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Exhibition: Holocaust of Bullets

31.10.2016

In September 2016 the exhibition “Mass Shootings: The Holocaust From the Baltic to the Black Sea 1941-1944” opened at the Topography of Terror in Berlin.

The exhibition focuses on the mass murder of Jews and other minorities after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, often referred to as the "Holocaust of bullets".  The exhibition is the first in Germany to focus solely on the executions by shooting of more than two million people.

At the opening of the exhibit, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke of these “wounded landscapes” of “the forgotten Holocaust.” Mr. Steinmeier continued, “this exhibit removes the layers and brings to light, layer by layer, the details of a past which is not just an eastern one, but also ours.”

Andreas Nachama, the director of the Topography of Terror, said at the opening that the exhibit bore “a sad relevance,” an allusion to the rise of right-wing populism today. At the entrance, a map shows 722 places where more than 500 people were killed by the Nazis’ firing squads.

The IHRA has carried out a multi-year project on the topic of killing sites and also issued a publication "Killing Sites - Research and Remembrance". The publication can be downloaded free on the IHRA website and is avialble in print from the Metropol Verlag. Dr Thomas Lutz, a member of the German Delegation to the IHRA, is also head of the Memorial Museums Department of the Topography of Terror Foundation in Berlin.

The New York Times reported on the opening of the exhibition on 23 October.

Image: Gordon Welters for the New York Times