The German Historical Museum (DHM) has acquired the “Wolfgang Haney Collection” with tens of thousands of evidence of anti-Semitism. In 30 years of work, Holocaust contemporary witness Haney (1924-2017) had collected 15,000 objects on the history of anti-Semitism, the persecution and murder of European Jews and current forms of right-wing extremism, as the DHM announced on Monday in Berlin.
Among these “mass evidence of hatred and persecution” are postcards, posters, pamphlets, knick-knacks, coins, ration cards, photographs and films, but also remnants of Torah scrolls that were misused as wrapping paper by German soldiers during looting in Eastern Europe . Associated research projects should therefore also clarify questions of provenance, for example.
convolute Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters (CDU) emphasized that the Haney collection contains “historically unique testimonies that portray in an oppressive way National Socialist crimes against humanity and the gradual escalation of the racist terror system.” It is thus “a valuable bundle of research into anti-Semitism, which is currently challenging us again.”
The President of the German Historical Museum Foundation, Raphael Gross, said that in the course of the redesign of the permanent exhibition, it was “an important concern of the DHM to deal with the past and present of anti-Semitism in a more meaningful way than before.” The Wolfgang Haney Collection lays the foundation for this.
Haney, born in Berlin in 1924 as the son of a Jewish woman and a Catholic father, built up his collection consciously in memory of the Nazi persecution of his family. His mother worked in the Otto Weidt workshop for the blind and survived from 1943 in a hiding place in the forest. His father had to do forced labor at the Todt organization because he did not want to get a divorce. Haney himself helped Jews hide. kna
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