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Exhibit explores how Hitler taught a nation to hate

15 October 2010 22:32 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Playing cards with images of Hitler, APA reports quoting CNN.
Toy fuhrers. And a lamp and church tapestry with swastikas emblazoned across the front.
No, it’s not a neo-Nazi convention. Rather, it is a groundbreaking exhibit that opened Friday in the heart of the German capital that is intended to show Adolf Hitler’s relationship with the German people.
Germany has produced exhibits on the Holocaust and Nazism before but never since World War II has such a large show focused on the man who taught an entire nation to hate.
"Hitler and the Germans" is not about the fascist dictator’s memorabilia, not about the man himself, said curator Hans-Ulrech Thamer. It’s not about textbook history or scholarly writings.
The everyday objects on display show how Hitler won the heart of the German people.
Everyone can read a book, but "objects have another quality," Thamer said.
There are rows and rows of magazine covers carrying the face of Hitler as well as enormous metal busts carved for industrial mantle pieces. And propaganda signs, welfare collection boxes, photographs, film footage promoting a visionary leader of the fatherland.
Thamer hopes viewers -- many of whom are sure to be Germans who who no longer have direct memories of their nation’s ugly history -- will look inside themselves as they cast their eyes on ordinary things that back then, served a very extraordinary purpose.
More than 1,000 people streamed into the museum on opening day, Thamer said.
Swastikas are banned in Germany but Thamer said museums have special permission to display them for historical purposes. Still, organizers of the show agonized over possible repercussions: inciting new-Nazi extremists and infuriating the rest of the world.
A new study published this week in the German magazine Der Spiegel revealed far-right thoughts are common in Germany today. One-third of Germans said they would send foreigners home if there were not enough jobs to go around. One-sixth of Germans said Jews have too much influence.
"Yes, we have had some objections," Thamer said. "One of the fears discussed in the newspapers is that this might promote extreme groups. But I am not sure they enter museums."