When the Germans were refugees: a sensitive page of history enters the museum - France 24

Berlin (AFP)

For a long time, the fate of the millions of Germans expelled from Central and Eastern Europe at the end of World War II was controversial.

A museum opens in Berlin to tell their story and reconcile memories.

"How to represent the forced migrations experienced by Germans, without leaving any doubt as to our guilt in the genocide of the Jews?", Summarizes Gundula Bavendamm, director of the new institution, to describe the challenge taken up by her team.

The "Foundation for Exile, Expulsion and Reconciliation" tackles a delicate chapter in German history: the expulsions of minorities of German origin living on the territories returned to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the USSR or Romania, after the defeat of the Nazi Reich in 1945.

The history and the sufferings of these populations were initially obscured by the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, which forbade considering the Germans as victims.

"It sometimes takes several generations, and the right political constellations" to look at the past, Ms. Bavendamm observed during a press visit ahead of the museum's scheduled opening to the public on Wednesday.

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- Cart and blanket -

In its quest for a balanced narrative, the exhibition places these expulsions in the context of the expansionist logic of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and considers them in a global context.

The Foundation, in central Berlin, is located between the museum of the former Gestapo headquarters and the ruins of the Anhalter station, from where the Jews were sent to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt, in the Czech Republic. .

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Access to the space on the second floor, dedicated to the exodus of the Germans, can only be done through a dark room dedicated to the Holocaust.

Then come the intimate testimonies: the visitor discovers the cart used by the Ferger family to flee the territory of present-day Serbia, an unfinished embroidery or even a blanket, so many objects abandoned during these hasty departures.

A young girl's leather pouch shows her address in the city of Fraustadt - now Wschowa in Poland: Adolf Hitler Strasse 36.

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"We did not want to make an inventory but to know the history of each object, the fate of each family", explains Gundula Bavendamm.

Audio testimonies of evicted families or their descendants accompany almost each piece presented.

The number of these displaced is estimated between 12 and 14 million.

Many belonged to German-speaking communities settled in eastern Europe, between the Danube and the Volga, since the 13th century.

Some members of these minorities supported the invading Nazi forces, fueling the enmity of other populations, used to justify postwar expulsions.

From the winter of 1944-45, they were thrown onto the roads to escape the advancing Soviet troops.

This massive population transfer continued systematically after the armistice agreements, until 1950.

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At least 600,000 people lost their lives during these migrations.

- "School of ambivalence" -

On their arrival in a bloodless Germany, many were received with suspicion or even hostility.

At the same time, the groups representing the expelled Germans sometimes had links with the extreme right.

"This museum is the school of ambivalence", sums up its director, recalling that "in Germany, the commemoration of the mass expulsions (...) has long been marred by historical revisionism",

Thus, the former president of the Federation of German Expellees, Erika Steinbach, left Angela Merkel's conservative CDU party in 2017, moving closer to the far-right AfD formation.

She is one of the personalities behind the creation of the museum.

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"Even if it must be recognized that without it, this museum would never have seen the light of day, we no longer have anything to do with it", assures the current director.

The design of the permanent exhibition was not easy, giving rise to dissension among the experts associated with the project, sometimes until the resignation of some of them.

According to the magazine Der Spiegel, the institution hopes "to fill a last gap in German memory".

To anchor itself in a universal narrative, the museum devotes a floor to the history of forced population displacements across the world and over time: from the Armenian genocide to the war in Syria, including the Vietnamese "boat people".

© 2021 AFP