#69-On Displaying Violence: First Exhibitions on the Nazi Occupation in Europe, 1945–1948. A dialogue with Agata Pietrasik and Maciej Gugala

In the years immediately following the Second World War, European societies were confronted with a difficult question: how to show and explain the violence and destruction of Nazi occupation to a public still living among its ruins. One response came through a series of exhibitions created between 1945 and 1948 across Europe, often by survivors themselves. These exhibitions documented Nazi crimes and resistance using images, objects, and personal testimonies. They were not only about remembering, but also about shaping the political and moral foundations of postwar democracy.

The current exhibition On Displaying Violence at the Deutsches Historisches Museum revisits these early attempts to represent violence and asks how exhibitions became tools for rebuilding societies.

To explore these questions, Fabien Théofilakis, historian and deputy director of the Centre Marc Bloch, welcomes two of the curators of the exhibition at the German Historical Museum:

Agata Pietrasik is an art historian and Alfred Landecker Lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin, and the curator of On Displaying Violence at the DHM.

Maciej Gugała is a research associate at the Deutsches Historisches Museum and an art historian who contributed to the exhibition’s development.

Publication references:

Maciej Gugała, “Beyond Black and White: Tracing Colours of Postwar Exhibitions”, DHM-Blog, 13 August 2025, https://www.dhm.de/blog/2025/08/13/beyond-black-and-white-tracing-colours-of-postwar-exhibitions/

·       German version: “Jenseits von Schwarz-Weiß. Die Farben von Nachkriegsausstellungen entdecken”, https://www.dhm.de/blog/2025/08/13/jenseits-von-schwarz-weiss-die-farben-von-nachkriegsausstellungen-entdecken/

Agata Pietrasik, Art in a Disrupted World: Poland, 1939-1949, First edition, New Histories of Art 2 (Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw : Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2021).

Agata Pietrasik, “Exhibiting the Holocaust at the Majdanek Concentration Camp and the Bergen-Belsen DP Camp,” The Journal of Holocaust Research 37, no. 3 (2023): 271–96.

Agata Pietrasik, “Exhibiting the Holocaust at the Majdanek Concentration Camp and the Bergen-Belsen DP Camp,” The Journal of Holocaust Research 37, no. 3 (2023): 271–96, https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2023.2210939.

Agata Pietrasik, “On Display: Miscellaneous Objects in Early Holocaust Exhibitions in Poland,” Holocaust And Genocide Studies, September 2, 2025, dcaf026, https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcaf026.

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