Crimes hitlériens” (Hitlerian Crimes), which was first shown in the Grand Palais in Paris in June 1945, was the first attempt to deal with the collaboration of the Vichy regime. At the same time, the first attempts to create a European narrative of the German occupation emerged there. In 1945, in massively destroyed Warsaw, the National Museum presented the exhibition “Warszawa oskarża” (Warsaw Accuses) focusing on the destruction of the Polish national heritage and the future reconstruction of the Polish capital. Three years later, the Jewish Historical Institute presented the first permanent exhibition on the persecution and murder of Jews in Poland under the title “Martirologye un kamf / Martyrologia i walka” (Martyrology and Struggle). While the expulsion of the German population was still ongoing, the memorial site “Památník nacistického barbarství” (Memorial to Nazi Barbarism) was inaugurated in 1946 in Liberec (Reichenberg), Czechoslovakia. In the very villa in which Nazi Gauleiter Konrad Henlein had taken up residence after it had been expropriated from the Jewish family Hersch, the organisers reconstructed central sites of Nazi crimes of violence. Finally, one of the largest exhibitions took place in 1947 in the displaced persons camp in Bergen-Belsen under the title “Undzer veg in der frayhayt” (Our Path to Freedom). Here, Jewish survivors presented their view of the catastrophe they had endured, documented the revival of Jewish life, and also showed the persistent antisemitism in postwar Germany.

Ruptures and Continuities

The DHM exhibition explores various forms and presentations with which these impressive postwar exhibitions took up the themes of violence, resistance, and perpetration, as well as the loss of cultural heritage. The art historian and curator Agata Pietrasik analyses the different visual languages of the time and compares the sources of these displays within their respective local and national context. This throws light on the interpretive narratives of the immediate wartime past and the different ideas about the future that were reflected in the early exhibitions. The DHM exhibition also examines the motivation and specific perspectives of the participants of the time, as well as the impact of these exhibitions, some of which toured extensively across Europe. This reveals not only which topics the organisers of these exhibitions presented, but also what they omitted. Thus, continuities come to the fore that shape, and occasionally cloud, the presentation of the history of German violence in Europe, including how it is remembered and commemorated to this day.

The exhibition shows around 360 objects from Germany, France, Great Britain, Israel, Poland, and the Czech Republic, including 80 original objects, on a surface area of ca. 400 square metres on the ground floor of the Pei Building. The displays include charts and guestbooks from the former exhibitions, photos of these exhibitions shown here for the first time, films, books, documents, maps, artworks, and posters. Video and audio stations document the reactions of visitors to the early exhibitions. There are also interviews with museum experts, with descendants of the original exhibit organisers, and with representatives of communities, which were underrepresented in the early exhibitions.

Accompanying the exhibition is a richly illustrated publication with 15 essays by international experts published by Ch. Links Verlag in German and English.

Start of the European accompanying programme on 13 May in London

An accompanying programme developed by the DHM and the Documentation Centre “German Occupation of Europe in the Second World War” delves further into the immediate reactions to the German occupation and Nazi rule in Europe. The European series “Facing Nazi Crimes: European Perspectives after 1945”, taking place from May to October at the respective sites of the early exhibitions, deals with the social and historical contexts: How were the exhibitions received and what consequences did they have? Six evenings will be dedicated to discussions of the background of these transnational undertakings with experts from local institutions. The series will be streamed online and subsequently accessible on the DHM website. The first event will take place on 13 May 2025 in cooperation the German Historical Institute London and the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

While the exhibition is showing in Berlin, regular tours will be conducted with experts who have explored new ways to present Nazi crimes in museums and reflected on the relation of “Displaying violence – past and present”.

Documentation Centre “Second World War and German Occupation in Europe”

Between 1939 and 1945, Germany brought disfranchisement, suffering, destruction and death to large parts of Europe. The methods of warfare and the treatment of the civilian population constituted major crimes. The Shoah and the genocide of Sinti and Roma were unique in history. In the formerly occupied areas, the violence is still felt today. To acknowledge this, the German Bundestag resolved the founding of a Documentation Centre in Berlin and entrusted the DHM with its realisation. The future centre will present the European dimension of the German occupation and provide room for commemoration. It will focus on the experience of the victims, particularly those groups that have received less attention.

Further information under: https://www.dhm.de/en/museum/about-us/project-group-for-the-documentation-centre-zwbe/

Press conference: Wednesday, 21 May 2025, 11 am, Pei Building

Press photos: Initial pictures are available in the press section of the DHM website.