medica mondiale and prominent intellectuals protest exhibition:

German museum ignores subject of mass rape

Exhibition on flight, expulsion and integration sidesteps issue

Cologne, 11 April 2006. The major exhibition entitled "Flight, Expulsion, Integration" at the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn will end on Easter Monday. The show has received enormous public attention, and the exhibition staff are proud of the numerous visitors who have come. But museum officials are loathe to mention the massive criticism that has been voiced. The reason for this protest is that an important subject is missing from the exhibition, namely the historical fact that hundreds of thousands of women were raped in the closing days of World War II – on all fronts – as they fled or were expelled from their homes. Thousands of women died as a result of the violence inflicted on them. Those who did survive were severely traumatised as were their children, who were often unwilling witnesses to these terrible acts.

All of this is ignored by the museum, although it is supported by the German government and financed by considerable public spending. medica mondiale had raised protest against this scandal early on and demanded changes from museum curators.

This criticism is shared by prominent intellectuals, too, such as the psychoanalyst Margarete Mitscherlich, the physician and psychoanalyst Horst Eberhard Richter, former parliamentary president Rita Süssmuth and former federal minister of justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger. Historians and politicians such as the renowned historian Margarete Dörr have expressed their shock that such an important subject has simply been ignored. In letters of protest, they pointed out that this amounted to further discrimination for the victims, who often have been unable to talk about the horrific events they experienced.

Dr. Monika Hauser, founder and head of medica mondiale: “We have asked exhibition officials to name this crime against hundreds of thousands of women and to give this historical fact appropriate treatment in the exhibition. A year ago, during the run-up to the exhibition, we offered to provide the curators with material such as a diary in order to visualise this subject. We also offered our expertise in this field. But to no avail. A repeat offer during talks a few weeks ago also fell flat.”

According to Hauser, the strategy of the museum officials is to gloss over this issue and wait in the hope that the protest will subside. They refer to the approximately 190 short statements in the film “Lebenswege” in which people talk about their personal experience of flight and expulsion. Some reportedly mention the subject. Nevertheless, even the film fails to explicitly mention mass rape.

This subject is far too historically important to be hidden or found only by chance. Museum curator Achim Westholt in all seriousness referred to a current poster of UNHCR (the refugee organisation of the United Nations) in which sexual violence is mentioned. This, of course, in no way does justice to the historical dimensions of systematic mass rape in times of war or mass exodus.

The exhibition in Bonn is now over, and an opportunity has been missed to give serious treatment to this important subject. The exhibition will now travel to Berlin and Leipzig. Hauser: “Up until now we have made an effort not to make public our criticism in the hope that the exhibition curators will listen to reason. Unfortunately, our hopes have been disappointed. Considerable improvements must be made to the shows in Berlin and Leipzig, otherwise they will meet with considerable protest, this time in public.”

 

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