Exhibit
on Hitler's Army Challenged By PAUL GEITNER Associated Press
Writer BERLIN
(AP) -- Conceding
that mistakes were made in a controversial
exhibit linking regular soldiers in
Hitler's army to wartime
atrocities, organizers say they will
remove disputed photos from the show and
appoint experts to re-examine the
rest. The Hamburg Institute for Social
Research, which assembled the "Crimes of
the Wehrmacht" display, said several
individual photos and one photo series
challenged recently by historians were
being pulled from the 4-year-old
exhibit. Those critics also will be invited to
join the expert panel, to be formed "as
soon as possible," according to a
statement released Wednesday. The traveling photo and document
collection has been controversial since
its debut because it charges regular
German soldiers in the Wehrmacht -- not
just the Nazi SS or special commando units
-- with involvement in wartime atrocities
from 1941-1945. Neo-Nazis and
other far right groups have staged
protests against the show at almost
every stop, charging it violates the
"honor" of Hitler's regular army, the
Wehrmacht. Even some mainstream
conservative politicians have accused
the organizers of painting with too
broad a brush. But others have praised the show for
focusing attention on a subject most
Germans would prefer not to address. More
than 800,000 people have seen the show in
Germany and Austria, and an English
version is scheduled to debut in New York
City in December. The smaller English
version does not include the disputed
photos. The sensitive debate was reignited this
month in an article by a Polish historian,
Bogdan Musial, who found material
in eastern European archives showing that
several of the photos allegedly portraying
Wehrmacht crimes actually show
mass-killings of civilians by the
Soviets. Other historians then stepped forward
with additional challenges, prompting the
institute to pull the photos. In its statement, the institute
stressed that Musial, the main critic, has
said he supports the basic premise of the
exhibit: that Wehrmacht soldiers were
involved in wartime atrocities. "The crimes of the Wehrmacht are also
verified with other documents," it
noted. Spokeswoman Regine Klose-Wolf
said she could not say exactly how many
photos had been withdrawn or how many
remain. The exhibit contains more than
1,400 photos, although about half are
portraits of individuals.
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to David Irving