I agree with Craig d'Arcy; visitors often don't read even the first paragraph.

In the part of our gallery introducing the Second World War, we have one of the
few "grosser Mercedes" limousines that can actually be identified as being used
by Hitler, in a small German streetscape of the late '30s. Around it are
exhibit components intended to show the contrast between the glitzy, colourful
face of Nazism and its equally dark and evil side; an SS officer standing in
front of a prison door, the head from a statue of Hitler, displayed in front of
a photograph of piles of bodies in one of the concentration camps, a truncheon
used by a kapo in one of the camps against the hood used in the hanging
execution of the "Beast of Belsen", etc. The very first paragraph of the single
large text panel in the area (bold white text on blood red background) speaks
to the evils of the Nazi regime and a large map, showing a fire expanding out
from Germany to engulf Europe furthers the theme.

You'd think this would be enough to commuicate our view of Nazism, wouldn't
you? Yet we still get a number of complaints accusing us of glorifying it -
though we have also had the local neo-Nazis parading up and down outside,
feeling hard done by!

Perhaps when we open our planned Holocaust gallery (when we've raised the rest
of the money to do it!) we may communicate to everyone - but I doubt it.

Harry Needham
Canadian War Museum