Germany sparks Polish anger with war museum

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany on Wednesday unveiled plans for a museum to document the fate of millions of Germans forced out of eastern Europe after World War Two following a years-long row over the idea with neighboring Poland.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet approved the Berlin centre, which will house a permanent exhibition on the experiences of 12.5 million Germans expelled from Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia after the Nazi defeat.

Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said the museum served the dual purposes of education and reconciliation.

"In dealing with the Nazi dictatorship, World War Two and its consequences, a responsible treatment of the issues of flight and expulsion is part of the broad historical picture," said Neumann after the long-awaited cabinet decision.

But many eastern Europeans object, fearing the site will portray Germans as victims of a war they started. Warsaw's concerns have been the subject of talks between Merkel and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Aiming to defuse the row, Merkel dispatched a delegation to Warsaw last month to explain the plans and Neumann said Polish officials now accepted the museum was a domestic German matter.

But not all fears have been allayed.

"The message behind this project threatens the memory of World War Two. This is wrong and mistaken," said Pawel Zalewski, a member of the Polish parliament's foreign affairs committee.

"I am worried by this project and think it will result in a problem for Polish-German relations if concluded."

After the war, Poland's borders were shifted west by international treaty and ethnic German communities were forced to flee from Poland, Hungary and what was then Czechoslovakia and to start new lives elsewhere from scratch.

Ties between Germany and Poland have been difficult since the war, in which six million Poles perished, and the long battle by Germany's League of Expellees for a permanent centre on the expulsions has aggravated underlying tensions.

Erika Steinbach, head of the League and a figure of hate in Poland, denied the new museum would try to re-write history.

"No one has as much of an interest as we do in depicting history truthfully," Steinbach, a member of Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), told Reuters.

"The main thing is not to push anything under the carpet but to present all the facts in an unemotional way," added blonde, blue-eyed Steinbach, who was portrayed in a 2003 Polish magazine in a Nazi uniform, straddling then chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

The show will focus on the fate of expelled Germans but will also refer to other expulsions. Details, including Steinbach's role in the project and the opening date, were unclear.

Since 1945, Germany has struggled to deal with its past. One of the most heated recent debates has been how acceptable it is for Germans to talk about war-time suffering.

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Warsaw; Editing by Giles Elgood)