Whitewashing History: RNC Organizers ask St. Paul History Museum to remove Nazi Banner

for immediate release:

contact MichaelLuickThrams@yahoo.com or 651.373.9673



World War II was the “good war”—and we gave Hitler a sound beating, right? Why, then, do Republic National Convention organizers feel uncomfortable with visible aspects of telling that story?

TRACES Center for History and Culture in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota, documents encounters between Midwesterners and Germans or Austrians, 1933-48: prisoners of war on both sides, refugees, Anne Frank’s Iowa pen pal, etc. (www.TRACES.org). In the past week intermediaries for the RNC have contacted the museum several times, relaying convention organizers’ request to remove a Nazi banner captured by an American soldier from the Aachen, Germany, city hall, that now hangs in the museum’s exhibit on the Nazi book burning in Berlin in March 1933. The museum has decided not to grant the request to remove the banner.

Executive Director Michael Luick-Thrams, Ph.D., notes “We are perplexed by this matter. John McCain endured years of captivity as a POW, and we’ve invited him repeatedly to visit the museum during the convention—especially as it lies literally across the street from the convention center. Wouldn’t this museum—about the effects of war—be an exceptionally relevant story to feature, as the nation considers choosing this man to lead it? We think that the legacy of Nazism’s defeat by America and its allies in the Second World War remains an inspiring and relevant one. Why, then, are we being asked to alter our exhibit during the convention?”

Initially, staff at Minnesota Landmarks—manager of the county-owned Landmark Center, housed in a former Federal Courthouse now used as a cultural center—revealed only that a “client” renting the building for a late-night party next Thursday evening, at the conclusion of the convention, worried that “a delegate or some official might inadvertently be photographed” with a bold swastika hanging in the background. In the meantime, TRACES has learned that a large law firm will be hosting the reception. Curiously, the lights in the second-floor museum will be off at that time of day, anyway.

“Both parties, during both conventions, care about impression management—but this move seems to my staff and me to go too far” comments Luick-Thrams. “We struggled over our response, and after we decided to refuse the request, I hesitated to speak about the incident publically.” After St. Paul police followed Luick-Thrams Wednesday for almost two miles as he drove the museum’s exhibit bus from the Landmark Center to the bus storage space, however, he decided “This sort of Big Brother-ism is counter to America’s tradition of unrestrained freedom. I feel like we’ve slipped into some netherworld of smoke and mirrors, where appearances count more than substance or any semblance of reality.”

Charles Turner, TRACES Assistant Director, adds “To a degree, this incident is an indictment of the state of the media in this country at this time. That the RNC even feels it has to worry about someone from the press or some partier taking a ‘sensitive’ photo on their cell phone and leaking it to the media offers sad commentary on how low personal and public integrity in this country has fallen.”

Concerns over integrity ultimately led to the museum staff’s decision to keep the banner where it is. “This is a museum, telling a historical story. Who can ‘erase’ the past, and for what reasons? What happens when crucial information is ‘sanitized’ or outright omitted from our collective narrative about who we are as a people, and what we have experienced?” Luick-Thrams goes on to explain “We once collaborated with a Jewish historical society, for example, and cited on an exhibit panel that ‘non-Ayran’ refugees from Austria attended a Wagner opera in Iowa City, and ate non-kosher lamb at a dinner beforehand. The co-sponsors were adamant that ‘some segments of the Jewish community’ wouldn’t approve of Jews—even ‘ethnic’, non-practicing Jews—attending an opera by a known anti-Semite, and eating non-kosher food. We refused to compromise the historical truth of that exhibit, too. Our museum is all about learning from the past, even the complicated and ‘messy’ past.”

[For images of the banner, go to http://traces.org/historycenter.html; scroll down.]

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Michael Luick-Thrams
Executive Director, TRACES
Center for History and Culture
L A N D M A R K   C E N T E R
75 West Fifth Street, Suite 211
Saint Paul/Minnesota 55102 U.S.A.

land 651.292.8700
fax 651.292.8702
Email address:
director@TRACES.org
Web site: www.TRACES.org

Michael:

Thanks for your post.  I also think this request is not reasonable.

I understand guests may not want inconvenient photos of themselves in  
the media, however, if the reception is on the first floor and the  
museum is on the second floor with the lights off, I can't conceivably  
see how a guest could be photographed in this way.

Also, let's remember the past, so maybe we can avoid repeating the  
parts where millions are killed en masse.


  -Matt Johnson



On Aug 29, 2008, at 10:15 AM, Terry kayser wrote:

> Whitewashing History: RNC Organizers ask St. Paul History Museum to  
> remove Nazi Banner
>
> [For images of the banner, go to http://traces.org/
> historycenter.html; scroll down.]
>
> —     end —
>
> Michael Luick-Thrams
> Executive Director, TRACES
> Center for History and Culture
> L A N D M A R K   C E N T E R
> 75 West Fifth Street, Suite 211
> Saint Paul/Minnesota 55102 U.S.A.
>
> land 651.292.8700
> fax 651.292.8702
> Email address:
> director@TRACES.org
> Web site: www.TRACES.org
>
>
>
>
>
>