The exhibition “Postscriptum. Ostarbeiters in the Third Reich” was opened in the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst against the background of the trial on the liquidation of the International Memorial in Russia – again, without changes, a year later. The exhibition is based on archival materials from Memorial and tells about the fate of forced laborers during and after World War II. The DW correspondent spoke with the museum’s management about why they chose this form of public support and how they reacted to it in Russia.
Museum director on the case against Memorial: “It is unlikely that the authorities will stop at this”
“The situation is desperate. I think everything is going to close the Memorial,” said museum director Jörg Morré in an interview with DW. “Considering what is happening with the laws in Russia, the authorities are unlikely to stop there. Of course, this is not our business. But Memorial is our good partner and we, as a museum, feel that we are losing it. First of all, we are afraid for the people who work there. Secondly, for the preservation of the archives. “
The museum director’s decision to publicly support Memorial coincided with the annual meeting of members of the Verein Museum Berlin-Karlshorst eV. It includes, among others, Russian partners: the State Historical Museum, the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War, representatives of the ministries of defense, foreign affairs and culture. “Important officials, everything is very formal. And I announced to them that we are reopening the exhibition and we are doing this deliberately to support Memorial. The answer is a poker face. Silence. You know, this is the Soviet way of not saying anything. Nobody objected, and I regarded it as agreement, “explained Morre.
When asked why the Russian authorities want to close Memorial, the museum responds unequivocally: to thwart any attempts to look at Soviet history alternatively. “It is very symbolic that last year Vladimir Putin wrote an article about the reasons and lessons of World War II. He clearly wanted to show that he is the person who will now tell us about history. There is only one storyteller. Nobody else has the right to publish. So it doesn’t matter what other materials Memorial would publish in the future, it’s a matter of principle, ”says Jörg Morre.
Sample oral history: what the Memorial exhibition is about
The exhibition “Postscriptum. Ostarbeiters in the Third Reich” is clearly visible from the window of the hall, where on the night of May 8-9, 1945, the act of unconditional surrender of Germany was signed. It is located outdoors, in the garden behind the main building, between a piece of the Berlin Wall and a Soviet tank. The exhibition is traveling: it was first shown in Moscow in 2018, and then in St. Petersburg, Novgorod, Pskov and Kostroma. In Karlshorst, she “landed” in 2020, after which she went to another Berlin museum and to Dortmund.
Almost 20 vinyl stands in German tell about several episodes in the life of Ostarbeiters – from the hijacking and assignment to work in Germany to returning to the USSR. With photographs, letters to relatives, postcards and memories. They have been collected in “Memorial” since 1990, now there are more than 320 thousand documents in the archive. At the same time, the exhibition curators Nikita Lomakin and Evelina Rudenko did their best to prevent visitors from drowning in archival materials. The focus is on a personal story, a person and his fate: who these people worked, what conditions they lived in, how they tried to return home and kept in touch with relatives, how they died from bombings, disease and hunger. And, finally, how their relations with the Germans evolved.
“Postscriptum”, in fact, shows the basic principle of the “Memorial” – work with the so-called oral history, when historians talk with ordinary people, and they, in turn, send or transmit them diaries, documents, their memories. Due to the liquidation of Memorial, this very format of work, as the director of the museum, Jörg Morre, fears, may be terminated in Russia for future researchers.
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