EU museum of Europe sidelines Churchill while glossing over Germany’s Nazi past
A NEW £47million museum of European history is under fire for ignoring great Brits such as Winston Churchill and William Shakespeare while glossing over German’s evil Nazi past.
Critics of the House of European History, in Brussels, also point out that revolutionary British achievements like the television, railways and penicillin also go unmentioned.
However such questionable exhibits about the paper clip and the ballpoint pen - invented by a Norwegian and Hungarian, respectively - are included.
Britain is credited with importing pyjamas from Asia and being the first European nation to abolish slavery.
The museum, which opened in May, features an exhibit on Brexit, with Vote Leave t-shirt is on display alongside a roll of Vote In stickers.
This exhibition violates fundamental historical truth in matters of fundamental importance
A short blurb explains to visitors that British voters ‘no longer believed in the promise of prosperity and security within the European Union’.
The centre, which was part-funded by UK taxes, said it is dedicated to the 'history of Europe and the process of integration’.
The only mention of Churchill, Britain’s Prime Minister during the Second World War, is in the form of a photograph of the Yalta summit, which does not feature a caption.
Landmark battles such as Dunkirk and D-Day which helped free Europe from the yolk of Nazi rule are also barely noted, as are the fallen soldiers from Commonwealth allies including Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
Earlier this month Poland’s culture minister lashed out at the museum, saying it showed his country, as well as France and Ukraine, as being ‘complicit in the Holocaust’.
Piotr Glinski detailed his concerns in a letter on Friday October 6 to the President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani, which sponsored the exhibit at the House of European History.
He wrote: “This exhibition violates fundamental historical truth in matters of fundamental importance, omits many important historical facts and presents, in many cases, a biased interpretation of them.”
Mr Glinski said he received “numerous signals and letters” critical of the exhibition since it opened in May.
He continued in the letter that the exhibition’s narrative “shows that the greatest victims of World War II were Germans, without indicating their role as aggressors and initiators of the Second World War and without counting the civilian victims of German warfare throughout Europe”.