When a small-town museum in Geraldine decided to “show both sides” of World War II by displaying Waffen-SS uniforms and a Nazi flag, it likely did not expect national attention. But it should have.
Because there are not “two sides” to genocide.
The Military Museum’s decision to feature a re-enactment of Hitler’s elite bodyguard unit — the Waffen-SS — complete with Nazi insignia and without explanatory context, has drawn widespread criticism from historians and Holocaust educators. The Waffen-SS was no ordinary military formation; it was a paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, personally commanded by Heinrich Himmler, and directly implicated in war crimes, massacres, and the industrialised murder of Europe’s Jews.
Yet, according to reports, the display’s creator claimed the exhibit merely sought to “show the public what the uniforms and equipment of the opposite side looked like.” He insisted the group was “non-political and non-ideological,” and that “history should not be hidden away because it might offend someone.”
It’s an argument that might sound reasonable — until one remembers what the SS actually did.
Moral Equivalence as Historical Evasion
Dr Rowan Light, a historian at the University of Auckland who studies commemoration and public memory, rejected the “both sides” framing outright:
“No historian would make that argument… the atrocities were the point of the Nazi regime, not an accident or side-effect of battle.”
That distinction matters. The Nazi state wasn’t a participant in a tragic misunderstanding of history — it was the architect of deliberate, mechanised genocide. As Light noted, New Zealand soldiers, like all armies, committed isolated wartime abuses. But in Nazi Germany, mass murder was the mission.
When a museum flattens those distinctions, it risks transforming education into moral confusion. To present Waffen-SS symbols as historical artefacts without context is to normalise them; to display a swastika without narrative is to strip it of its meaning — and its horror.
Geraldine’s Uneasy Legacy
This isn’t the first time Geraldine has faced uncomfortable questions about its Nazi connections. In 2021, local media revisited the story of Willi Huber, an Austrian former Waffen-SS officer who settled in the area and became celebrated as a “founding father” of the Mt Hutt skifield.
Huber, who joined the SS at seventeen and served as a Panzer gunner in the Battle of Kursk, was interviewed by TVNZ in 2017. He described Hitler as “very clever” and claimed, “We, as soldiers, never, never had the slightest inkling — maybe the high command — it never occurred to us what happened in Germany or Poland.”
Those comments sparked outrage from Holocaust educators. Jeremy Smith, then chair of the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand, condemned the programme’s “positive and uncritical representation” of a Nazi officer, calling it “outrageous.” Shalom.Kiwi added that glorifying a Waffen-SS veteran “trivialises the horrors of WWII, insults the Kiwi soldiers who fought for freedom, and desecrates the memory of the millions murdered.”
That controversy should have been a warning: New Zealand, like many Western democracies, remains vulnerable to the sanitisation of Nazi history — the quiet reframing of ideological evil as “another perspective.”
Education, Not Equivalence
Holocaust Centre chair Deb Hart offered a vital corrective in her comments on the museum display:
“You can’t just put a big swastika up in a museum with some military uniforms and equipment and say, job done. It doesn’t help people understand.
There’s an obligation to safeguard community. We want to educate, not traumatise — to safeguard NZ against antisemitism and hatred.”
This is not about banning difficult history. It’s about framing it responsibly. The Holocaust Centre stresses that engaging with the history of the Holocaust must be guided and responsible, presenting the facts without sensationalism or glorification. Without careful curation, such displays become fetish rather than history.
Why It Matters Now
New Zealand’s Jewish community is small but increasingly aware of the global rise in Holocaust denial and distortion. When local institutions, however inadvertently, echo the rhetoric of “seeing both sides” of Nazism, they contribute to that distortion.
A museum’s role is to illuminate, not to equalise. To teach that the SS uniform is not just another costume of war, but the symbol of a movement that sought to annihilate an entire people.
As antisemitism resurges worldwide — often disguised as political commentary or “context” — how we remember the past will shape our moral clarity in the present. Geraldine’s museum controversy is not a provincial footnote; it’s a test of national conscience.
History Is Not Neutral
To “show both sides” of the Holocaust is not history. It is abdication.
Because some sides were fighting for survival — and others were fighting for annihilation.
And when we begin speaking of “both sides” in situations defined by atrocity and ideology – whether in the history of the Holocaust or in the present – we risk losing the moral clarity that safeguards free societies. Some conflicts are not symmetrical. Some evils do not merit balance, only truth.
