Berlin building for expellee exhibition has yet to be picked

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Berlin (dpa) - Germany has yet to pick a venue for a permanent exhibition on the ordeal of post-Second-World-War refugees following a surprise announcement that a federal museum's show has been selected as the official Berlin memorial.

The temporary show, "Escape, Expulsion, Integration", opened to the public Thursday in Berlin after a successful run since December in the former German capital Bonn. It is also to be shown in Leipzig.

The exhibition about German refugees was originally conceived to last just one year. By concentrating on the story of how Germany absorbed and housed 14 million ethnic German refugees after World War Two, it avoided offending Germany's neighbours.

Eastern European nations expelled the ethnic Germans in the five years after the Nazi defeat, but a legacy of bitterness has remained.

Calls for a museum to describe the sufferings of 20th century refugees have triggered friction with Poland and the Czech Republic. Critics say a memorial to Germans who were raped, dispossessed and killed may blur revulsion for the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes.

Bernd Neumann, Chancellor Angela Merkel's top cultural aide, announced Wednesday evening at the second opening of the exhibition that the temporary exhibition would not be split up when it ended, but retained as the basis for a permanent one in the capital.

The Merkel government has said it plans a memorial, but commentators had not expected the exhibition, curated by the federal history in museum in Bonn, to be awarded this role. It is on display currently in temporary space in the Berlin federal history museum.

Neumann gave no indication of how the exhibition might be enhanced in the future for its new role, nor of where it could be housed. The Berlin museum said Thursday it has no space for an additional permanent collection.

There was no immediate indication where the exhibition on refugees might be housed in future years.

Polish and other reviewers mostly praised the show when it opened in Bonn. "Escape, Expulsion, Integration" tells the personal stories of 150 Germans and how they formed an impoverished underclass in post-war Germany.

It bluntly explains how Naziism was the root cause of this and also documents how the Nazis had dispossessed non-Germans. The fate of the Germans is shown as just one episode in the 20th century's "ethnic purges".

Officials in Berlin said a permanent home in Berlin for the exhibition, which includes crude sleds from refugee treks and rags worn in the refugee camps, had yet to be found.

Germany's national federation of expellees BdV advised the show, but is seeking federal funds to build a museum of its own. BdV president Erika Steinbach welcomed the decision, but said she would not abandon her plans for a museum showing how expulsions occurred.

There has been concern in Warsaw and Prague that the Merkel government might offer funding Steinbach's proposal for a museum in Berlin run by former refugees.